When I first picked up Gatekeeper, I didn’t really know what to expect. I haven’t played many Roguelikes, and while I have a lot of respect for the genre, I just personally have never gotten around to them. Opening this game for the first time and starting a run was a bit intimidating, but after hours and hours of playing, Gatekeeper kept me engaged the whole way through, despite some hiccups in gameplay and accessibility.
The Heart of Time is waiting for you
Gatekeeper is developed by Gravity Lagoon and published by HypeTrain Digital. The game has you facing hordes of enemies as you fight to hunt down Chaos, who stole the Heart of Time. Before you begin your run, you will have the option to choose a character, with their own unique abilities and stats. Something that I really appreciate about this game is that it won’t shy away from giving you all the information you would need. You know everything about how your character, abilities, and items work, which keeps the gameplay as clear as possible. The character designs and art style are also immediately noticeable and fit the world very well. There’s so many cool enemy designs, and they all look unique!
Time to look at our Database and land!
The gameplay loop will have you entering a mission where you defeat enemies, pick up upgrades, and clear mission objectives. When you clear all the objectives and defeat a boss, you’ll be sent to a hub area to plan out and further optimize your build before going into the next mission. While some could see this as repetitive, the objectives changed enough to keep things interesting. I found the combat in this game to be really fun and engaging. Just mowing down hordes of enemies using my abilities and getting stronger feels good! However, the upgrades do start to feel less and less impactful the more runs I played. While there are a lot of different build options, after awhile it got hard to differentiate between styles of play.
Jumping over the Gate
While Gatekeeper is a game I enjoyed greatly, it does have a good amount of issues that hold itself back. I found a lot of the bosses to be big damage sponges that would take many minutes to kill. I understand that bosses need to be difficult, but the difficulty always felt like it came from big HP bars. While unlocking new characters helps, I could see myself getting bored of the general gameplay loop over time. The upgrades losing impact and the bosses definitely don’t help in this regard! Another issue I found with the game is one accessibility feature that seems fairly important. There’s no way to save your game in the middle of a run! With this game, runs easily last over an hour, so having at least an autosave would help a ton.
Worth it to reach the Throne Room?
Overall, I found Gatekeeper to be a really fun game with a rewarding system and satisfying gameplay. Even if there’s problems in bosses and upgrades, the core of the game works very well! As the developers continue updating the game, I hope they listen to feedback to make a better, well rounded experience. I absolutely see myself playing this game on my own time. This game is a great introduction to the Roguelike genre. It’s a simple game to understand, and has enough content to keep you engaged for quite awhile. While there’s some issues I had with the game, Gatekeeper has proved itself to be a really good time.
