Video Game / ScourgeBringer

ScourgeBringer is a combat Platform Game with Roguelike elements, developed by Flying Oak Games and released on Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and the Steam, Epic, and GOG stores on October 20, 2020. It's now available for release on PlayStation 4 and Play Station Vita on April 22, 2021.

An evil structure known as the ScourgeBringer has brought desolation and destruction to a once-flourishing world. All who have entered it have never returned. In desperation, a young woman named Kyhra is chosen to brave the ScourgeBringer and hopefully defeat it once and for all.

Armed with only a long sword and a trusty Attack Drone, the player must explore a randomly-arranged maze of rooms and use their agility and quick reflexes to kill all the enemies in each room. Various powers and blessings can be obtained along the way to increase your deadliness. At the end of each level is a powerful Judge who guards the exit.

Kyhra has a number of useful combat abilities which must be mastered in order to succeed:

• Dash: Kyhra can perform a lightning-fast dash which cuts through enemies, useful for rapid attacks and quick dodges. A later upgrade allows you to chain multiple dashes together.
• Smash: A heavy strike of Kyhra's sword can send enemies flying. If timed correctly, the smash can stun enemies and temporarily prevent them from fighting back. The smash also blocks projectiles coming your way, and when upgraded can even deflect projectiles toward other enemies.
• Gun: Kyhra's attack drone can fire bullets in any direction, giving her long-range attack capability when melee isn't an option. The gun has limited ammunition, but replenishes during combat, and can also be upgraded with modules to grant different bullet effects. Several different gun varieties and upgrades can be acquired or purchased throughout the game.

The game can be purchased on Steam here.

---

ScourgeBringer contains the following tropes:

