Rogue Within:

In Brief:
Rogue Within is a short first person action/exploration/maze game, created using the Unity engine and was an entry in the time limited Gamiron 10 competition that sees developers creating games under specific constraints including the time you get to develop the game from scratch. This is usually limited to days rather than months or years, so expect a relatively short gaming experience.

The Game:
The aim of the game is for you to escape the evil sorcerer's castle that you mysteriously woke up in; however, to escape, you need to find a key, which is hidden somewhere in the maze like castles rooms.

There's a very small level map in the bottom right of the screen that shows you the rooms you've already explored on specific levels. There are more than one floor to the castle; however, once you leave a floor, you cannot return to that floor until you've found the hidden key. As you uncover more rooms you'll come to realise it's like a multi-levelled maze.

While exploring the castle you can interact and pick up items such as food, gems and weapons (which you will need as there are denizens of the castle that will attack you). Your sword is automatically placed in your hand when you pick it up, however, if you access one of the other items (via quick slots), you'll need to re equip your sword. Food, such as apples, carrots, bread and ham can be eaten when in your hand by pressing the LMB. Different foods have different healing capacities. For example Ham heals you more than apples; hover I didn't see any healing properties when eating a carrots. You can find food gems and potions as well as spare swords scattered around the castle and in chests, though you cannot pick up the swords dropped by the enemy soldiers. Different coloured gems have different values; for example, the grey gems gives you $2, the green gems give you $8 and the blue gems $10. I don't know if the money can be spent at some point in the game?

When opening a chest, your inventory will appear which shows you how many items you can carry at any one time. The inventory which is also accessible using the I key, shows you your health, the number of weapons you have as well as money (picking up gems adds money to the counter and does not fill your inventory.) and what looks like an horseshoe symbol (I haven't figured out what it means). If your inventory is full you can drop items by dragging them out of the inventory and dropping them on the floor or into any spare quick slots.

There is a health bar in the bottom left of the screen. You can regain health after a battle by eating some of the food or using an health potion you've previously found. To do this access your inventory and click on an item of food and place it in one of the four quick slots that are located along the middle bottom of the screen. At the start of the game you'll also pick up some health phials, make sure one of these is in your quick slot as well because you will encounter area's in the castle with more than one soldier and may die if you don't have a health potion to hand. Health potions take immediate effect, unlike food items, which take time to regenerate your health. Pressing any one of the four quick slot numbers (1 to 4) will place whatever's in that quick slot into your hand. Use the Left Mouse Button to either use the item or eat it. Remember to place your sword back into your hands after eating or using a health potion, otherwise you may die when encountering one of the castles denizens.


While exploring the castle you'll come across many dangers. Pick up everything you think will help you to survive by pressing the E button, especially weapons, food and potions. If you die you have to start from the beginning again, so make sure you heal up after every encounter. I found slashing then retreating the best way to conserve your health. When confronted with more than one soldier, retreating to a previous room, gives you some leeway and allows you to tackle enemies individually. If you leave the game without dying, you can return to where you left off via the main menu continue button.

When starting a new game, I found different items sometimes more, sometimes less in the chests you find, plus on my third try I found different coloured potions, which leads me to believe they may have different functions. The red health potion heals you to full health.)


You can see a video of game play HERE.

Controls:

WASD & arrow keys = Movement
E = interact
LMB attack of eat
I = Inventory
Q = pick up all items from chests
1,2,3 & 4 = Quick Slots
Esc = menu

Conclusion:
Although short, it's worth downloading if you like action/exploration games. The graphic is typical unity based with blocky visuals, but that's part of it's draw for me. I have loads of virtually photo real like games and sometimes just want to play a game with no realism involved.. Pity it's just a short game more like a demo that a fully fleshed out game.

Notes on Security
I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game using Virus Total and it found zero hits from 62 antimalware engines. You can see the completed scan HERE.