6 Things We Wish We Knew Before Starting Rogue Genesia (2024)

Rogue: Genesia is an indieroguelite bullet hell, one of the many in wake of Vampire Survivor’s genre-spawning success. This one has a unique twist in that, instead of picking a stage and sticking with it or even only having one stage, like its contemporaries, this game instead consists of short stages in an overworld.

Related: Games To Play If You Like Vampire Survivors

Once you pick a stage, gameplay goes as you’d expect, but for a much shorter time. You do an assigned goal, be it surviving a set amount of time, killing a certain number of enemies, or slaying specific elites, which will allow you to clear the stage and pick another in a branching map, eventually leading to a boss. The game has a few curveballs to throw at you, and like most games in the roguelite genre, it doesn’t slow down to explain most of it to you.

6 It’s A Mix Of Genre Styles

Upon starting a run, Rogue: Genesia looks familiar. You pick an offensive ability, and you run around trying to not get hit while your ability auto-fires at enemies. It might seem like this is Vampire Survivors again.

However, certain cards are actually targeted to your cursor, making the game a little more like 20 Minutes Till Dawn, save the part where you have to manually fire. Other than reading the text of a card, you can actually tell when you have a card with this trait because it will cause the crosshairs to activate, allowing you to see where you’re aiming.

5 There’s No Limit On How Much Gear You Can Have

In a lot of games like this, you’re given a limited number of slots for weapons and items, so you’re forced to pick and choose between upgrades that will make for a working build. While you should still do that in Rogue: Genesia, the game is more flexible with how you go about it.

Theoretically, there isn’t really a limit to how many weapons and upgrades you can have. Both are governed by Soul Cards, and you can acquire them without limit. Though it’s possible to have every Soul Card equipped in a run, you should still probably focus on a cohesive build, since the enemies can overwhelm the unprepared.

4 Anything Left Behind, Stays Behind

The game’s multi-stage setup means that when you meet the win condition of a stage, you can do so with plenty of experience and other goodies left on the ground when it’s time to clear the level. You’d think that the game would just give it to you after you win, but in fact, all those goodies are lost after a run. There are even Artifacts that help mitigate that loss, should you find them.

Related: The Best Fantasy Roguelike Games

After a level is done, you have about five seconds to grab what you can, which is a woefully small amount of time. A trick you can do to help you recover at least the lost experience is to save at least one Void powerup, which attracts all experience gems to you until the end of the match, and then grab it when the ending countdown starts.

3 The Soul Shop Has Multiple Levels

When you first start the game, you might come upon the Soul Shop, which holds more permanent power-ups than the stuff you find in a run. You might think that the selection is small, and you’d be right, if that was the only page of the Soul Shop you get.

Fortunately, you get more Soul Shop options with more powerful (and expensive) upgrades as you emerge from runs victorious. Succeeding in a run in a given rank will unlock the Soul Shop page of the next higher rank. So if you were to beat Rank E in Rog’s mode, you’d unlock the Rank F Soul Shop page.

2 Pay Attention To Weapon Targeting

If Vampire Survivors was your only experience before in this genre, you might think that your offensive abilities fire in a set pattern, randomly, or in the direction you’re facing. However, if you take the time to read the Soul Cards, you’ll find that they actually tell you their preferred targets (least health, most health, closest, etc.) or if they fire upon your cursor or even in a set area.

Related: The Best Roguelike Card Games

They also tell you other important tidbits, like the number of projectiles they fire, how often they fire, how much damage they deal and other details. While it can be a lot to keep track of when facing wave after wave of enemies, you can at least keep that data in mind when comparing upgrades and deciding on which ones to get.

1 It’s Easy To Lose Your Crosshairs

This game gets chaotic pretty quickly. Depending on what difficulty you’re on, the screen could start filling with enemies as soon as the second stage. All this visual noise means that you could end up losing crucial details.

While Rog (or the Survivor) has a distinct enough look so that you’re not likely to lose sight of them, for some reason, as bright as your crosshair and aiming line are, it’s still quite easy to lose track of them. Fortunately, you can go into the options menu to change the size and color of your crosshairs, which should help some.

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