Klei's new co-op brawler makes a strong first impression in early access

I like a game that chucks me into the thick of it with minimal preamble: Just beat me up! I'll learn! Klei's new co-op brawler is one of those: You can handwave the NPC welcoming committee who tries to explain the controls and just start swinging a hammer at forest monsters within seconds. My kind of game.

I've only played about an hour of Rotwood, which released on Steam in early access today, but for $11 (even less right now since it's on sale), I'd already recommend it to my friends. They've invested as much in lesser games just to have something new to play in co-op, and I've even been enjoying Rotwood as a solo game.

Rotwood's roguelite structure is typical of contemporary game design: In the first biome, you hop between 2.5D forest glades, bashing away at the enemies in each before moving on to the next, which might contain more enemies, a shopkeeper, or a surprise. After clearing a room, you're sometimes rewarded with a new power. These are minor bonuses at first—move faster when you enter a room, shoot a projectile after every three melee attacks—but as in games such as Slay the Spire and Risk of Rain, you get more and more OP as you stack on synergistic powers and upgrade them. By the time I reached the first boss, the first heavy attack I used in a room dealt 500 damage to every enemy. 

To complete an area and unlock the next one, you have to fully traverse it in one life, which includes defeating a miniboss and boss, and you only get a single health potion to use along the way (unless you find a way to refill it). It's easy to keep the basic bug-vegetable forest enemies at bay by spamming light and heavy attacks, and they generously telegraph their attacks so you can dodge roll out of their way, but you eat a lot of damage when you're hit. It's not extraordinarily difficult, but it only takes a few lapses of attention before you're cooked, and there are unlockable difficulty levels.

When I started to discover combos, I probably made things harder for