Going Rogue: Iris and the Giant
It is a fact universally acknowledged that a roguelike in possession of a good mechanic must not be in want of a story. An opening cinematic to provide some scaffolding to the game’s aesthetics, sure. But a real story, with beats, themes, a turning point that isn’t “We defeated the bad guys?” A story that makes you feel things?
Common wisdom states that roguelikes can’t have stories because the core loop is too repetitive; if you play 50 run-throughs of a game, you don’t want to see the same cutscene 50 times. And roguelike players, as a whole, don’t care about story. So most games don’t bother.
But where some see a commonsense genre convention, others see a challenge. I’ve been keeping an eye out for roguelikes that tell interesting stories. One of the very few — and certainly the most successful — is Iris and the Giant.
The Game
Iris and the Giant follows shy, awkward middle schooler Iris. Bullied by her peers and misunderstood by her parents, she retreats into her interest in Greek mythology, creating an imaginary world where she battles her fears and insecurities in the form of monsters (and a lot of cats, because this is a middle school girl, after all).
The story is cleverly told: Collectibles that unlock metagame bonuses are scattered throughout the levels, and each one triggers a short memory. Since they’re metagame items, these vignettes only play once across any number of playthroughs, and they’re designed to work in any order (save for the opening and ending cutscenes).
The art is primarily simple vectors in a limited palette of muted blue and orange, and while some of the animations (enemy deaths, in particular) lean towards evoking 2000s Flash animation, for the most part they are expressive and effective at communicating the emotions of the story.
The gameplay, too, is straightforward: Columns of enemies advance on Iris, and she dispatches them with a deck of attacks that hit one enemy, all the enemies in one row, all the enemies in one column, and so on.
All in all: Very simple. But if you’ve been reading this column you know that, in roguelikes, simplicity is elegance. Does this game go too far? Let’s take a look.
Simple Math: A
It doesn’t get simpler than this, folks. Enemies don’t have hit points and your attacks don’t have damage values — it’s one hit, one kill. Stronger enemies wear armor that requires one or more hits to break through, but never more than four — less like its fellow roguelikes than like Plants vs Zombies. I don’t think you’ll be needing a calculator.
Instead of wearing down enemy health, the challenge is the sheer number of enemies you have to contend with. There can be a solid nine to twelve enemies on the map at once, and under the wrong circumstances, they might all get an attack. Choose your targets wisely.
Deterministic Outcomes: A
Another gimme. With a few exceptions (like enemies that steal a random card), the outcomes are all plainly laid out. I’ve done more careful how-do-I-survive-this-next-turn crunching in Iris and the Giant than just about any other roguelike I’ve played, except maybe Inscryption.
Tradeoffs: B
At first blush, there may not seem to be much of a tradeoff to “Sword: attack one enemy.” But Iris and the Giant does something quite unique among deckbuilders: All the cards are single-use. When the deck is empty, you lose. This aspect evokes old-school traditional roguelikes with their very limited inventories of items.
Thus, there’s never a moment of “sure, I’ve got 1 energy left, I might as well play another card” — every play must be weighted against saving the card for a later turn when you might need it more. Making a beeline for the stairs is usually smart, but killing enemies and collecting items gets you valuable advancement as well as additional packs of cards.
Of particular note are the Steal cards. When they kill an enemy, they give you a new card — and powerful enemies net you rare cards that you can’t acquire any other way. Collecting these cards and picking the correct moment to use them is a key part of the strategy.
Still, plenty of turns end up just being “Sword: attack one enemy,” especially at the beginning when you don’t have very many different cards. At the opposite end, it’s easy to fall into death spirals where not having attack cards makes it impossible to get attack cards; there’s no less satisfying way to lose than slowly burning through your last half-dozen Confidence cards one at a time.
Intermediate Geometry: A
If I had to summarize ideal roguelike geometry in one rule, it would be: Thou Shalt Not Move The Protagonist. Movement is invariably the most tedious part of combat; nobody enjoys wasting an entire round schlepping their character across the room. But on a more fundamental level, the ability of both the protagonist and the enemies to move creates multiple possible positions that are mechanistically identical, and that’s poor design — there’s the appearance of many options without those options actually making a difference.
Iris and the Giant neatly illustrates the alternative. Iris always remains in the same place. The enemy at the front of each column is in melee range. As you kill off the enemies at the front of a column, the enemies in the back slide forward — a proxy for Iris moving down the corridor. At the end of one column are the exit stairs.
There’s a certain level of abstraction here that’s difficult to grasp at first, but which you can use to your advantage — you can use obstacles to block enemies from reaching you, and knowing which actions end your turn (playing cards) and which don’t (opening chests, picking up crystals) allows you to sneakily navigate dangerous situations.
Also like Inscryption but unlike most other roguelikes, the win state doesn’t require killing all the enemies. This adds flexibility to your strategy as you work out which enemies you need to kill to reach stairs, chests, and other goals and which ones you can safely ignore. I’d like to see more roguelikes introduce combat-orthogonal goals like this.
Overall Grade: A-
Now, I really enjoyed Iris and the Giant — largely because of the effectiveness of the story — and a score this positive is going to look like a very resounding recommendation. But while I do recommend it, I think most serious roguelike fans won’t enjoy it quite as much as I did. Some of this is the design; it may indeed veer towards too simple to be truly compelling. But I think the bigger issue is the metaprogression.
Metaprogression: Mixed
Man, did my view of this game’s progression system evolve as I played.
At first, this was one of my absolute favorite roguelike progression systems. Both in-game and in the metagame, there are multiple ways to advance, and they’re natural, organic, and nuanced. During a run, you power up by killing enemies, collecting crystals off the map, and picking up items dropped by bosses. Between runs, you get the aforementioned memories, collected across various runs; invisible friends, who you unlock by completing challenges; and bonus packs of cards depending on how well you did on the previous run.
While I was first playing, I found the progression to be silky smooth, each major obstacle feeling initially insurmountable before being mastered. But once I had beaten the game and unlocked most of the collectibles, I found that there wasn’t much to lure me back. The levels are static and mostly linear. The memories and invisible friends don’t really alter the base strategy. There are two additional paths after you defeat the giant, but while they’re challenging, they weren’t unique enough to really compel me.
The main constraint here is that, whatever the metaprogression may add, Iris is still Iris. But that’s also fundamental to the story. So while I don’t see most players putting more than 10 or 20 hours into Iris and the Giant, I also don’t really want to say the game design is wrong. It’s a story, and when it ends, it ends. And what’s so terribly wrong with that?
As for our honorary award, I can honestly say that this is the first time I’ve felt a genuine feeling while working on this series. In a roguelike, it turns out, that’s a pretty mean feat.
Honorary Award: Best Emotional Impact
Be sure to check out my previous columns on Monster Train, Meteorfall, and Fhtagn Simulator, and join me next month when I’ll discuss…hmm…do you know what, I haven’t decided yet. If you’ve got a suggestion, drop me a note.
More Going Rogue
Tetra Tactics
Mortal Glory
Fhtagn Simulator
Meteorfall: Krumit’s Quest
Monster Train
