As companion pieces to the books, The Lost Legends of Redwall series is anything but formulaic. The first title, Escape the Gloomer, was a conversation, text-based adventure game that hit the PC, iOS, and Amazon Alexa. The second game in the series, The Scout Anthology, could've easily followed that route but opted to follow a more traditional gameplay path, so it also debuted on consoles at a later date. We took a look at an early build of the game and came away intrigued.

The Scout Anthology takes place sometime before the events of the first book. You play the role of either Liam or Sophia, two mice who are about to become members of the Lilygrove Scout Corps. On the night of their graduation ceremony, pirate rats have come to town, and it is up to them to warn the people and save some lives while an army assembles to fight the invaders.

No matter who you play as, the adventure plays out the same way, since both mice have the same abilities. What makes the game interesting is the lack of overall combat. Scouts have no real combat training, and while you carry a slingshot, it's used more as a tool than a weapon, since you can't fire on enemies with it. The one exception is if you use your slingshot to break locks that rain down rocks or lumber on enemies — or if you push boxes from above to take them out. In lieu of fighting, the game becomes much more focused on the art of stealth. You can use the slingshot to ring bells to distract guards and have them investigate the source of the sound. You can hide in barrels or bushes to let enemies pass or try to find alternate paths to ensure you don't get caught.

One of the more interesting elements at play is the presence of scent. Almost everything gives off a scent, from the food to the bushes to the characters themselves, and the presence of wind means that the scent carries beyond where you're standing. You can also hit a button to make those scent trails visible, so you aren't guessing about where a scent is going. The presence of scent also means you have the ability to hide it, like diving into a barrel of flour to mask it, or moving around or blending in where other smells are more prevalent. It is an interesting addition to the stealth mechanic, since it means one more thing to disguise. One can see it as a replacement for sound, as you naturally don't make enough sound to be noticeable by anyone.

Although this title is a stealth game, your movements are fairly limited compared to other titles in the genre. You can't duck, and your leaps don't have much height. You also can't run, which is fine later on but bothersome in the early stages, as your walking speed makes early tasks take longer to complete. Enemy AI is very inconsistent, as they can spot or smell you from a good distance at one moment but be completely oblivious to your presence the next time you get within range. This inconsistency also applies to elements meant to distract them, so you can ring a bell one moment and see a good number of them run to it and stare at it. Another bell will be completely ignored, no matter how many times it produces a noise and how close enemies are to it. The game fades to black when you are spotted. Players don't expect there to be a gruesome sequence when you get caught, but seeing the screen fade without any indication of what happened leaves the player guessing about what went wrong. Players should have the opportunity to not repeat that mistake a second or third time around.

The presentation is fine. This is a fully voiced cast, since the whole story is narrated, and all of the characters speak quite often. The music is also well done, with a soundtrack that sounds era-appropriate, but it would be nice if it were toned down at times or muted, since the rats tend to have long conversations or monologues that partially drowned out by the music.

Graphically, The Scout Anthology looks pretty good, but some elements that we saw were a bit undercooked, but this is still an early build of the game. The frame rate is high, but it seems to go low on objects that are far away or whenever you shoot your slingshot. Interestingly enough, this makes gameplay on the Steam Deck more appealing, as the performance averages at 40fps, which helps the areas with lower frame rates stand out less. The battery life averages two-hours-and-forty-five minutes on a full charge with the default Good preset, so there's still wiggle room to squeeze out more game time on the LCD version.

The potential is there with The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout Anthology. The use of a scent mechanic opens up some intriguing possibilities and scenarios when it comes to stealth, as does the inability to directly attack foes. We checked out an early build of the game, so hopefully there's still time to fix some of the more pressing issues before it fully launches.