The 24 Games of Christmas! Day #20: Rogue Legacy

Nothing beats Christmas; it’s the time for fun and play, for family and friends. It’s the chance to get away from work and reset the batteries. And, of course, it’s the perfect time to knock off some of those games that you just haven’t been able to get around to.

As is tradition for Digitally Downloaded we’re going to count down the 24 games of Christmas – one a day for each day from December 1 through to December 24. The fun, the silly and the crazy, these games have been custom picked by the DDNet editorial team to give you plenty of ideas for stocking fillers, games to play with family and friends on Christmas Eve, or games you should use the extra time over the holiday to get stuck into.

Day #20: Rogue Legacy

(We never did review this one! Read below for info)

Within the last three hours of writing this article, I beat Rogue Legacy in NG+7 and I am now on my 9^th playthrough of the game. With my usual habit being to complete a game once and put it on the shelf, there must have been something special about Rogue Legacy if it urged me to play through it eight times, and that there is why I’m recommending you grab this one for Christmas.

Indeed, there is something special about Rogue Legacy. Of course, you can point to the procedurally-generated castles and the re-contextualisation of death as progress, and to the games credit those were important parts of the experience. However, what I feel ties Rogue Legacy together into a wonderful package are the art style and platforming of the game.

There’s something about the sprite art of Rogue Legacy that makes watching the game in action an enjoyable experience. From the highlights of each sprites to the styles’ slight exaggerated nature to the snappiness of the animations, there’s something simply enticing about the look of the game.

The platforming of Rogue Legacy is some of the best platforming I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Once again, it’s hard to describe in words how Rogue Legacy does it so well, but the platforming is so natural from a player perspective. Attacking takes the perfect amount of frames, the speed of the game allows lightning reflexes to be useful but not necessary, and I feel like I could write an entire essay on how perfect the jumping is. These traits, combined with controls that respond on a dime, make Rogue Legacy worth mentioning in the same sentence as Super Mario Bros. and Mega Man.