I'm looking forward to dying alone on the side of a mountain
Insurmountable is a turn-based roguelike with no combat
If you, like me, have spent the last year of lockdown watching YouTube videos about hiking, then you might have begun to wonder how you would fare on a solo trek across 100 miles of rugged wilderness.
Insurmountable is a game that'll help you find out: a turn-based roguelike set on a procedurally generated mountain where your enemies are the weather, long falls, and wild animals. It's out on April 29th.
Although you're not fighting monsters or travelling through a dungeon, there's plenty that's familiar if you've played a turn-based roguelike before. You'll spend time managing your inventory, but you're carrying gas cannisters instead of potions, and events you encounter on your journey have multiple choice decisions to make about whether, for example, to traverse "the Death Zone" quickly, slowly, or, er, after mending your wounds. I suggest the latter? Don't bleed on the Death Zone.
You'll also be levelling up your climber and unlocking active and passive abilities, with the ultimate goal of reaching the summit of three increasingly difficult mountains.
I am fully onboard with all of this. I want more turn-based games that aren't about fighting orcs, and more permadeath roguelikes that aren't about fighting orcs.
You can wishlist Insurmountable on Steam ahead of its release next week. And if you want to watch some hiking videos on YouTube, I suggest the mostly wordless work of Kraig Adams or some of Currently Hannah's more recent videos. Or you could watch Free Solo and sweat all the moisture in your body out through your palms.