Developed by ITEM42, ‘PERISH’ is a stylish 1 – 4 player rogue-lite experience. Slay hordes of creatures on the black sands of Purgatory alone or with friends. Kill magnificent bosses and use those proceeds to gain entrance to Elysium, a place of cosmic revelations.

You are Amyetri, a Pariah that failed to perform the Orphic Rites in life, and therefore, you are condemned to a corporeal body in the halfway realm of Purgatory. Completing the Rites in this treacherous realm, a much harder undertaking than performing the Rites of the living world, come out the other end unscathed. Only then will you be permitted entry to Elysium and accompany the mystical poet Orpheus, but if you fail to complete the Rites, you will end up back at the Pantheon having to undertake the trials from scratch again.

Starting off with the option to play by yourself or with friends, I began on my own to get a feel for what Purgatory has to offer me. I began by selecting my difficulty, and I like to start on Medium, which in this case is called Tough, along with the other options being Forgiving (Easy) and Punishing (Hard). As far as difficulty goes, it’s not so much altering enemy health like most, but more as what assists you would like. Also, if you’re not happy with the preset difficulty, you can always customise it to your liking at any time.

A lot of the story behind the game is in your codex, which is where you’ll find a lot of the lore. To acquire such knowledge though, you must explore the realms you find yourself adventuring through, finding ancient tablets, and completing challenges. This is a great way to split gameplay and story for a game like this. You can spend a lot of your time pushing through and focusing on gameplay, and then later, having a good read if the story interests you.

Equipped with only a broken sword, you begin your journey, but don’t worry, not long after you’ll find yourself with multiple weapons ranging from swords to guns. Unfortunately, only being able to carry one weapon at a time, I would have liked the option of having a primary and secondary, but I guess that is part of the challenge. On the positive side of things, if you aren’t happy with your choice of weapon this time around, you have the option of switching it out in between realms, or you can leave and go back to your hub world to better equip yourself.

Your hub world, known as Pantheo, is where you’ll be able to upgrade and buy equipment. In order to buy all the glorious goodies, you’ll need to slay the hordes of creatures and complete the Rites you have been bestowed with to acquire currency called Danake. As mentioned you’ll have the option between realms to return here, which will bank all of the Danake you have, but dying with it will result in a major loss of what is currently held. This happened to me quite a lot, that’s part of the high-risk high reward feature of PERISH.

There are plenty of challenges to complete on your journey, and with each weapon comes a couple of challenges to complete, unlocking abilities to better yourself in battle. Along with challenges on weapons, there are also challenges to unlock other equipment, like throwables, such as bombs, shields, temporary passives, or rings and crowns, which give you passives and abilities when equipped, and much more. For a little more icing on the cake, some of these work in conjunction with co-op partners. I really liked the variety on offer, allowing me to explore more playstyles helping me get through some challenging sections.

With PERISH’s rogue-lite nature and gameplay, each attempt you make might be slightly different than the last. With this style of game mechanic, the game becomes that much more interesting, wondering if you’re going to get a more challenging playthrough or get lucky with the easier challenges. I really enjoy this style, especially for a game where you are going to die and be forced to run through the levels again. Although it does change it up a bit, you’ll still notice repetition, but playing in co-op can spice this up a bit.

Cooperative play is always a great feature, and who doesn’t love playing with their friends? Well in PERISH, you can play with up to 4 players, but I didn’t notice any scaling in enemy difficulty or health per se. It does increase requirements for some of the challenges, for example, at one of the earlier stages you might be required to kill a miniboss of sorts. Having more players in your game increases the number of minibosses you’ll have to take down, and if this is still too easy for you, there are always the difficulty options mentioned before.

Purgatory is always imagined differently for everyone, and what the team at ITEM42 imagined is nothing short of amazing. The multiple realms you get to slay your way through are great. The realms were a bit small with not a whole lot on offer, but each one was different, and it felt great when you finally managed to get past a challenging part after dying and repeating a few times, only to advance that little bit further.

With each new realm came a new variety of enemies, some being more annoying than others. Within each realm, you’ll notice the music starting to play, the tracks chosen felt great and really get you in the mood for slaying the hordes of enemies, and fighting those big bad bosses, and this is accompanied by the satisfying ting noise every time you kill enemies and complete your challenges.

PERISH, with its rogue-lite nature and well-designed depiction of Purgatory is, in my opinion, a definite pick-up for something to dive into with friends or solo to see how far you can get. Even if you die and have to restart, you’ll most likely be better equipped your next time through, aiding you in surviving that much longer. I’m still yet to reach Elysium but I know in good time I’ll make it.

Written by: MrVibeAU