Pyrene is inspired by Basque mythology, which is rare in video games. The player moves around on a 2D board and each biome shows a different art background. It is a mix of dungeon-crawler and roguelike.
Combat
Move around a board to collect an item or fight an enemy. You are allowed to move to a tile adjacent to your current tile. it is important to be strategic about where you move to take advantage of healing items and weapons. Also, you are not allowed to move to an empty tile. These combats are called “danger zones.”
Enemies have health as shown by red hearts. When you defeat the enemy, damage is done to you based on their health. There are multiple ways to deal damage without fighting, such as spells or poison/burn damage from relics.
Some enemies have effects when dying such as spawning another enemy or giving a poison debuff. To see the effect, hover your mouse over the enemy tile.
Debuffs:
To view what a debuff does, you can hover over the enemy with a debuff: An icon shows up in top right corner of enemy.
- Poison: Takes 1 damage after each move on the board.
- Burn: Takes 2 damage when you spend the night.
- Bleed: Takes 1 extra damage when receiving damage.
- Frost: Enemy does only 1 damage.
- Thorns: Takes damage when changing position.
Your goal is to reach the Votive altar to progress to the next zone. After reaching the Votive altar, you are fully healed. To improve combat rewards, you need to defeat more enemies and collect votive shards for better equipment chest choices.
Map
Appears in the top right corner. Shows you merchants, upgrade places like anvil, and danger zones. To move to each area quickly, player can click on the desired location from the map. If an area was not discovered yet, it will appear as an blank square and usually that means it’s a danger zone.
After beating a biome, you move to the next area or biome. A nice feature is the player does not need to visit all areas to clear a biome. If you find the next biome tile, you can move to the next biome.
To reach final boss, you need to clear all biomes, which involves 6-8 fights and takes about 30-45 minutes. Other characters may have more biomes to beat before reaching the boss. Before moving to next biome, check merchant upgrades because you cannot revisit a merchant after moving to the next biome.
The screenshot below shows art from the mountain biome. After beating a biome, you move to the next area or biome. To reach the final boss, you need to clear all biomes, which involves 6-8 fights and takes about 30-45 minutes. The final boss has more health than normal enemies and will most likely have special effects.
Relics and Cards
Choose 1 out of 3 options after reaching the Votive altar. Card rarity is shown in the top right corner and when you hover over the card. Blue is rare, purple is epic, gray is common, and legendary is orange. If you do not like the choices, you can reroll for 4 gold by clicking the dice icon on the right side.
After you lose or win, a final score screen is shown, player receives certain amount of wood, and the choice to return to the village to spend the wood or retry.
Editing deck: Your starting deck size is 6 cards and you can edit which cards are active in your deck. To edit your deck, drag a card to the illuminated section. Cards that are not active will appear grayed out. During combat, you are not allowed to edit your deck, so add/remove cards before fighting.
Resources
Health (red icon): Can gain health with potions or items during combat.
Provision (green apples)- Needed for spending the night. If you run out of Provisions, you take damage. During night, enemies gain 1 health.
Spirit (blue flame icon)- Used to cast certain spells. They appear as blue lights. Since this is limited, the player needs to use the spell only when needed.
Gold (coin icon)- Used to buy new relics and upgrades.
Luck (green clover icon): Increases chances of chests showing loot that synergizes with your cards and relics.
Wood – Used to upgrade buildings in the village. Even if you lose early in a run, you are given some wood.
Characters
There are 7 in total, and new ones are unlocked in the tavern after meeting certain conditions, such as beating a boss. Each Character has a different play style and will have synergy with certain relics and cards.
Merchants and Upgrades
There are multiple merchants you can visit during the run and gold is used to buy new relics, health or provisions upgrades, and cards. As shown in anvil screenshot, if you try to buy the same upgrade twice, the second upgrade will be at a much higher gold price.
- Before leaving a biome, it is a good idea to visit each merchant to determine which upgrade is best for your build.
- There are no items to sell to the merchant.
The village
This is where you can use your wood to upgrade new cards, biomes, relics, characters, etc. Each building can be upgraded multiple times to unlock new content. If you upgrade to next level, you can view progress towards getting a new relic or biome.
Difficulty modifiers
There are multiple ways to make the game easier or harder by changing conditions in the Watchtower. You can turn on certain modifiers to change the next run. This is a great feature to increase the difficulty or to add variety to the next run.
Art & Music
Art is Low poly art. Buildings are simplistic and enemies are shown as portraits. Colors are easily distinguishable and each new biome contains unique color schemes and artwork.
- Menus are easy to read and organized clearly.
- There is some blood but no extreme or graphic violence. Anyone 13 or older can play this game.
- Sound effects are played when you deal damage to the enemy when they die. Peaceful fantasy music is played while spending time in the village.
Other comments
A demo is available for download. English and French languages are supported.
There are 3 save slots and the game auto saves progress if you exit in the middle of a run.
The Processor requirement for playing the game is AMD Radeon 8500 Series 64MB or NVIDIA GeForce 3. Recommended OS is Windows 8. So older gaming PCs should be able to play the game smoothly.
There are 30 steam achievements as of game release. Unlocking the characters and learning about the story will take at least 8-10 hours.
Keyboard shortcuts can be used to save time and reduce mouse clicks. To move around the map faster, the player can click on a specific tile and click the right/left arrow buttons to move to the next area. If you unlock new cards or relics, there is a skip button to avoid extra clicks.
Verdict
It is a fast-paced, turn-based rogue-lite game with high replayability. Multiple characters can be unlocked, and progression is steady through completing runs. The game encourages players to use gold wisely and choose optimal chest rewards based on their character. It has player-friendly features to speed up gameplay, such as skipping unlocked cards/relics and moving around the map. If you are interested, check their Steam page and play the demo.
