I very nearly missed the boat on Deadzone: Rogue multiple times. After all, the game launched on PS5, Xbox, and PC last year without me noticing. Then, when it was shown at a recent Nintendo Indie World Presentation, I thought it looked like a somewhat generic sci-fi FPS, and I brushed it off as something I would likely skip. However, when I got my hands on it at GDC in March, I was immediately hooked. When the game arrived on Switch 2, I fired it up, and I simply cannot stop playing it.
In Deadzone: Rogue, you step into the shoes of a man who doesn’t remember anything about the space station he’s on, and with that mystery in mind, you start going on runs. The sharp shooting mechanics, rewarding cycle of gathering loot and resources for upgrades, and bite-sized rooms coalesce into a terrific roguelite twist on the sci-fi shooter genre that sets it apart from other recent games I’ve played. While the loss of a promising run is as devastating as ever, I am almost always immediately jumping right back into another attempt at moving the story forward.
