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I've said it more than once by now: roguelikes and I don't usually see eye to eye. The genre's obsession with runs, resets and starting from scratch is a kind of gameplay loop that isn't something I will spend my free Saturday with. So when I sat down ten days ago for an early look at Glowmade's Rogue Fortune, ahead of its reveal during today's XBOX Gamescom broadcast, I wasn't expecting to walk out reconsidering that stance. And yet, here we are.
Greed, a Cursed Temple, and a Very Good Reason to Keep Fighting
Rogue Fortune's premise is simple, and that's exactly what hooked me immediately. You play a guy who's stumbled into the Well of Eternal Riches, a cursed temple stuffed with enough gold to set him up for life. The catch, and it's a good one, is that all that treasure doesn't do you much good if you die three rooms in. To survive the horde of enemies and deadly contraptions standing between you and the exit, you'll have to spend your own hard-earned fortune on items, heals and whatever else keeps you breathing. Every dodge, every swing, every shortcut to survival comes out of the very pile of gold you're working so hard to get out of the temple. The temple isn't just trying to kill you here; it's trying to make you poor while doing it, and that's just a genius design.
A Backpack That's Actually a Puzzle
The part that really caught my attention during the presentation, though, was the inventory. Glowmade calls it the Relic Board, and it will probably be the biggest selling point of the game. Relics, the power-ups you collect on a run, aren't just something you put randomly in your inventory; they're geometric shapes that have to physically fit together. How you arrange them on the board determines how they interact, and the devs showed us on several occasions that their placements can matter just as much as which Relics you actually pick up.
Slot two Relics next to each other the right way, and you can trigger devastating chain reactions and stacked buffs. Arrange them in a wrong way, or move one piece without thinking it through, and a build loses that particular edge that made you cut through enemies just a moment earlier. So equipping the strongest gear isn't the most important thing to do in Rogue Fortune; it is how you get the best out of everything you have, and it is something that made me interested in the game, even just after attending the presentation. The real deal is something I definitely look forward to.
The developers really outdid themselves while explaining everything about the game, every mechanic, every room and every movement, and honestly, they were thorough enough that by the time they allowed us to ask questions, the room didn't have much left to ask, but don't think it's a bad thing, not at all. It is simply the job well done by the people who lead the presentation in the best possible way.
Combat That Doesn't Let You Coast
Visually, Rogue Fortune tries to showcase the same contrast through the level design as the contrast shown in the game's core gameplay design: the difference between the richness and the danger. From what I saw in the gameplay presentation, the temple's visuals change between warm, shiny halls glowing gold and green and colder, a bit more pale chambers coloured in blue and dark. The towering stone guardians and ornate puzzle-tile floors are there to show you everything you need to know about the game's DNA before you even take a controller in your hands.
Combat itself looks fast and a little chaotic in the best way, skeletal warriors, robed cultists and huge hammer-wielding enemies all closing in at once, with beautiful combat effects that light up the screen as soon as the battle commences. Every battle feels calculated, and the visual effects fully support it. Greed can kill, but not being greedy can also make you broke.
That risk-reward loop is best described by Glowmade's co-founder and studio head Jonny Hopper, who said, "Rogue Fortune grew out of us considering how we could take the moment-to-moment thrill of a roguelite and blend it with this deep, strategic puzzle mechanic. The result is incredibly compelling. Players need to be inventive and think laterally in order to truly master the second-to-second combat and beat the Temple."
Real Stakes, But Not Total Loss
Even though Rogue Fortune might seem like a bit of a different game, make no mistake here, it is a roguelike through and through. Runs are built to last around 30 minutes, and dying means losing what you were carrying – no shortcuts around that. But the game won't demand starting completely from zero every single time. Gear you've earned and personas you've unlocked carry over and can meaningfully change how you approach the next attempt; keep doing runs, be persistent, and you'll eventually either get good or get upgraded, devs' words, not mine. If you combine all this with a temple whose environment changes every time you start anew, no two runs are meant to look the same, and for me, it is enough of a hook.
Early Verdict
To say I'm suddenly interested in a roguelike title and I might even become a fan of the genre would be an overstatement. But Rogue Fortune is doing something with its Relic Board and its greed-as-a-resource combat loop that feels quite different and attractive, and I must say I'm a bit curious for the game.
Rogue Fortune is in development for PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch and Switch 2, with a release date still to be announced.