• Action Bomb:
  • The Still Bastion contains Fall-bots, icicle-like robots that crawl along the ceiling and drop onto you when you pass underneath them. With a carefully-timed smash, you can use them as weapons.
  • The Wasted Pit has splat-flies, which home in on you and burst themselves, and their hardier adult forms which spew toxic jets when they die.
• Airborne Mook: The game has a heavy emphasis on aerial combat, so most enemies are able to fly or float.
• And I Must Scream: Anyone who enters the ScourgeBringer is trapped there forever, forced to fight through an neverending death labyrinth, and even dying isn't a way out.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Many rooms feature environmental hazards such as pressure-activated spikes or gas spouts to hinder the player while they're fighting; however, once all enemies are defeated, all hazards and traps deactivate so that you don't get unfairly damaged when you're simply traversing the room.
  • Similarly, fired enemy projectiles disappear as soon as the last enemy is defeated, preventing cheap post-victory deaths. (Projectiles produced in a death explosion, however, can still get you even after the enemy is dead).
• Apocalyptic Log: You can occasionally find logs from the expeditions that entered the ScourgeBringer before you, which detail some of the game's Backstory.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Kyhra has an artificially-intelligent companion drone, yet her main weapon is a sword. The game's story hints that the sword may have been gifted to her by one of the clans that shuns technology.
• Attack Drone: BLAST.32 might seem like a cute little interface droid, but it is powerfully armed and is Kyhra's only means of long-range defence.
• Attack Reflector: One of Kyhra's most useful abilities is the smash attack, which can be upgraded so that it deflects bullets. This can be used to take out enemies without consuming ammo.
• Boss Room: All bosses and minibosses have their own unique rooms, usually with some Benevolent Architecture to take advantage of.
• Bullet Time: The Hot Stuff blessing makes enemy projectiles move slower while you are standing on the ground.
• Cast from Money: The Cursed Ammo blessing makes your projectiles 50% more powerful, but each one now costs 200 blood to fire.
• Civilization Destroyer: The ScourgeBringer is slowly ravaging the world beneath it.
• Closed Circle: Anyone who enters the ScourgeBringer can never leave; the place itself contrives to keep them trapped there for eternity.
• Combat Parkour: Kyhra's fighting style has elements of this; she can leap off walls and wallrun to outmaneuver her opponents, although a lot of the time she just straight up defies gravity anyway.
• Cursed with Awesome: Some of the Cursed Altar blessings are these:
  • The Cursed Transmutation blessing converts all of the Judge Blood acquired that run into regular Blood. However, by the time you're able to get this blessing, you'll probably already have unlocked almost the entire skill tree anyway, at which point Judge Blood is essentially a useless currency - so choosing this blessing means you instantly earn thousands of spendable Blood with absolutely no downside.
  • The Cursed Deal blessing gives back half your HP, but restores your gun back to the starting default. However, it's possible to get this blessing while you still have your starting gun, so choosing it at that point is just free HP.
• Critical Status Buff: Two blessings can give you these, in different forms:
  • The Last Stand blessing boosts your damage output by 50% if you are on your last point of HP.
  • The Bear Spirit blessing increases your damage output as you become more injured.
• Dash Attack: One of Kyhra's main methods of attack and movement, allowing her to maneuver around (and through) enemies at a lightning pace.
• Death or Glory Attack: A couple of the bosses have a bullet-spamming attack which, if countered at the exact moment it's fired, will instantly redirect all of those bullets at them, often doing enough damage for a one-shot kill. However, if you mistime the counterattack, you'll get hit by the deluge of bullets instead.
• Directionally Solid Platforms: They are a common feature on most screens. Usefully, they block enemy fire, allowing the player to safely hide on one side of them and then dash through for a surprise attack.
• Dungeon Shop: A vendor can be found on each level, who will sell you a small selection of items if you have the blood (or life) to pay for them.
• Elimination Platformer: The doors on each screen will only open once all of the enemies are defeated.
• Elite Mooks: Sometimes, regular enemies are replaced by slightly tougher versions, with a more imposing visual design.
• Emergency Energy Tank: The Determination blessing instantly restores you to full health and replenishes all of your ammunition, extremely useful if you've made it to the final world.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The ScourgeBringer brought the Scourge.
• Flaming Hair: Kyhra has white flaming hair.
• Full Health Bonus: The Top Predator blessing increases your damage output by 50%, but only when you're at maximum health.
• Flying Seafood Special: Judge Bileranha, apparently an enormous mutated fish who is nonetheless able to hover in the air.
• Giant Hands of Doom: Judge BodyBoulder is like this; his hands float independently from his body and are used to attack the player.
• Giant Mook: Most rooms have one or more large enemies as their main threat, which are usually a larger, more powerful version of a small enemy.
• Giant Spider: NightWeaver, the Judge of the Living Walls.
• Good Is Not Nice: The Chiming Tree gifts you with powers and brings you back to life when you get killed. However, it's implied that this is not a kindness - rather, the reason it's resurrecting you is to keep you trapped in the Ordeal.
• Green Hill Zone: The first level contains vines and vegetation dotted around the place, in comparison to the more foreboding later levels.
• Ground Pound: An unlockable skill which allows Kyhra to hit the ground with immense force when dashing downward, usually taking enemies with her on the way.
• Heart Container: Hearts and Crystal Hearts increase your max HP by 1 and 2 respectively.
• Heavily Armored Mook: Some enemies have hard armor that deflects bullets, forcing you either to kill them with the sword, shoot them when they're vulnerable, or use piercing ammunition.
• Have a Nice Death: The game over screen tells you what killed you and sometimes gives hints on how to fight it.
• Hover Bot: BLAST.32 is Kyhra's robot companion, a small hovering robot that can interface with technology, give Kyhra useful guidance, and fire upon distant enemies for her. The various characters that Kyhra meets often have their own companion droids too.
