I knew that Haque (presumably pronounced the identical as Hack) was a sport I needed to dig deeper into when, after slaying a manticore for the primary time (described in-game as ‘Big angry kitties with venomous scorpion tails’ and likewise ‘They are just the best’), the tutorial narrator popped as much as grumble about what the fell beasts had achieved to his vegetable backyard.
Released a few week in the past, Haque has flown beneath the radar. Low-fi retro video games are ten a penny, and roguelike dungeon-crawls even moreso, however after making an attempt a little bit of it myself, I reckon it would nicely warrant a more in-depth look.
At its coronary heart, Haque appears to be a simple and accessible roguelike, wrapped up in a messy bundle of fascinating inspirations. The writing is whimsical, harking back to Adventure Time. The look of the sport is early DOS, with (elective) CRT monitor simulation, proper all the way down to a Filth slider within the graphics choices letting you regulate how a lot finger-smudged mud you need in your imaginary monitor-within-a-monitor.
Most apparently appears to be an sometimes glitchy aesthetic that appears to run greater than pores and skin deep. While I don’t anticipate the sport to go full Pony Island on me, I positively felt an escalating sense of glitch-fueled dread, with the scatterbrained Old Man of the tutorial sometimes returning in menacing type to ship dire warnings as sprites warp and flicker.
If that was all there was to the sport, it wouldn’t be price mentioning, although. At its core, Haque is charming. It appears to be a legitimately good little roguelike, with a solidly designed UI, animation used sparingly however to nice impact and with enemies, gadgets and courses which can be nearly all bizarre however cute. The audio hits all the fitting sorts of retro crunches, beeps and bloops however what actually steals the present is the free-flowing guitar-noodling of the soundtrack – generally acoustic, generally electrical, incessantly nice to hearken to.
Haque’s bundle of concepts features a notably intelligent one borrowed from Rogue Legacy, too; Every time you begin a sport of Haque, you choose from one in every of three fully random characters, that means that generally you’ll simply must play as a Pumpkin-man and his loyal pet Puplord, who’s a cat. Given how foolish all the alternatives are typically, it appears arduous to select generally, and that’s a very good downside to have in a roguelike.
I’m solely a little bit methods into the sport, having simply slain the primary boss. I’m positively going to be spending some extra time on this later within the week – even when the rabbit gap doesn’t go fairly as deep as I’m counting on the bizarre glitchy entrance, the stable mechanics and lovely writing will maintain me by no less than a number of extra runs.
