A lot of action games promise the thrill of a choreographed martial arts movie, but when I play them the fights tend to look more like a panicked scramble than a martial arts masterpiece. If my execution's ever artful, it's during a repeat playthrough when I'm not learning on the fly.
Forestrike, an upcoming action roguelike revealed by Devolver earlier today at Japanese indie game festival BitSummit, hopes to provide a solution for the problem of delivering elegant action: It lets you see the future before you have to punch it.
In Forestrike, you play as a novice martial artist, seeking to liberate your country from the clutches of an evil admiral by conquering a series of kung fu encounters—as all the coolest revolutionaries do. You're outnumbered in every brawl, but you've got one distinct advantage: the Foresight, a kind of kung fu clairvoyance which lets you act out the fight to prepare your strategy in advance.
Essentially, Forestrike is a high-stakes action puzzle, where you're trying to find the best sequence of dodges and strikes to redirect and outlast the incoming hail of enemy blows. One failed fight ends your run, but luckily, the Foresight lets you infinitely replay the upcoming fight in your mind palace, so you have all the time in the world to troubleshoot your fight strategy.
A few rounds of Foresight sparring let you plot out whether it's safe to start the fight with an aggressive opening attack on the closest enemy, or if that'll leave you open to a thrown weapon from behind. Once you've plotted out a combat routine you're confident in, you return to the material realm of real, angry opponents to (hopefully) perform a flawless execution.
In each run, you'll be assembling a build from the techniques of one of five martial arts schools. All that kung fu is rendered Karateka-style in lovely 2D pixel art from Skeleton Crew, the makers of the 2021 action adventure Olija—a game we liked quite a bit, thanks in no small part to its excellent grappling hook. Forestrike's set to release in 2025.
