Samurai Bringer

An exciting 3D roguelite set in the picturesque lands of Japanese myths and legends, Samurai Bringer delivers fun gameplay and visual spectacle in equal measures. Featuring an astounding amount of player customization and some genuinely challenging boss battles, this game sets a new standard for indie roguelikes that we hope to see more frequently in future entries in the genre.

A game that’s built around customization naturally offers the player a massive degree of freedom to create any character they’d want, and that’s precisely what Samurai Bringer delivers. As long as you can deal with some controller oddities, this is pretty much a flawless roguelite experience through and through.

A Rich Backstory

In recent years, we’ve seen an uptick of roguelite games that use classic mythologies as their setting to fantastic effect. Who could forget how great Hades incorporated some quite obscure elements of Greek mythology into its narrative? Samurai Bringer uses a similar concept, using Japanese mythology as its basis instead.

The story begins with the struggle between Susanoo and Yamata-no-Orochi, two highly recognizable deities who should, by now, be familiar names to anyone who has ever played Nioh. Samurai Bringer takes these two characters and gives them a unique story — one involving legendary samurai from across time and space.

Your character will be tasked with surviving the seemingly endless hordes of mythical warriors, gathering the powerful Combat Scrolls in the process. These scrolls will also serve as your main ways of offense, so you’ll have to keep a close eye on which of these powerful tomes you’ll add to your repertoire — especially because each of them completely overhauls the way you play the game.

Customize to Survive

Every powerup you pick up will serve as your character’s attacks. The objective of Samurai Bringer, like every roguelite game, is to survive for as long as you can using a variety of randomly-selected weapons and powerups.

The difference here is that every Combat Scroll that you pick up will be assigned to a different button, meaning that the player ends up customizing the very way in which they control the game. It’s similar to Godhand’s combo system, where different attacks could be combined in a sequence to create customizable combos.

With an assortment of over a hundred unique legendary warriors, the possibilities for combat customization in Samurai Bringer are nearly endless. Each playthrough feels wholly unique, and that’s mostly because the controls change every time you play the game.

However, some of the most purist PC gamers might find the inability to fully map the controls to their liking a bit unsettling. When most of the game revolves around binding controls to specific actions, it’s certainly a bit puzzling to see that the control options seem to be a bit limited in scope, especially compared to some other similar roguelite games.

Regardless, the impeccable visual design and excellent gameplay loop turn Samurai Bringer into one of the finest roguelikes of its kind. Considering how small its file size is, and how simple it looks at first glance, this game holds a whole lot of potential for fans of the roguelite genre.

Pros

• Amazing amount of customization options
• Clever gameplay loop that’s incredibly rewarding
• Great visuals and overall presentation

Cons

• Some minor pacing issues