It’s topdown hack-and-slash combat through procedural dungeons which consist of floating platforms you can move and rotate in order to bamboozle and best the demons you’re battling. The trailer does a good job of explaining the appeal. Yes, to this. I like the look of its hacking combat against swarms of inky black demons anyway, but the moments where the Tetris mechanic is used are the definite standouts. In the footage above, you see the player shift and rotate a platform in order to be able to slide through a narrow gap, and also to lure and then avoid a swarm of enemies the player doesn’t want to fight. It’s interesting that the dungeons are procedural. I’d have thought that the most interesting applications of the block-shifting mechanic would be handcrafted puzzles, but maybe that’s not necessary when there’s also fighting and skills to upgrade. Loot River is being developed by Straka Studio, who previously created Euclidian Lands and Euclidian Skies, two games that similarly blended a world-twisting mechanic with combat. It’s being partly funded by Superhot Presents, which was - as is maybe obvious - set up by the developers of time-slowing FPS Superhot. There’s no announced release date yet, but Loot River is available to wishlist on Steam now.
