It can be a fun pastime to mindlessly scroll through the pages upon pages of new demos and games on Steam when you have nothing going on. It is during one of these random wanderings that I stumbled upon Lost in the Open. The game is a debut project from a small development studio Black Voyage Games that promises to create games with a dark atmosphere. And, judging by the available demo, they have seriously decided to follow through with this promise.
Lost in the Open is a dark and gloomy roguelite that tells the story of King Nrvesk, the ruler of Ruedome. He got caught unawares when the royal advisors betrayed and attempted to murder him during a strategic meeting with the neighboring kingdom.The game starts with a murky forest where our King finds himself stuck, accompanied only by a couple of loyal soldiers and a burning desire to survive. As you flee from the capital, pursued by enemy troops, your only hope is to get to the Mardrot mountain range through the Temcao forest.
The map is split into hexes connected to each other, some featuring various events like encountering merchants or running into bandit camps, meeting a monk or a local hermit, and so on. Your journey from the capital to the mountain range will be long and eventful.
Each start of a new game will bring you a new race from the capital to the mountains, but it will never be the same. The combination of events along the way will always be a bit different, and, given my experience, you can easily lose on the very first move.
Random battles, assisting the inhabitants of your country, military camps and outposts, the entire range of events will allow you to make a choice that will then determine the result of your actions. Each event will let you decide on a path: attack bandits or pay them off, help a monk or rob him blind, trade with a merchant or kill him, and all of these decisions will have consequences.
Decided to follow a shadow into the forest? Ran into the robbers. Met the same event the second time? Well, this time you come across a merchants’ camp! Helped a monk? Oh no, it turned out to be a disguised thief. A hunters’ camp allows you to get some food, running across the mines gives a chance to find a treasure… There are multiple outcomes for each event, and their combinations sometimes lead to interesting results. In one of my playthroughs, I had over 20 warriors in my retinue, but managed to lose my food, and the run ended in failure anyway.
The game forces you to calculate your path and spend resources diligently. Firstly, you have gold that can be spent on purchasing various tools and gear, or for upgrades. Secondly, there is food, which is automatically used to maintain your troops. You will need it in sufficient quantities: running out means losing the health of your soldiers with every move. That puts you at risk of entering a battle and seeing a sorry picture of a bunch of troops with a singular point of HP. Needless to say, they won’t last long in battle.
You can get both gold and food by helping out merchants (or robbing them blind), finding resources through random events or even just buying them. You can spend gold to purchase artifacts that increase certain characteristics, upgrade gear of your troops, or even hire new party members. Just don’t go overboard, Lost in the Open heavily favors balance.
The King is your most powerful and most vulnerable unit at the same time. Leading the troops on the battlefield, he is no doubt a power house, capable of both inspiring your troops and taking on the enemies on his own. But if your foes manage to down the King, that’s it, that’s the Game Over.
Protecting and providing the king with the support of the troops is an interesting task. At the beginning of the game, you will only have 2 of your most loyal guards that refused to betray their liege. However, along the way you will find others willing to join your forces, from bandits, to vikings, to spearmen and archers.
At the moment, the demo version is limited in the overall number of troop types. However, even the existing ones are enough to come up with several different tactics in combat. Fortunately, each new run will bring you random types of troops, which, in turn, forces you to adapt on the fly.
Even after a dozen runs it was still quite interesting. Although I have to admit to a fair share of games that were over in a single turn due to the king being shivved to death by an overly enthusiastic viking.
The battles take place in various locations, each with its own modifier that introduces new rules to the combat. For example, fighting in a swamp is different from fighting in a forest or a field. It is worth considering these aspects before you move along the map.
Winning battles nets your King and his forces some experience that, in turn, lets you upgrade their skills and learn new abilities. Getting a level gives you a few choices such as a couple of abilities, additional points, or a passive skill. You also can improve the basic characteristics that can turn your warriors into something extraordinary.
A levelled-up tank can single-handedly take on 3 enemies without receiving much damage. A rogue can bleed and poison a strong enemy so that taking them down is done quickly and painlessly. Meanwhile, an archer can blind and slow down enemies, and a viking… Well, a viking can do what vikings do best: fall into battle rage and finely chop up nearby enemies.
The system invites you to decide who your warriors will be, with a great choice of interesting skills. Choosing something atypical can give you an interesting run, after all, Lost in the Open is all about choosing a non-standard path.
Even through the demo, Lost in the Open provides quite a few hours of good roguelite gameplay. If you enjoy dark and gloomy atmospheres and are always on the lookout of a new roguelite to enjoy, Lost in the Open is worth paying attention to. Although I will admit that most of my runs have ended with the death of the king due to some extremely disappointing circumstance, like getting finely chopped up by an enemy viking with no chance to escape or retaliate.
