An Ankou is a simple roguelite. You go into the game, craft one weapon, upgrade one set of armor, and leave a bloody trail of spider and other monstrosities’ corpses as you fight your way tooth and nail to the final boss.
There are so many spiders though! So many! The game deceives you into thinking you are safe and that victory is possible and then twenty minutes in, the entire screen is covered in those pesky spiders. Slow white spiders, speedy jumping red spiders, exploding green spiders, the game provides so many exciting ways to chip your health down and sometimes outright kill you if you can’t get away.
This is where the game’s sort of roguelite-ish mechanics come into play. You are expected to die before finishing the level but you don’t necessarily unlock any passive upgrades. Instead, by completing certain objectives before you die, you unlock new equipment that can be crafted in each run. You don’t really need the new equipment to win but it certainly makes life more convenient.
The core gameplay loop of An Ankou is quite enjoyable despite the constant onslaught of spiders. The general strategy I use is to quickly gather resources to upgrade my weapon as fast as humanly possible. I also like using ranged weapons that have a wide area of effect, such as the crossbow for the soldier and the bombs for the apothecary. I personally found that having more damage is desirable compared to having more health.
Health can be increased by crafting armor and different sets have different benefits. For example, the soldier’s default armor set focuses on greatly increasing health and survivability in exchange for slower crafting in order to make using a melee weapon more feasible. The default apothecary set focuses on increasing crafting speed, efficiency, and storage space in exchange for a smaller health gain. There are other armor sets you can unlock that give slightly different benefits. While more health may seem great, towards the end of the game there are just so many enemies that you just have to rely on not getting hit in the first place.
This is why I make upgrading the weapon my first priority since the best way to avoid getting hit is to destroy all the enemies before they can reach you. Ranged weapons accomplish this the best. Aside from your one weapon, you can also unlock spirit weapons, upgraded weapons, or armor pieces from shrines. Shrines require a certain number of materials to unlock and once you provide those materials, it will give you a random selection of upgrades to choose from. I’ve found that while upgrading your weapon for cheap is definitely beneficial, having a spirit weapon is also incredibly helpful when it comes to harvesting while under attack.
The spirit weapon summons a small ghost wielding a specific weapon and attacks nearby enemies whenever you are not moving. Since the enemies don’t stop attacking and you must play a small mini game when harvesting, this gives you a little bit of space when things get more hectic. The spirit weapons can be upgraded as well, giving you essentially two weapons to fight with.
There are also rings, amulets, advanced crafting tools, and other upgrades to make the constant onslaught of enemies manageable but the best tool is to upgrade your weapon as fast as possible and make it to the final boss as quickly as possible before the threat level reaches ten. You can craft wooden flutes to track a desired resource if you are having difficulty finding something. I’d definitely recommend using the flute to track resources as quickly as possible since time is of the essence in this game. When the threat level is at its highest, it’s almost impossible to survive. The enemies spawn infinitely and you barely have any time to grab any resources or craft even health potions.
Overall, An Ankou is enjoyable. It has a simple gameplay loop that is easy to learn but still manages to provide some level of complexity and nuance. It also doesn’t take much time to complete a run, it’ll take thirty minutes at most. It reminds me of playing that one Warcraft III custom map where it was a survival crafting roguelike. I forgot the name of the map but the small scale, micro session focused design of An Ankou definitely brought back those memories and feelings of simpler times. And spiders. So many spiders. They just don’t stop.
Additional Info
Steam Store Page : https://store.steampowered.com/app/2281650/An_Ankou/
Review Score: 95% positive with a total of 124 reviews as of this writing (08/29/2023)
Developer: Alkemi
Publisher: PID Games
Release Date: Aug 17, 2023
MSRP: $4.99
I received a key from ICO. Thanks Lewis!
Time spent: 4.8 hours
Achievement Score: 2/6
Ducky Obrien 