Darkest Dungeon meets The Binding of Isaac in new Paradox roguelike

Paradox Interactive, the company responsible for putting out some of the best strategy games ever made — games like Stellaris, Crusader Kings 3, and Europa Universalis 4 — is also a publisher that’s launched work in different genres made by outside studios. These include work like the Helldivers 2 makers’ action RPG Magicka, TaleWorlds Entertainment’s medieval RPG Mount & Blade, Obsidian Entertainment’s CRPG Pillars of Eternity, and, now, a roguelike from XperimentalZ Games called Escape The Mad Empire that’s just had a new demo made available on Steam.

Escape The Mad Empire is a roguelike game that incorporates classic RPG elements, like tactical combat and dungeon crawling. Similar to the excellent Darkest Dungeon, the game involves putting together a party of adventurers who must delve into forboding labyrinths filled with monsters and try to survive without losing their lives or their minds.

It features a retro, pixelated visual style and blends survival game reminscient resource management requirements with RPG character building. The latter genre also informs its pausable, real time combat system, which requires both the use of its characters’ unique abilities and taking advantage of elemental attacks and dungeon hazards such as oil slicks and fires. As a roguelike, players are expected to try and retry their hand at the game, pushing further with risky but powerful sanity-reducing crystals and experimenting with various character builds.

You can try Escape The Mad Empire now through its latest demo or by signing up for a Steam playtest. Its new demo provides a look at its ‘Escape Run’ mode, which shows off the game through three dungeons, a challenge room, and the ability to unlock increasingly tough difficulty levels.

Escape The Mad Empire is set to launch sometime this year. You can get an early look at it, though, by downloading the new free demo or signing up for its playtest on Steam right here.

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