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Let’s! Revolution! review: the fantasy Minesweeper roguelite you never knew you neededToo coup for school
Too coup for school
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Buck/Hawthorn Games
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Buck/Hawthorn Games
I never thought I’d hear the words ‘roguelite’ and ‘Minesweeper’ together in the same sentence but here we are.Let’s! Revolution!is a joyous mix of bothMinesweeperand a roguelite, tasking players with hunting down a deliciously repugnant king through a series of increasingly complex tile maps to enact their titular coup. With all tiles facing down on arrival, you’ll need to hop from square to square to flip them over and reveal the king’s hiding place before progressing to the next level. But with several of his royal agents stalking the roads and highways, you’ll need to choose your route carefully, making good use of your character’s unique set of skills to arrive at your final destination of Beebom City. That, and employing a bit of the old Minesweeper noggin, of course.
You see, tiles come in two types in Let’s! Revolution! The aforementioned road tiles, and surrounding landscape tiles. The latter all have numbers denoting how many road tiles surround it, giving you just enough information to build up a picture of where the road (and the king’s lackeys) might be lurking. Take care, though. This lot are a tricksy bunch, and can quite quickly overwhelm if they’re revealed too soon and all at once. That’s Let’s! Revolution! in a nutshell, at least, but the real joy of this run-based rogue comes from its gorgeous presentation and its brilliantly conceived character classes that twist and mould its basic building blocks into fresh new forms each and every time. It’s great fun, and I can’t get enough of it.
Let’s! Revolution! Release Date Announcement TrailerWatch on YouTube
Let’s! Revolution! Release Date Announcement Trailer
The Trooper is a great first class to teach you the ropes, with their powerful roundhouse revealing whole swathes of tiles at a time without fear of being hurt, and making it easier to discover those all-important dead-ends with shops and treasure lying at the end of them. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Buck/Hawthorn Games
Case in point: the tiny, childlike Oracle, who’s even less suited to facing enemies head-on than the others. She starts with just a stun rod that lengthens the turn count of affected enemies before they’re able to strike again, and must instead use her large energy pool to teleport round the map, suss out its dead-ends (where the king, treasure and occasionally handy shops always lie) and move on before things get too hairy - although not before revealing as many landscape tiles as they can to get their end of level bonus.
On Easy mode, the game will highlight safe squares you can jump to with green ticks. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Buck/Hawthorn Games
Thinning the crowds and staying on top of what enemies are in play is key to a successful run in Let’s! Revolution! Each guard has their own health pool and turn count to consider, and landing a hit will reset their turn clock to give you some precious breathing room. Fail to defeat them or reset that clock in time, however, and enemies will land a guaranteed hit on your warrior regardless of where you are on the map - and when there whole enemy types that are dedicated to revealing and getting as many of their mates on the board as possible, a run can go south pretty fast if you let things get out of hand.
These confrontations make each level bristle with just the right amount of tension, giving you the time and space to get your bearings while continually provoking you to act and make a decision. It helps that each map tells you upfront the number of enemies hidden inside, too, emboldening you to take chances and gamble on unexplored tiles if you’re almost in the clear. You will inevitably curse your own mistakes in a run, but when the king is such a wonderfully smug and turd-like villain, taunting you from his second-rate Dr Robotnik egg, every slip-up just gives you more motivation to hang in there and try harder.
As you start tackling higher difficulty levels, you’ll have to deal with extra starting conditions, such as lower health, an increased likelihood of encountering ‘elite’ guards, and enemies revealing themselves sooner after a set number of turns. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Buck/Hawthorn Games
There is, perhaps, a feeling of being slightly overpowered early on, as the number of coins you generate in a single run make it quite easy to max out your hearts and energy meters, while also doing regular full heals and kitting yourself out with new buffs and abilities. These buffs don’t carry over to the next run, admittedly, but there have been instances where my little defenceless Oracle suddenly got their hands on a proper melee ability, for example, which completely changed how she was able to conquer the remaining maps. That said, any sense of ease quickly dissipates on higher difficulty levels. On top of the ‘Easy’ and ‘Normal’, each class has five levels of NG+ to contend with, and so far I’ve reached NG+3 and still get a bit of a royal arse kicking almost every time. Even on defeat, though, most runs still count for something, as you can usually find an additional gem or two in treasure chests to nudge you towards the next unlock tier, even if you don’t make it to end.
Uh oh, time to leg it, methinks… |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Buck/Hawthorn Games
Besides, it’s hard to feel mad for long when its lush visuals from animation studio Buck and catchy soundtrack from musical outfit Antfood make this such a delight to dig into over successive runs. It’s particularly impressive to see Buck make such a strong debut into fully-fledged game development, too, as their previous game work has been limited to VR demos, AR experiences and ad campaigns for other companies. It’s great to see this animation house have such a clear and strong command over their subject matter, and I hope Let’s! Revolution! is but the first in a long new dynastic line for them. It may not be a game that can stretch to perhaps hundreds of hours of play time like some of today’s roguelike heavyweights, but I’m having a grand old time with it so far, and right now that’s enough. I cannot stop playing it, nor do I want to. So Let’s! Give It The Attention It Deserves!
