13Z is a beautiful, frenetic roguelike – and you can play it now | Hands-on preview

13Z is a third-person hack ‘n’ slash roguelike from Mixed Realms that I’ve had the pleasure of playing this week, thanks to early access to the public playtest – which is now live. It’s a colourful, frenetic action game based loosely on the Chinese Zodiac, and features a bunch of bright, cartoony characters that juxtapose quite nicely with the challenging combat.

Inspired by the likes of Hades, it takes place on a series of floating islands where you must undergo the Zodiac Trials, a gauntlet of challenges that will test your mettle and push your skills to the limit. There will eventually be six characters to choose from, but I only got to try out Lyra, a swift fox-lady with a razor-sharp blade and the ability to dodge and dash by turning into a fox herself.

Combat is a mix of light and heavy attacks, timed dodges, and special attacks which don’t draw from a mana supply or feature a cooldown. Each area is presented as an enclosed arena where you’ll slice through waves of enemies before moving on, choosing the next upgrade each time. These upgrades come in a variety of elemental flavours and add a great deal to the combat.

For example, you may imbue the final strike of a combo with Fire magic, or trigger a mini lightning storm on performing a perfect dodge. You’ll also collect gold coins and jade ingots with which to buy equipment and unlock cosmetics at the village. This area is currently very sparse, but is sure to be expanded in the coming months.

These combat arenas eventually leads to bosses, which at this point present my only real gripe. There’s no lock-on option, which is an absolute must have with combat this wild and acrobatic. You’re constantly fighting against the camera, not ever quite sure which way a certain attack has spun you, and the enemies hit incredibly hard. A boss can kill you in just two good hits, and with permanent upgrades focusing more on damage than defence right now, survivability feels like an issue.

Enemies are a decent mix of ranged and melee attackers, though there isn’t a lot of nuance in what they do. Most will just charge at you and crowd you, and the hit detection isn’t great, so it becomes a bit button-mashy when there are lots of mobs on you. 13Z is gorgeous though. The art style is lovely, and the speed and spectacle of the combat almost makes up for the lack of a lock-on – though the inability to invert the Y-Axis without forcing it through the Steam overlay is irritating. It’s 2024, folks.

What’s here is a great foundation, for sure. There’s a good spread of elemental buffs, as well as special moves you can unlock with Skill Tomes and assign permanently. Environments are pretty, portraying a sense of whimsical charm even as you battle through them. The story, though, isn’t really in place yet, so there’s little context to what you’re doing and why.

As it stands 13Z has a lot of potential. The combat is fun, the world is interesting and it’s fast-paced and good-looking. Roguelikes of this ilk are fairly common these days, though, so 13Z will need to work hard to stand out. That said, based on what I’ve seen so far, this could be a definite success.

13Z is coming PC via Steam, and the playtest is starting from today, September 19th.