"Hello everybody, a roguelike has just been released," is a sentence that that I could have written on any day of the last few months and still have it be accurate. There's been a lot of them, is what I'm saying. Not that it's a bad thing: personally, I'd rather this than endless waves of DotA-likes or, *shudder* tower defence. The latest is Bionic Dues, from AI War developer Arcen Games. It's a robo-roguelike featuring a seemingly unstoppable invasion and a lot of mechs.



I've only played it for a short while, but already it seems like a remarkably tactical and compulsive take on the roguelike genre. As a lone pilot of four hovering exosuits, you've fifty days to prepare for a full-scale assault on your HQ. Doing this requires you to select missions, which can either reduce the strength of the final assault, or give you better weapons and upgrades with which to improve your EXOs.

Once a mission is selected, you have to stalk through the turn-based mission corridors, killing robots, using special abilities, hacking chests and computers, and carefully trying to navigate the level in a way that gives you an advantage. Also you die a lot, because roguelikes.

Bionic Dues is out now. Normally it would cost £7/$10, but it's 25% off until October 15th.