When you hear the word “roguelike,” certain things leap to mind: procedural dungeons maybe, and randomized upgrades and loot. RP7 throws most of that playbook out the window: it’s a game about a knight who moves back and forth across a set of slots, and your only way to control what happens is to spin the slots and hope something better turns up each time.
Each slot in RP7 represents an encounter for your little toy knight to deal with. The slots can contain health potions or shields to pick up, enemies to fight, or traps. Defeating enemies yields gold that the knight can use to open chests, which in turn contain new items to make him more powerful as he tries to find his lost pet frog. Along the way, he’ll meet friendly characters and face down challenging bosses. If it sounds confusing, don’t worry: it makes sense when you start playing it.
RP7 also has a unique control scheme among roguelike games I’ve played. There’s no mouse or controller input at all – instead, you place your fingers along the bottom row on your keyboard, and control each of the seven slots by pressing the corresponding key, from Z to M.
There’s a bit of risk management involved, a touch of Guitar Hero timing, and a lot of hand-eye coordination. I do a lot of typing every day, and have for many years, but placing my fingers along the bottom row on my keyboard felt super weird – I was surprised at how much that threw off my sense of familiarity.
RP7 has a free demo you can try right now, just head over to the Steam page. It’ll be launching in early access this summer. Check out our list of the best relaxing games in the meantime, or have a look through our list of the best indie games on PC.
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