Rogue Citadel

A delightful hybrid of a bullet heaven and a tower defense featuring an actual “cat lady” paladin, fluffy ears not included!
Confession time: I was never seduced by the sudden craze surrounding Vampire Survivor and all the other copycats that formed what is now known as the bullet heaven genre. However, I have always been an avid tower defense enjoyer, and this game looked at first glance to be a perfect amalgamation between the two genres. Do note that this game is still in Early Access, but the developers are active on steam and regularly drop balancing patches that really gives you a good sense of direction for the game.
The premise is simple, you are a resurrected revenant defending your way through an old citadel to stem the everpouring tide of monsters from destroying your dungeon cores. During your defensive bouts you level up and are aided by the citadel's quirky entourage of assorted residents, all presented in a beautiful “Hades-like” character portrayal with assorted characterisation added for extra spice. As of writing, I can’t say that the lore/story is greatly fleshed out at the time of the review, but you get snippets of the grander story behind it all during your brief interactions during each resurrection/respawning as well as your brief interactions with your fellow residents. Overall I really found the presentation to be top notch, and it really alleviated the game's otherwise rather murky storyline. However, since this is early access, I guess we get more of the bits and pieces of the overarching plot in the final release of the game.
As for the gameplay, the mixture between tower defense and auto-slasher made for a really addictive gameplay loop that got me hooked right from the start. Each run is based on a random dungeon floor with your dungeon core fixed firmly in the center and it is up to you to build walls, turrets, spiky traps and gold farms to enhance the combat that you as the main character can ditch out. After slashing monsters for a while you get visited by one of the locals offering you a trio of upgrades depending on what NPC shows up. The upgrades are quite many and give you bonuses such as automatic fireballs, a tower regenerating aura or simply more health or defenses. In a way it reminds me of a slightly different Dungeon Defenders, albeit more on the roguelite side. When you either die or finish a level you get returned to the hub/lair in which you can craft and equip items, improve your or the building's stats, or invest in new towers to expand your arsenal. This part of the game allows you some freedom in how you prepare yourself for the next run and gives the game a lot more replayability.
Personally I really enjoyed this game and found the mix between automatic slashing combat and tactile tower building to be just the right amount of each so that neither of the two aspects diminishes the other. Both the character and clever towering are needed to get past the levels and the upgrades and boons made each run feel unique. Despite the game being quite lacking in the storytelling department at the moment, the characters and the voice actors deliver a tremendous amount of personality to a game that otherwise is tons of third person automatic hacky slashy combat. I have not been this enamored with characters in a game since Hades or Vermintide, and the personality of the few characters on show is really promising for the future of the game.
This game is a solid recommendation to enjoyers of both genres. The combat is tactile and the towering scratches that right amount of automation for me. Sure you might be ambushed by a particularly bad dungeon layout now and then, but that only adds to the challenge ahead! This game is highly polished for being an early access title and one I will be keeping a keen eye on in the near future.
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Rogue Citadel Review
Dungeon’s Core
We’ve all explored dungeons, but have you ever defended one?
Build defenses and traps to stop the incoming hordes of monsters who try to destroy the dungeon core. Fail, but rise again and replan your strategy, upgrade your defenses, and level up to become bigger and stronger.
The Game of The Play
Rogue Citadel is a Dungeon Tower Defense Rogue-Action Game in early access, which is also displayed at the opening of the game. The game plays out from a god-view angle, while the key bindings for movement are combined with the character’s view point.
Holding down the left-mouse button will allow the character to look around as the mouse moves but will cause the player to be constantly walking.
(There is no save file mechanic, so the player saves their progress when they close the game, and they cannot do a blank restart).
As there seems to be, there are three levels/floors that the player needs to protect. After completing protecting one floor, the next will be unlocked, along with a harder difficulty.
Overall, there’s three difficulties: Normal, Hard, Insane, but when starting to play the game, simply normal is quite difficult itself, which I enjoy. Forcing the player to rethink and redo their strategy for their next try.
