To be honest, when I see a game tagged as “rogue-like” on Steam, I have to keep my eyes from glazing over. It’s not that rogue-like games are inherently unfun; in fact, their gameplay loop is designed to rehash the most interesting parts of the game design, but they just seem to be a bit overcooked in recent years from extended time in the limelight. The formula is prolific but tired by reused and recycled assets, writing, and level design that make a game feel less like a journey somewhere and more like a dramatic exercise in chasing one’s own tail. Thus, after being completely enraptured with Hadley’s Run for 7+ hours, I could hardly believe the rouge-like formula still had enough flavour to keep me coming back.
Hadley’s Run is the debut title from Unsigned Double, a game studio out of Cape Town, South Africa. The game follows Hadley Orah, a banged-up mining craft pilot on a routine assignment excavating asteroids. While on the job, he gets a mysterious call from a woman named Nia, offering him a very large sum of credits to roleplay the courier and help her transport an undisclosed device from point A to point B. What could go wrong? Turns out, there is a nefarious race of sentient AI called the DraadMek who really want that mystery device, and Hadley is forced to portal jump to a distant part of the galaxy to avoid certain death. The rest of the game plays out as Hadley, bitter towards Nia for putting him in this sticky situation, tries to fight his way home.
The plot stood out to me, right out of the gates, as a welcome change to the typical rouge-like experience. Not only is there plot justification for the rouge-like format, using some sci-fi sleight of hand, but the quality of the story is leagues above what I would expect of this genre. Hadley and Nia are excellently written, each with their own backstory that served as a trail of breadcrumbs explaining how they had come to this precarious moment in time. The banter between them sold me on the tension at the core of their relationship, rooted in half-truths about secret tech but deepened by the cooperation necessary for each to achieve their goal. Instead of a looping narrative, each run through the game allowed the duo to get to know each other more intimately. The central relationship was always progressing, even when Hadley had to restart his journey to get back home time and time again.
Furthermore, Nia and Hadley were not the only ones with engrossing character arcs. There were several other characters that clearly demonstrated Unsigned Double’s narrative craftsmanship. On my journey, I met a living nebula that spoke poetry shaped by my discoveries in space. I met an existential grifter droid who rallied dishwashing robots against their nasty employer. Later, after he was deposed, I found that same employer at the local bar describing a “self-help group for former intergalactic scumbags,” and that was turning his life around. All of these moments were the result of dramatic rising action building up across multiple sessions in this world, each drip-fed with new dialogue and dynamic story threads. It was a bit difficult to follow the conversations at first, since I was only getting short bursts of dialogue at a time, but I eventually settled into this format across repeat visits to each space colony.
Artistically, the game wears its South African influencers on its sleeve and is better for it. The visual design is a stunning vision of South African tech noir, with the brilliant colours of combat contrasted against the dark, rusty palette of patchwork space stations. It is a mix of old and new. technologies, amid the darkness of space, and it works incredibly well to set the mood of a shoddy mining craft going head-to-toe against an incredibly advanced alien AI. The music is utterly captivating as well. It fuses together EDM and D&B with heavy, pulsing electronic beats that carry Hadley from one combat encounter to the next. This music put me in a trance-like flow state as I battled the DraadMek across multiple runs, and it was easy just to lose myself in the vibes completely from time to time. It is rare for the music of a game to keep the whole thing in motion, but Hadley’s Run is a rare breed that can hook you and pull you along on sheer momentum of its jams.
When Hadley isn’t making small talk with the galactic denizens, he is moving from one combat encounter to the next as he fights his way back to New Jozi, his home. Every time he is defeated, he is warped back to the starting area, where he can begin the sequence of battles anew. In this respawn environment, there are a number of things the player can do to improve their chances of success. There is a really helpful star map that will show how many battles Hadley made it through on his last run, giving the player a sense of tangible progress and a goal to strive towards. There is an upgrade shop where Hadley can equip permanent modifications to his ship, slowly tipping the power scale in his favour. There is also an armoury where Hadley can change the weapons after unlocking them through combat challenges like defeating a certain number of enemies or specific bosses. Most importantly, there are permanent portals Hadley can open for a hefty sum of “space junk,” giving him a convenient fast travel opportunity. All of these progression mechanics helped motivate me to keep pressing on, despite how frustrated I felt to be back at square one when I was defeated.
I had to get used to dying often in this game. It was not that any one enemy was overpowered, but depending on how the seemingly random enemy spawn points overlapped, I found myself quickly overwhelmed by all the projectiles on the screen I had to dodge. Furthermore, the floppies, which are temporary upgrades awarded at the end of each battle, led to drastic swings in difficulty if I didn’t get decent options to choose from. It was the difference between installing an incredibly powerful triple shot on my spacecraft or getting a marginal boost in shield regen delay. I felt it took me a little too long to hit the point of inflection where my ship started to have enough baseline power to carry me through the tougher battles. Fortunately, about halfway through my playthrough, developers released a patch to reduce the funds (and therefore time) it took to permanently upgrade the ship and the portals to shortcut my way to the endgame.
I thought the enemy variety was a bit lacklustre for a rogue-like format, which needs to consistently introduce variety in the combat to make it engaging on repeated attempts. As I got 5-6 hours into the game, the enemies and overall length of each combat sequence grew stale. However, the game provided the option before each battle to earn larger rewards in exchange for a higher challenge, such as getting two post-combat floppy upgrades instead of one if you survive enemies that have higher damage output than normal. This added challenge, along with a lucky roll of a legendary upgrade or two, could lead to some really unique situations. Plus, there were a number of environments that modified the gameplay, such as needing to hide behind a small shield as a rain of asteroids covers the screen or fight while dark matter clouded parts of the screen. Overall, I felt the customisation options and modularity in each run provided enough novelty to compensate for the repetition when it came to the enemy and visual stimuli.
In short, while Hadley’s Run had a few setbacks when it came to pacing and enemy variety, the thick vibes of this game more than made up for these shortcomings. This is mesmerising rogue-like, keeping my attention through trance-like beats, a vibrant arsenal of weapons, and truly poignant writing. I kept wanting to go deeper to evolve character relationships, outfit my ship with permanent benefits, and perhaps most of all, blow up some dazzling enemy AI in technicolour fashion. To quote one of the game’s more spirited characters: “The thing about uncertainty is that if you repeat it a bunch of times, on average, it becomes certain.” I hope that you will give this game a chance to turn your uncertainties about yet another rogue-like into something far more defined and positively impressive, as it did with me.
Release Date: August 26th, 2024
Platforms: PC
Price: £9.99
Version Tested: PC
Many thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
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