A roguelike game that emphasizes fast and fluid action isn't anything new. A game in the genre that incorporates multiplayer isn't new, either. A new game incorporating these things can cause  player to be curious, especially if the title attempts to add something new to the formula. Godbreakers is that game. It's the first title from development studio To The Sky, and we gave the preview build a spin before its public release.

The preview build doesn't provide much in the way of narrative, but it sets up enough of a premise to work with. Through some unexplained actions, humanity has been identified as the cause for the sun's march toward death. To set things right, three supernatural sisters decide to resurrect some humans to help fix the mess. To do this, those humans have been given weapons and tasked with using violent means to scour the lands and prolong the sun's life.

The game starts with a tutorial, and just about everything it covers should be very familiar if you've played a third-person action game. Light and heavy attacks and combos are at your disposal, along with charged attacks and a special move or two that delivers big hits but requires significant cooldown time. You can't block, but you can dodge. Unlike a number of games that try to incorporate Souls-like elements, there is no stamina meter for attacks, but you can only dash three times before you have to wait for the meter to refill.

The sense of familiarity is extended when you go to Uhr, the first real combat location in the preview build. Combat areas are separated into rooms, which only seems obvious when you notice how you need to go to underground areas for a fight before going above ground to move to the next area to repeat the process. Some enemies drop buffs and temporary abilities for a run, and there's a shopkeeper before a boss fight to give yourself one last advantage before the big skirmish. The boss fight is fun, but it goes against modern trends by only having one phase in the entire fight. You go through stages where you beat up tentacles, fight minions, and escape an all-encompassing blast. You rush to the boss' prone body for some easy hits before the pattern repeats, but you don't need to learn a new pattern for the fight. It's old school in that respect, and it's appreciated since so few games do this classic style anymore.

The combat is fast, at least with the initial weapon, and it feels rather fluid thanks to a change you may not immediately notice. Namely, you can cancel out of a move at any time. This is noticeable if you tend to button-mash because you can still do so while hitting the dash button to move away, rather than having to wait for the full combo animation to play out before being able to dash. The feature is more noticeable if you're using a slower weapon to attack, but overall, it makes the combat less punishing when compared to other games of this type, roguelike or otherwise.

Fighting highlights a big gimmick that the game is running with: godbreaking. Provided you have the energy to pull it off, you need to whittle down an enemy's health bar enough for the ability to activate. Then you hit a button that allows you to go into an enemy and cause them to explode from the inside. While it acts like a bomb to those surrounding you, the explosion also gives you the chance to gain a unique ability from the enemy you just killed. For example, killing the fuzzy ball allows you to fire a powerful energy beam, while godbreaking a robot enemy allows you to burrow into the ground before emerging for an uppercut.

The ability to godbreak is neat but not quite limitless. Once you obtain an enemy ability with the technique, you can't perform a godbreak again until you use what you've got. That stolen ability can only be used once before you have to wait for a lengthy cooldown period before you can perform another godbreak. Even then, the combat is frantic enough at times that you can get so busy attacking and dodging foes that you'll forget that you have a godbreaking attack saved up. This sentiment may change in later levels, but you get the sense that the move is more of a bonus, since you can go through the stage in the preview build without it.

Like any roguelike, dying means having to start over, but you'll really want to do that often since it means the ability to unlock stuff. Upon dying at the first boss, the preview build unlocked a new colorway for my suit, a new helmet, and a pillar as a new weapon. That, in turn, unlocked a new move set to learn and master, which greatly changed up the approach to the game. This isn't a new concept, since roguelikes often reward players for dying with permanent upgrades for the next run. The preview build felt more generous because it gave awards for just reaching a boss, not defeating it.

The idea of a faster deployment of rewards upon death feels like it was a conscious design choice, since the game emphasizes multiplayer, especially since some of the abilities you unlock per weapon emphasize giving buffs to allies. With the pillar weapon, for example, you can give everyone a shield that lasts longer if you hit enemies in close range while unleashing it. You can also absorb damage by attracting attention from others to unleash a powerful explosion. Meanwhile, the lancer weapon lets you give everyone on the team a random ability absorbed from enemies via the godbreaker. The preview build revealed very little about the other locked abilities, but it's highly doubtful the others are strictly made for one player alone.

Godbreakers is currently set to arrive sometime in 2025, and if the preview build is anything to go by, this could be a fun title. The combat feels right, and the ability to cancel moves doesn't seem like a big thing on paper, but in practice, the fighting feels more responsive, since you aren't locked into a move. The presence of multiplayer is always welcome, while the enemy ability snatching move is cool. The single-use nature of the technique and lengthy cooldown associated with it means that you aren't going to rely on the ability as often as you'd think. Based on what we've seen so far, we're really curious to see what the full game has in store when Godbreakers gets released later in the year.