BULLET LIMBO

RETURNAL is a roguelike shooter at war with its own identity

- Robin Valentine

In 1996, Housemarque released Super Stardust, and for two decades it honed the top-down arcade shooter. In 2017, it declared “ARCADE IS DEAD” – there was no money left in it, and the developer would be “moving on to new genres”. Returnal is the result, a big-budget roguelike that kicks off a new era for the studio. The twist? It’s… basically an arcade shooter.

OK, that’s a little unfair. Strictly speaking, it’s a third-person roguelike shooter – the camera tight over your shoulder, not high above, with runs progressing you through a shifting alien world, rather than being an opportunity to chase high scores. But the more you play, the more it feels like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, using some of the trappings of a popular modern genre to smuggle in the gameplay Housemarque is more known for. It’s a game with one foot in the studio’s past and another in its future.

Things kick off with an astronaut – Selene – crash-landing on the alien planet of Atropos. After some fraught encounters with the hostile wildlife, she discovers she’s trapped in a time loop – if she dies, she simply wakes up again at the crash site. It’s a perfect narrative setup for a roguelike, contextualising your repeated runs through Atropos’ dangerous levels as part of a continuous story – similar to Deathloop or particularly Hades.