Roguelikes have to do a lot to actually stand out these days, because not only is it a crowded field, but also one where the overall quality can be incredibly high. It’s not enough to be competent; the game has to be not only mechanically satisfying, but ideally mechanically different as well. Ovis Loop manages to do both of these things pretty darn well, even in Early Access.
Ovis Loop puts you in the shoes of a sheep, sort of. You might be all woolly, but you get to run around with a massive greatsword, and then absolutely smash the heck out of some wolves, some of which are robotic, and some of which are horribly mutated into things that can spit out fireballs, or just be massive. You’re a sheep hunting wolves, and that’s just a good concept to start with.
Without digging too deeply into the details of the story, being a roguelike means that it unfolds as you explore the levels and beat up baddies. Of course, so do your abilities. While the base level of fighting in the game is to just jump, hit, and dodge, the skills you have can completely change what you’re actually doing as you fight. There are plenty of cool builds to try in the game, even at this point. I really like mucking around with the electric attacks, as they not only deal damage, but also cause massive lightning strikes as the debuff up, but the drone builds are also good fun. There’s just something satisfying about constantly throwing out drones instead of fighting on your own, and that’s a blast.
Your skills go way deeper than this though. Each skill has passive augment slots as well as active ones. You can change the passives up so that the skill cools down faster, does more elemental damage, or gets more damage in exchange for less defence. The active slots let you put in extra skills, which you can activate sequentially as you go, and all of them get the passive buffs too. This lets you have far more skills than the four you eventually unlock, and also build up specific combos as you please.
You can also choose to make a build that hardly uses skills at all, and just focus on the core attacks and your weapon too. You do get new weapons to choose from as well, including the starting greatsword, but expanding into things like an electric rapier and even a gunblade. Each of these theoretically unlocks different playstyles, and it’s just a joy to muck around with them all.
Ovis Loop isn’t perfect, despite my glowing praise. The balance feels a little bit wonky for some of the boss and mini-boss fights, and there are some weird bugs too. Although it’s worth noting that a couple of those bugs actually got removed in the Early Access review window while I was playing, and that’s got to be a reassuring fact for the game’s continued development.
Ovis Loop is already one of the coolest action roguelikes I’ve played, and if it can keep improving and adding things while it’s in Early Access, it’s got potential to be one of my overall favorites. I’ve got high hopes for this my little sheep hero, and I reckon a lot of you will too.
