Featuring a “puntastic” name that sets the tone perfectly, this pixel art roguelike shooter stars a onesie-wearing teddy bear and takes place in a dreamworld. This means anything goes, from an enemy assortment that includes gun-toting pigs and walking AA batteries, to weapons such as a ‘mac & cheese gun’ and an everyday toaster. Even the music is a bit strange, providing warbled and distorted beats to listen to while blasting your way to victory.
Once the tutorial is out of the way, co-staring a smartly dressed fox as a mentor, you’re presented with a handful of stages along with their accompanying bosses – and just one life to make it through to the end. While stages are randomised in their design, formed of several rooms to clear and an exit to find, bosses – which vary from a rock music loving octopus to a weather controlling rain jacket – always appear in the same order. This gives the chance to learn their attack patterns, including the heavier hitting attacks they unleash once their health bar is almost drained. It’s very much a case here of getting a little bit further every time you play.
Being a roguelike, there are randomised items and upgrades to collect, along with permanent upgrades from a skill tree found within the small bedroom hub. Three weapons are provided from the outset, each with varying firing speeds and spreads, which can then be swapped out for the more comical weapons found. Shotguns, SMGs and rifles feature too, helping combine stupidity with realism. Two guns can be carried, and it usually isn’t long until they can be augmented, doubling projectiles, reducing spread, and even adding a chance of one hit kills. This can make for wildly unpredictable arsenal, especially if you have a powerful weapon to begin with and then increase its projectile count three-fold.
The pool of upgrades is somewhat smaller, including faster movement, more cash (known here as ‘plu’ and spendable between stages), and increased frequencies of health or power weapon drops. Perhaps to prevent players from becoming overpowered too quickly, a Calamity must be picked upon defeating a boss. These vary from finding less cash, increasing enemy movement speeds, doubling the amount of enemies, or hiding reward selections entirely.
See, Rightfully, Beary Arms will let you choose what rewards are found in the next set of stages. If you’re low on health, for instance, then a health pack can be requested. Chances are it won’t appear in the first room, but still, it’ll duly appear at some point. If you have a weak weapon, it’s possible to ask for a better one too, with the only downside being that you may need to clear out every room before it eventually drops. Permanent upgrades meanwhile require Inspiration points, which again can be chosen as a reward. This allows for more hearts, cash boosts, and minor (2%) damage increases to all weapons. It seems reasonable to suggest that most players will need to unlock around half the permanent upgrades before emerging victorious – a task that’ll take around five hours.
PC owners have been playing Rightfully, Beary Arms in early access since 2023, and this new console version definitely benefits from years of tweaks and improvements. I can’t really fault its difficulty, as it’s very well balanced. Or at least, it is after unlocking a couple of extra health points, which is likely going to be most player’s first upgrade anyway. The on-screen whereabouts of enemies is always clear, projectile waves can be dodged easily with a well timed dash, and most bosses can be beaten swiftly providing you have a decent weapon.
Progress is swift too as stages only take around five minutes to beat, culminating in a runtime of around half an hour. There are achievements for beating it in less than 20 minutes, which you’d have to be very well acquainted with the bosses to acquire. That, or heavily invested in the skill tree’s movement based options.
While this isn’t something that’ll impress with its visuals – a few aspects, such as the scrolling pixel art backdrops, are pretty crude – it nevertheless offers a smooth and fun ride through several delightfully irrelevant locations. If you’re looking for a finely balanced roguelike with a silly streak and plenty to experiment with, you’ll find exactly that here. It’s unquestionably neat that it’s about to make its debut on Xbox with years’ worth of refinements and tinkering.
Version 1.0 of Daylight Basement Studio’s Rightfully, Beary Arms is out 27th Jan on PC (Steam and Epic Store) and Xbox Series.