A Short-Run RPG Auto-Battler About Building a Resistance One Expedition at a Time.
I came across ACORN: Seed of Resistance just today, and it was announced last week; anyway, its mix of exploration, party building, and short roguelite adventures immediately captured me, even if we are talking about an auto battler. Developed by Guidelight Games, the studio behind SpellRogue, ACORN takes us into a surprisingly dark woodland kingdom where a group of small creatures is trying to fight back against a much more powerful enemy.
The story begins after an order sworn to protect the realm is betrayed from within and nearly destroyed. Its surviving members are blamed for the disaster and forced into hiding, leaving you to slowly assemble a resistance of refugees, mercenaries, and anyone else willing to join the cause.
Each mission starts with a single hero exploring a procedurally generated area. Along the way, you can recruit new companions, find equipment, discover hidden locations, collect resources, and decide which encounters are worth the risk. Runs are designed to last around 15 minutes, so the idea is to create relatively compact adventures where you constantly rebuild and adapt your party around whatever the game gives you.
Combat is perhaps the most unusual part. Battles themselves are automatic, meaning ACORN isn’t a traditional command-by-command tactical RPG. Most of your decisions come down to party composition, character positioning, equipment, skills, and synergies before the fight begins. Builds can focus on things like summons, chained effects, or concentrating resources into a particularly powerful companion. You can also interfere more directly with encounters by using consumables such as traps, fire bombs, and barricades.
Health is limited, supplies can establish camps and aid recovery, and roaming enemies can sometimes be avoided or ambushed rather than confronted directly. Camping also adds activities like cooking, gathering, and assigning guards, giving the exploration layer more weight than simply moving from battle to battle.
Back at your hidden base, the resistance can gradually rebuild the fallen order, unlock new heroes and leaders, and gain access to increasingly difficult missions. If the developers manage to make the different party combinations genuinely transformative, the short-run structure could make ACORN particularly suited to experimentation.
ACORN: Seed of Resistance is being developed by Guidelight Games and published by Ghost Ship Publishing. It is currently planned for PC via Steam in 2027, with no specific release date announced yet. A Steam Playtest is also available for players who want to request access ahead of launch. Below is the trailer.
