Chivalware Preview – A Fun New Take On Roguelikes

The roguelike genre was never really one I could find myself getting into, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about Chivalware until I loaded it up for the first time. Needless to say, I’m now totally convinced that Chivalware‘s take on a roguelike system works perfectly for me.

Chivalware feels like the kind of game I would’ve had a blast playing at the arcade when I was younger, with its sleek pixel graphics and rapid-fire action. This little indie game about knights, floppy disks, and tiles has enough depth to keep new runs interesting, with a short, sweet gameplay loop that keeps me coming back for more.

Chivalware has you playing as a Disk Knight, a warrior who must slay the mad King of this cyber-medieval kingdom. You’ll travel across many different regions, encountering short battles, shops, and special encounters that can earn you gold and rewards, with a boss guarding the end of each zone.

“Chivalware feels like the kind of game I would’ve had a blast playing at the arcade when I was younger.”

The core gameplay of Chivalware centers on how you interact with different tiles on the battlefield. The 16 tiles on your side can be matched and chained like a match-3 game, and every time you make a match, you equip a different weapon. Chaining more tiles earns you more energy to attack with that weapon, and getting into the rhythm of matching tiles while attacking and dodging enemies is key to getting good at this game.

Most battle stages in Chivalware will drop a handful of enemies onto the map, who will sometimes have a shield protecting them against one of your weapons depending on which colour the weapon is tied to. The way different enemy types sync up their attacks gave the grid-based arena a real dance-floor feel, and some of the boss fights felt a bit like a rhythm game. You don’t have much health to spare either, so getting good at no-hitting stages is key.

Your power comes from installing different chips, processors, capacitors, and memory sticks to gain new abilities. Those abilities work together with different floppy disks that grant you new weapons, which can make pretty powerful builds depending on what you gather. Each installation can come with a passive buff as simple as more health, or as distinct as increasing damage against enemies with certain status afflictions. New weapons you find will increase in level as you go on, with upgraded damage and extra passive effects.

I’m normally a creature of habit, so being encouraged to try different weapons consistently took some getting used to, especially since some weapon movesets were tricky to learn. With only three slots to work with, putting together a sick combination of weapons tied to your passives feels super satisfying.

One of my best runs had me finding a plasma whip, which would start building a stun effect on the enemy. Then I got a buff that set an enemy on fire when they were stunned, which paired nicely with a sniper rifle I found that boosted damage against burning enemies. After coming across a totem that made my halberd inflict stun, I felt like I had a god run. I have so many more stories like that one too, which tells me every run of Chivalware can be something really special.

Every roguelike would get pretty dull without some sort of subtle progression, so Chivalware rewards each of your runs with passive chips and weapons for future games. Some chips are tied to overcoming certain challenges, and others are tied to reaching new levels on a sort of leaderboard system, where your total accumulated score across games is collected and ascends your rank.

“Every run of Chivalware can be something really special.”

My favourite unlockables are the new Disk Knight characters you can start as, who begin with different weapon loadouts and a distinct passive. There were five total characters to play when I gave Chivalware a go, and I only missed out on finding one of them.

My new main became the Tank Knight, who has an ability that helps negate damage when you chain tile matches. The other two I unlocked were the Jester Knight, who had a quirky gimmick of launching a ball in the air every time you match a weapon, and the Hyper Knight, who gained tons of energy every time they equipped a weapon that would rapidly deplete. Each knight is simple but has a great sense of identity, and making custom modded knights to start as would be an awesome feature in the future.

There’s a lot of room for Chivalware to grow into, and I’m excited to see where Regal Pigeon Games might take the game when it fully releases sometime this autumn. I could see even more weapon disks being added, and I think new knights would be super cool, as I said earlier. I couldn’t tell from the preview I played if the leaderboard will track other players or even your friends’ scores like Ultrakill, but that would be really cool too.

I am super impressed with Regal Pigeon Games’ Chivalware, and if you’re even remotely interested, I would highly recommend picking up the demo and getting a feel for the action for yourself on Steam.