Shogun Showdown review

What is it? A turn-based roguelike that challenges you to master the blade. Or several blades, actually.
Release date September 5, 2024
Expect to pay $15/£12.80
Developer Roboatino
Publisher Goblinz Publishing, Gamera Games
Reviewed on Nvidia Geforce RTX 3080, AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, 32GB RAM
Steam Deck Verified
Link Official site

Some roguelikes are about scraping through by the skin of your teeth. Shogun Showdown is about striving for perfection. Defeating each of its rooms filled with hostile ashigaru warriors is its own challenge, but the greater quest is to do it in style.

Simply defeating the demonic Shogun and his army of warriors isn't enough—it must be done with elegance. A true warrior slices their way to the castle without taking a hit, and never makes a move unless it's precisely necessary, defeating multiple foes with every quick flurry of attacks. And ideally they do it in 30 minutes or less.

You start each run with two tiles—these are your weapon attacks, each specific in their use. As you defeat foes, you gain new tiles and can upgrade the ones you have. The feel of a deckbuilder is there, even if I struggle to call a handful of tiles a deck.

Battles are 2D and turn-based. Almost every action takes a turn—hopping a space left or right, flipping your character around, or queuing up tiles—and once you've done it, all your foes will get their next move.

Success is all about thinking several steps ahead. You always know what your enemies are going to do for their next action—in fact, because they follow predictable patterns, you'll know their steps beyond that once you learn their behaviours. You're able to queue up to three of your tiles before you unleash them, going off one by one in a single turn. The trick, then, is surviving—dancing back and forth around attacks—until you've set up the perfect flurry of blows that wipes out two, three, even four foes at once, clearing the field for the next wave.

When you're firing on all cylinders, it feels like directing