Small update before we get into things today: I’ve been sick. Repeatedly. Double batch of food poisoning followed by…whatever is currently assaulting my throat, and sinuses. That’s not me fishing for pity points. Rather, I wanted to address why I haven’t posted anything in the past 2 weeks. It’s the unfortunate problem with running a 1-person operation that when I’m incapacitated, nothing gets done.

Regardless, I received an opportunity at the tail-end of January to play the demo for Reptilian Rising ahead of its release, and that’ll be the focus of today’s Demo Dive. As such, I’d like to thank the developers for reaching out with this opportunity, and apologize for starting my coverage off with a brief announcement about my health.

With that update, and disclosure out of the way, let’s actually dive into what Reptilian Rising is because I think it’ll be a very tantalizing title for an oddly specific demographic of people.

First off, what is Reptilian Rising? 

In as few words as possible, it’s a Vaporwave Tactics game where you collect heroes from across time to fight talking dinosaurs. It’s a premise that sounds straight out of the 1980s, which is mirrored by the game’s visual style. All of the characters look like action figures that you’d hear about on a television commercial, and wouldn’t look at all out of place next to G.I. Joes, Transformers, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

On that note, the 1980s aesthetic feels very much like Reptilian Rising’s X Factor. I say that because I’m of the mind that your adoration for Vaporwave will directly correlate to how enthused you are for it. The game is so unbelievably kitsch, but if you have a ton of nostalgia for the 80s, or love collectible action figures then I could see that being a selling point. Unfortunately, I don’t find myself among that crowd, but I do have a few friends, who spend way too much money on board games, that’d be all over Reptilian Rising were it something they could buy at the local shop.

That said, while I’m not over the moon about the game visually, I thought Reptilian Rising was really well put together as a Tactics title. There’s a handful of reasons for why I think that, but the primary one is how the game encourages players to make interesting decisions instead of playing overly defensive.

 As a rule, I think any Tactics game where the dominant strategy is simply to hold your ground, and wait for the enemy to approach is poorly designed. That’s not the case here. Every mission has a turn timer that limits the amount of time you have to complete it, and there are also timed side objectives. Both help to encourage players to move forward, and be proactive instead of whittling the enemy down over time.

The way reinforcement work also encourages a more proactive approach in combat. You, and the enemy forces use a shared resource, a beacon of sorts, to call in additional troops. Every few turns, powerful enemy reinforcements will spawn from every beacon still under enemy control. As such, you’ll want to capture, and hold these beacons so you’re not completely inundated with reinforcements, and also so that you can spawn in the rest of your crew to fight alongside your limited starting battalion.

It’s also worth noting that the enemy AI is aware that these resources are important to hold, so they will guard beacons with a fierceness instead of running headlong into combat without a plan. Honestly, the enemy AI kind of reminded me of Shardpunk, which is a very good thing. They appeared to be operating with some kind of internal logic instead of blindly smashing into the player whenever they got within attacking range.

The variety of unique characters also feels like a bit of a selling point. I ended up playing through the demo twice, using marginally different team compositions across both playthroughs, and appreciated how the unique skills of each character changed my approach. For example, in my second run I drafted Cleopatra (yes, really) whose multi-target special attack proved incredibly useful for clearing out multiple trash-mobs while softening beefier targets. This meant that I was able to play a little more aggressively than I’d been able to in my previous run where I didn’t have access to that kind of area-of-effect damage.

All said, while I may not have been super into the aesthetic charms of Reptilian Rising, I was really impressed with the Tactics side of things. It does all of the right stuff in all of the right ways. That’s no easy feat either, so it’s worth calling out.

Though, 1 thing I’d maybe like to see changed is for attack animations to be a little punchier. Right now attacks are very quick, and don’t have much impact. I’m of the mind that this was intentional to keep the game from feeling too sluggish – which is something I appreciate as a player who normally disables or uses simplified attack animations – so I don’t want to harp too hard on this point. However, it was one of the only negatives that I captured in my notes from across my time playing the demo.

To close out, the final thing that I wanted to mention is that the game appears to be chock full of references to pop culture from throughout the 80s and 90s. That feels part and parcel for anything Vaporwave adjacent, so it wasn’t really a surprise when I clocked a few different nods to the likes of Back to the Future, or Beast Wars. I know that’s something that a certain type of person really gets a kick out of, so I figured it was worth a mention here.

While I’m not totally sold on the look of it, I gotta admit that Reptilian Rising is a solidly put together Tactics game. It really does all of the right things with regard to its combat. The demo in question was quite substantive, but I played through the whole thing (twice), and it didn’t really feel like it took all too long to do so. That’s gotta count for something, right?

As always, if you’d like to try the demo for yourself then it should be playable by the time you’re reading this. Don’t forget to give it a wishlist if you enjoy it, or you thought the game looked neat and are willing to take my word at face value. 

And again, thank you to the devs for the chance to play the latest demo ahead of its release. Sorry this was a few days late going out. I’ve been doing the best that I can while trying to look after my health.

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