Having seen all sorts of genre and style combinations come out of the indie gaming space, it’s always wild when you see unexpected pairings crop up. Normally, when I think of roguelikes and cozy games, those are two styles that would seem to go together like oil and water. The typical cozy game obviously tends to be approachable and mild-mannered, while your average roguelike tends to gear itself towards more intense challenges of some kind through an element of unpredictability. Nonetheless, Into the Emberlands is a title that has brought these two concepts together, and in the end it’s at least a decent ride.

This is a game primarily concerned with exploration, collecting resources, and town building. Outside of town the world is a dangerous place, covered by fog, and in order to survive it you’ll need to have your lantern with you and keep it lit. Thus, when you embark on any given run, your precise amount of fuel will determine the number of steps you’ll be able to take before it’s lights out, and if you’re out in the wild when that happens it will be game over for your current character. The good thing is that while you’re out in the wild you’ll have numerous opportunities to discover the resources and people needed to expand your town, increase your lamp capacity, and fuel up a bit, giving you some options. A key element of taking advantage of those opportunities will be having the right gear, whether an axe for cutting down trees or a pickaxe for clearing rocks. Those tools end up serving two critical purposes though, so you’ll need to be careful not to exhaust them too quickly. Once you’ve cleared out an area, you’ll typically want and need to return to town, and depending on how much lantern fuel you have left, you may need to create a shortcut. Of course, if you don’t have the tools you’ll need for this you can find yourself stranded and need to start again.

Where the light roguelike element does come into play is that each time you start over, or your town expands, the placements of resources, tools, and creatures you’ll need to work with are procedurally arranged differently, helping to somewhat preserve the spirit of adventure. The thing is, as you collect more resources and expand your lantern capacity, the nature of the game can change a bit. You can get to the point where the urgency of getting back to town and keeping an eye on your lantern are diminished, and at that point the game tends to start feeling more like a grind. Even as you reach new biomes, which will have some new resources to concern yourself with, the fundamentals really don’t change and it’s also at that point where you’ll bump into issues with your limited carry capacity, as you try to hold onto multiple tools for safety but a variety of resources as well. Finally, the console controls can be quite problematic at times, especially when trying to look around. It wasn’t unusual for me to lose my cursor for where I was pointing while scanning the area, and that could be very frustrating at times. Similarly, the camera not being able to freely turn, instead moving 90 degrees at a time also felt needlessly awkward, and like an area that could have been handled better.

In the end, this is a game I really wish I’d liked a bit more, as on a general level it feels like a fresh idea and it serves decently as an approachable game with survival elements, something you don’t see often. It has its strengths, and if you can be patient with it, and don’t mind some grinding, it can be a pretty good time. If, however, you take a harder look at some of its shortcomings, there are enough here that they can pretty well derail the experience if you’re more discerning with your purchases. It will likely rest mostly on personal tastes in the end which way you’ll see it.