While normally when I think of roguelike titles, I tend to see visions of deckbuilders or twin-stick shooters in my head, there are absolutely action-oriented ones as well. Whether it’s the geniologically-challenged weirdness of the Rogue Legacy series, or the tense exploration and platforming of the infamous Spelunky series, some ground has already successfully been covered in the space, and now Aura of Worlds must see how it can measure up to that competition.

Where the game excels is in capturing the pretty retro-accurate feel of earlier days of side-scrolling adventures. Armed with your sword and shield (or other weapons), exploring dark caverns, staying on the lookout for traps, and searching for loot, there’s a fundamental core element of play here that’s familiar and classic. What helps make it more distinctive is then adding the element of roguelike unpredictability with each adventure’s dungeons changing, the assortment of gear you’ll grab along the way being unpredictable, and what feels like consistent surprises with the new enemies and traps you’ll encounter. The fact that each run you go on continues to feel fresh for quite some time really helps to give the game’s replayability a boost.

That isn’t to say that everything is as polished or refined as it could be. While it generally plays well, there’s a raw edge to the experience in places that shows up periodically. Perhaps some of it is a function of the game’s ambition, as with so many things you can encounter to make use of in different circumstances, not everything behaves as you may expect. There were also times where I had a difficult time telling what elements were in the background versus the foreground when trying to get around, which can be frustrating to say the least. While for the most part these tend to be minor singular incidents, they did chip away at the impression of the overall experience at times. Regardless, if you think some challenging and action-oriented roguelike dungeon exploration sounds good, this will likely satisfy.