Forestrike is the ambitious upcoming kung-fu action game from Olija developer Skeleton Crew Studio. Once again teaming up with indie publishing champion Devolver Digital, the roguelike affair offers tough and precise combat that is hard to master. We got to check out an hour of the game, leading a run-through up until the first boss of the roguelike venture. Despite some tech issues and being quite reminiscent of another more prolific kung-fu game, Forestrike looks to be another artful hit from Skeleton Crew Studio.
Come full release, Forestrike will have several different fighting stances to choose from, mixing up play in various ways. With this preview (which is now a playable demo for the public too!), the Leaf fighting style was on offer; an effective stance that is very defensive and focused on parrying and moving around enemies. Even with just only a sample of time with it, it is immensely fun and challenging to handle. After all, the best offence is a good defence.
Forestrike features detailed pixel art that still manages to provide readable animations even when fast-as-a-bullet flurries and projectiles are flying your way. In between combat, you’ve got visual novel-style dialogue cutscenes where striking character sprites and details accompany the story. Though I wouldn’t quite call it derivative, the character detailing and fine line work in these character sprites remind me of early Disney. The strands of the protagonist’s hair falling out of their bun, the wrinkles on the protagonist’s kung-fu teacher…it’s refreshing because the Disney movies you see today hone in on fidelity rather than this sort of detail. As these are still sprites you’re not getting these stunning sights in motion but I’ll take what I can get.
In the demo, you’re running through a gauntlet of combat encounters, seeing an overworld map where you’re slowly navigating towards the boss at the end. There’s the classic risk of choosing which route to run down, each encounter netting you something different depending on if you fulfil the optional objective. These have their predetermined difficulties based on what different enemy types spawn. This kind of decision-making and adjusting your run on the fly is timeless. It’d be a lot more enticing this time around if it weren’t for the fact that this demo build oddly has incredibly long loading times between each encounter, often running up nearly a minute each. Though this is a game with still plenty of work to be done, it did hurt my first impressions; this kind of thing should be brisk. Imagine playing Hades and in between every combat room, you’re waiting a minute to get back into the fray. It’s torture.
Thankfully the meat and potatoes of the game are incredibly solid. It’s a really satisfying game of combat chess, working out how to juggle enemies coming at you from both directions. Before you boot up each encounter you can preview and practice how encounters can play out by using the ‘Foresee’ feature where you’re running through the encounter with no punishment for failing it until you commit to the proper attempt. It’s a unique way to plan out your approach in a categorically cruel and punishing. Light and heavy attacks must be used strategically and timing them just right so that they’re used as an enemy comes into your range to stop them in their tracks.
Running full sprint and headfirst into encounters is entirely detrimental and against the experience of Forestrike. Often you have to wait for enemies to come to you, resulting in windows to use your limited dodge (you can only use this once per encounter with a special charge known as Ki) that sees you circle around to a foe’s back. You’ll use improvisational weapons in the objects around a given arena. There are a lot of little moves and flourishes you can bend to your will, something crucial in a tactile combat game like this.
Forestrike is bloody hard. You only get three points of health to carry you through a run and though there are shops to heal up and add buffs, it’s the upgrades that open up a wealth of opportunities. You can change your light attack so that the first hit in a combo spins the enemy around to face away from you—essentially an extra free Ki charge for an encounter. The saving grace that I found in runs was one that heals you whenever you get an enemy to do friendly fire. Where Sifu was purely about skill, offering not nearly as many upgrades, I do appreciate that this other martial arts roguelike has some concessions to let as many people enjoy the fun as possible.
Small issues aside, Forestrike looks to be a blast of a roguelike adventure when it releases sometime later this year on PC and Nintendo Switch. Stay tuned for this one!
About the Author
Charlie Kelly
She/Her, They/Them
Charlie loves her video games as much as she loves dumb, charming JRPG protagonists: probably way too much. You can often catch her spending too much time being emotional over LGBT stories in games. She also thinks Yakuza 6 is the best one.
