There are a lot of games that I just think about all the time, staying memorable long past my playtime. Clever mechanics, adorable art, great soundtracks, and a satisfying gameplay loop are what made Dungreed a special game to me. It’s fast-paced, has a lot of customisation, and it lets you do a whole lot of very cool and very silly things as you fight your way through this dungeon in order to rebuild the village you stumbled upon.
As such, it should come as no surprise that I was incredibly hyped about Team Horay’s new title, Sephiria. It had some big boots to fill given how much I loved Dungreed, and honestly, it exceeded them fairly easily. Today, I wanted to talk about this cute and incredibly fun new action-roguelike that might just have become one of my favourite releases this year, and just share how it managed to do exactly that.
Developer: TEAM HORAY
Publisher: TEAM HORAY
Genre: Indie, Top-Down Action Roguelike
Release Date: July 31st, 2026
Reviewed on: PC
Available on: PC
Copy was provided via PressEngine.
At its core, Sephiria is a top-down action roguelike with inventory management and a great many different combinations to experiment with. You play as a tiny rabbit from a town called Bunnyville who is destined to save the world from a doomed fate after receiving a premonition of a crazed demon-led cult slaughtering the whole village. So, you dive into the mines and then head deeper and deeper into the tower structure to face off against moles, slimes, golems, cats, demons, and other enemies.
The main gameplay loop consists of going through procedurally generated floors, clearing rooms of enemies, and finding rewards to get stronger. Kill enough enemies, and you level up, allowing you to pick one of many different artefacts to add to your inventory. Each artefact belongs to different classes. If you collect multiple of the same item class, you’ll activate specific class effects, like Magitech letting you electrocute enemies or Frozen Relic, which lets you make use of unique ice weapons. On top of that, each artefact also comes with levels that increase its potency – and to level them up, you’ll have to strategically place different slabs into your inventory to buff up the level of artefacts placed in different rows and lines or perhaps specific tiles.
You can tell that the game takes a lot of inspiration from other games with its Slay the Spire-esque floor map for each biome, the inventory management reminiscent of Backpack Hero, and TFT or other autobattler-like class systems. What the game does with it, however, isn’t just merely copy and be done with it but rather infuse it with its own systems. There are a ton of cool builds you can go for but you also can upgrade your starting weapon to fit with what you’ve got going on, from adding elemental effects and damage to your staff, greatsword or crossbow, to changing how your weapon plays in the first place.
The weapons make or break games like Hades, in my opinion, but due to the in-run upgrade paths, you get a ton of variety in Sephiria, letting you choose between six different weapons that all feel distinct enough, in my opinion. Starting out, you use a sword and shield combo that lets you block incoming projectiles at the cost of mana and perform simple slashes and dash attacks. You will eventually unlock a greatsword with slow, albeit strong hits that just feel so satisfying to use, especially when you increase the size of the sword enormously, and then you’ve got the quick daggers, the fun ranged option if you like kiting, a katana if you’re a weeb, and a stick if you like Gonnosuke.
Look, every weapon has its own cool upgrades, as I mentioned already, but I’ve not seen so much variety in a ton of years. These can also be paired with way too many different costumes that further amplify specific aspects of your kit, and to further guarantee cool combos, you can increase the odds of receiving certain artefact classes while reducing the odds of seeing others (if not flat-out banning them) using the unlockable fruit skewer mechanic. Sephiria is quite possibly the king of build variety for me, especially because of how much you can adjust your build.
It’s a beautifully crafted experience with pretty aesthetics, cute animals fighting off demons, fun bosses, lots of build variety, meaningful upgrades, and it capitalises on what made Dungreed GREAT but expands on it in a way that really gives the player agency. You can set up specific loadouts, freely reset your talent tree, unlock more items over time, and once you make it to Chapter 3, you even unlock a hard mode that is customizable as hell. Honestly, it’s an extraordinarily fun title that I highly recommend checking out.
The only flaws I have with the game are probably its difficulty. It takes some time to get used to the very short i-frames you get when you dash through attacks, and some bosses can be fairly punishing. Once you get used to that, though, the game can feel fairly easy, which is why I sort of wished that hard mode had been introduced at an earlier time. Like, the difficulty modifiers, including reduced healing, restricted inventory slots, the buffed minibosses, and more would have been so nice to unlock earlier into the game. These are optional, after all, so people who are better at the game could make use of them earlier on, right?
Beyond that, though, I honestly don’t really have any issues with it. It’s very wonderfully balanced and feels super polished! Also, god, does it have a ton of quality-of-life features that I wish other games had…
Sephiria‘s an outstanding experience that manages to fill in Dungreed’s boots really well while enhancing the experience in a ton of meaningful ways. It’s well-balanced, has a ton of cool bosses to fight, and just genuinely was a great sight to behold. I’m a bit sad I didn’t get to play it during its early access run, but seeing the full release come out and maybe seeing more updates in the future got me genuinely hyped. TEAM HORAY cooked with this gas in this one, and it’s just incredibly nice to see a studio grow so much over the years.
Verdict: Sephiria manages to fill in its spiritual predecessor's shoes incredibly well by capitalizing on the build-variety and expanding on it in a satisfying and meaningful way. Between lots of artefacts, a great many weapons, a talent tree, and a bunch of costumes, players get to create a lot of cool builds for their little bunnies, all the while fighting increasingly harder bosses and challenging their luck with harder and harder difficulty modifiers. I highly recommend this to any roguelike fan looking for their next fix.
This post was originally published on Indiecator.
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