• I Need You Stronger: Greed, the merchant who's sold you weapons for blood over the many times you've fought and died over the game, has fed on countless wanderers who've gone into the Monolith.
• Kill Enemies to Open: All room doors lock when you enter and won't let you out until you've defeated the waves of enemies in that room. And the level as a whole works this way too - the Boss Room is sealed by a giant metal door that won't unlock until all of the Guardian minibosses are dead.
• King Mook: Guardian minibosses are often giant versions of the game's large enemies (which are themselves Giant Mooks).
• Late to the Tragedy: Several expedition teams entered the ScourgeBringer before Kyhra, and she gradually pieces together what happened to them through the logs they left behind.
• Limit Break: The Fury is an unlockable ability that charges up when enemies are around, and can be unleashed as a flurry of strikes that hit multiple enemies at once.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: By smashing shop items, you can transform them into a different item which may be more to your liking - however, doing so increases their cost each time. One of the altar blessings (Keep Rolling) removes the cost penalty.
• Meaningful Name: The Chiming Tree, which becomes increasingly festooned with bells and chimes as you unlock more skills.
• Meteor Move: The Ground Pound ability allows you to dash enemies into the floor, and is great for taking out columns of enemies all at once.
• Mini-Boss: In addition to the main Judge boss, each level has one or more Guardians - minibosses who must be defeated first in order to unlock the boss room.
• Mook Maker:
  • The Alpha Jello has no direct attack, but it spits out hordes of smaller jellos which do.
  • Similarly, splat-fly nests do nothing but spawn splat-flies to pester you.
• Multi-Mook Melee: The gameplay is almost entirely based around this, with most of the skills built around giving you ways to fight multiple enemies at once - smashing enemies into each other, lightning-dashing between enemies, etc.
• Not Quite Flight: Kyhra cannot fly, but since there is no usage limit on her Dash Attack, she can stay in the air indefinitely with repeated dashes. There is an achievement for clearing a room without touching the ground, and the "Floor is Lava" blessing rewards you for staying airborne while fighting.
• Noun Verber: The ScourgeBringer.
• Ominous Cube: The ScourgeBringer is cuboid in shape, with a fractured lower end.
• Ominous Floating Castle: The ScourgeBringer.
• One-Hit Polykill: The dash attack can slash through and kill multiple enemies at once. It can eventually be upgraded to a combination of dash+smash, the Dragon Punch, which has a cooldown of 4 seconds so you can't spam it every time (although you can get a blessing to reduce the cooldown for the run).
• Parrying Bullets: The smash attack can block bullets, saving you from getting hit. If you unlock the Lethal Club upgrade, you can additionally smash the bullets back at your opponents.
• Polluted Wasteland: The Wasted Pit, a world of toxic gas pipes and poisonous monsters.
• Portmanteau: Judge Bileranha, a giant toxic fish whose name is a combination of "bile" and "piranha".
• Power at a Price: The Cursed Altars, unlike the regular ones, only offer powers that always come with a catch.
• Punched Across the Room: Kyhra's smash attack can send enemies flying to the other side of the room.
• Punny Name: BodyBoulder, a muscular demon made of rock.
• Random Drop Booster: Three of the altar blessings improve random drops:
  • Lucky Charm increases the chance of an item dropping when completing a room.
  • Turbo Loot causes Judges to drop more items on death.
  • Quality Looter increases the chance of getting high-quality items from random drops.
• Rocket Punch: Judge BodyBoulder uses these. When heavily damaged, his punches also cause a spray of huge bullets which have to be dodged or parried in addition to the punch.
• Sentry Gun: The second level introduces prism-bots, static floating sentries that target you when in line of sight and zap you with lasers. By the fourth level, these have been upgraded to much more deadly versions that perform laser sweeps.
• Shout-Out: Peppy will sometimes say that you are "faster than a hedgehog" if you complete a realm quickly.
• Single-Use Shield: The player can get up to three shields on top of their HP, each protecting them from a single hit.
• Sinister Geometry: Square diamonds appear as a recurring geometric motif throughout the whole game, and seem to be symbolic of the ScourgeBringer itself. The shape appears to derive from the diamond-shaped outline of the ScourgeBringer's topside.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Still Bastion, a world of frozen platforms and crystalline ice monsters.
• Spikes of Doom: Many screens on the first level contain trapped platforms with pressure-activated spikes.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: All bosses have moments of vulnerability during which you can stun them with a smash attack. Most will also happily spam bullets at you, which you can smash back at them.
• Tech Tree: The game's skill tree is a literal tree, which becomes more decorated as you obtain more skills.
• Technicolor Toxin: The Wasted Pit is full of poisonous enemies which exude a sickly green gas that hurts you. There are also pipes that leak the poisonous gas into the air, creating an environmental hazard that you have to avoid.
• The Chosen One: Kyhra was chosen by her clan to fight the ScourgeBringer.
• This Way to Certain Death: The first tutorial room contains a skeletal corpse, presumably the remains of a previous adventurer.
• Throw the Mook at Them: Smashing enemies at other enemies is a useful means of disabling multiple foes at once, effectively allowing you to extend the reach of your smash if you position yourself correctly. The adult splat-flies of The Wasted Pit effectively become aimable bombs when used this way.
• Turns Red: Boss attacks become more violent and destructive after they lose enough health.
• Wall Jump: As well as her unlimited air dash, Kyhra can simply leap off walls to gain height.
• Wall Run: Kyhra clings to vertical walls and can simply run straight up them if she chooses.
• Weird Currency: Kyhra pays for things in blood - not her own, but blood collected from the enemies that she slays. There is also a more valuable blood, only shed by Judges, that persists between runs and can be used to buy skills.
• We Will Use WikiWords in the Future: ScourgeBringer is always rendered in CamelCase for some reason, as are the names of some of the Judges.
• Womb Level: The fourth level, The Living Walls, is this with each room pulsing like you're inside some being's organs.
• Wrap Around: Both Level 5 and 6, The Old World and The Beyond, use this in their rooms.