Every time the player dies or the core gets destroyed, they will get teleported back to the camp at the ruined tower, and once heading back into the dungeon, it will look completely different, either to their advantage or disadvantage. Making sure that the player cannot prepare a plan beforehand but to think in action.
Camp - Ruined Tower
At the camp, the player can access their found loot, retrieved from the dungeon, and upgrade their skills, weapons, or purchase new traps and defenses.
And once all is ready or nothing can be done with the remaining amount of currency, the player can dive back into the dungeon stronger and acknowledged of the upcoming dangers.
Lectern
In the cozy little corner of the bookshelf and shenanigans, we have the lectern, which allows the player to select and move their trap and defense cards that are used within the dungeon.
The maximum equipped cards are eight, so the player needs to choose wisely what to bring and what to leave once they have all the traps and defenses.
Forge
The burning hot forge is the very same thing that allows the player to upgrade their character, gear, or unlock new defenses.
If you don’t want a specific upgrade, you can reset it and get back all of your orbs to spend on another upgrade. (This, however, only works for character upgrades and not upgrades of gear or purchases of new defenses.)
Campfire
Over by the campfire, you'll find storage for your gear and belongings. Here, you can select from the items that have been found in the dungeon while slaying monsters and equip them yourself for buffs.
There are a large variety of things you can equip and find down in the dungeon.
Dungeon Portal
And finally, we have the dungeon portal, an oddly shining and flowing circle of blue light, beholding three levels.
But on the very other side, there are two stone pillars, just like on this side with the dungeon portal, giving the thought that a second portal might emerge if all levels are completed. Or if hard mode gets unlocked.
Visual & Audio
Visuals
As told in the gameplay, the game displays a god-view angel looking down at the character. And the character looks the way they walk, allowing the mouse to move freely when placing defenses or traps.
In general, the textures of the game look amazing, and after going to settings to see how the lowest options were, it still looked good. So, if you think it won’t look as good in lower graphics since your device would not be able to handle it, trust me, it would still look good and be worth the while.
The character animations are smooth and look very good, and so are the profile pictures of the NPCs? Basically, the people that show up during level-ups have wonderful voice recordings.
Audio
The soothing but fascinating thing about the sounds in this game is when you walk up to a fire, for example, and it slowly starts to embed the sound of sparkling in the fire the closer you get.
The same goes for when walking up to the portal that sends you into the dungeon. When you walk next to any of these objects, they start to embrace you with their sounds and fade away as you walk away from them.
The voices for our unknown companions or the dungeon masters sound truly well done and fit perfectly in. But it remains a mystery who they are and what their purpose is, aside from giving us the upgrade options.
While down in the dungeon, there is no music. Just the sound of your footsteps, fire, and the ghouls attacking.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Gameplay
NPC? Narrative Voices
Depth of sound
Good Price
Good graphics
Auto Attack
Cons
Early Access
Turning Mechanics (cannot walk backwards and fight)
No Music in Dungeon
My final little thoughts
Rogue Citadel is a small, dungeon tower-defense, rogue-like game that looks and sounds amazing and is quite enjoyable.
It takes a few trials before getting enough spirit orbs or soul orbs to upgrade the character or even unlock new defenses. Causing the player to be able to survive or defend the dungeon’s core longer while also getting bigger and tougher hoards.
The game is released as early access, and of course, no game is perfect at first, but this game will surely get more updates, both to smooth things out and add more things.
I highly recommend trying out Rogue Citadel, and I am sure you will find it enjoyable yourself.
Rating: 9/10
Dungeons & No Dragons

It's definitely a very fun game, highly recommend it.

Game's formula is straight up crack. Haven't put it down all day and I don't even usually go for tower defense games. Has a few bugs or idiosyncrasies (not sure how the devs view them) that need to be fixed, but it's so good that it doesn't matter. Great game.

This game's a great roguelike tower defense with a bit of hack'n'slash. It's also tough as hell! But I love coming back for more!

It has been very fun.you can play with enjoying min 3 hours in one sitting, I recommend it to everyone.

This game is just perfect! It's fun to experiment with different tactics until you find the perfect one. The graphics and player movements are smooth, enhancing the overall experience. As you keep upgrading your arsenal, you'll find it easier to defeat the waves