By sjj_admin 
Originally published on GameOnAus.com on Dec 2020
Roundguard is a roguelite from developer Wonderbelly Games. I’ve not played many of these sorts of games before but I understand the basic mechanics.
Roundguard has three characters from you to choose from, Flagon The Warrior, Shade The Rogue and Fizz The Wizard. Each character has different stats and starting abilities, like The Warrior having more health and The Wizard having more mana for ability attacks, which also differ between the characters.
Where this game differs to most other roguelike games is the battle arena. Instead of being a traditional 2D map where you can move your character at will, Roundguard is a vertical arena, where gravity assists you as you fall through the map, bouncing off enemies to damage them.
It’s a novel twist on the genre and makes for some interesting strategies in eliminating enemies. I found myself thinking almost like I was playing pool: looking for the trick shot to bounce off walls.
There was very little for you to do once you’d launched though. You can choose when to use your special abilities but that was it. I also found staying in the air long enough to do any decent damage was so hard. The only character where I felt like I was making progress was The Rogue and that was because one of their abilities was direction attack, which meant I had more control.
It also felt short. There seemed to only be 3 levels to move through. I played for just over three hours and didn’t unlock any other levels. The enemy variety was lacking as well.
Like all roguelikes, there are things that carry over between runs to make things easier or harder. Harder runs mean better rewards, which means better equipment.
It has a different look, where characters and enemies look like bouncy balls and the characters say some funny things, but I didn’t feel engaged with what was going on and skipped pretty all the text after about an hour of gameplay.
Roundguard is an entertaining game and tries its best to stand out, but ultimately the main battle mechanic left me feeling like I had very little control with two of the three characters.
Roundguard is available now for Steam, Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch and iOS. This review was conducted on an Xbox.