I’ve never been so happy to see a spike trap as I was in Debugging Hero. At the start of each combat encounter, the demo for this roguelite hack n’ slash hands you several numeric cards and lets you pause the game to view both your and your enemies’ stats: health, damage, and durability. You then drag the cards on to the relevant stat to modify it, then unpause to continue real-time combat.
It’s a cute gimmick, letting you knock down high health enemies to a manageable number, or kill weak ones outright, or heal yourself. But it felt a tad shallow to carry a whole game, even one with dodges and parries in its real-time combat. Then, I entered a room with a trap tile that thrust sharpened spikes upwards at timed intervals, and realised I could manipulate the timer. I tuned it right down, and raucously chortled like a portly racoon at the bakery bins as it pneumatically skewered my idiot attackers.
When I fought the first boss, I noticed I could also slow down his attack intervals, letting me poke with relative impunity for long stretches. You can also mess with projectiles like arrows, slowing them down or reducing their damage. Whether Debugging Hero stays interesting is definitely going to rely on how many new ideas it introduces past the demo – even then, I don’t think it’s going for something like Baba Is You‘s depth. But, being the Adorno to Edwin’s Benjamin in the seminal Marge Simpson School Of Potato Critique, I am compelled to award Debugging Hero our most prestigious accolade: it’s neat. The game’s out tomorrow, May 30th.
