Fogpiercer is a chaotic, stylish, and deceptively difficult train roguelite

Fogpiercer is one of the many roguelites that I first discovered via Steam Next Fest demo. And now, as so many Next Fest demos do, it has graduated to a fully fledged game, and I've found myself with an early copy to review.

The funny thing about watching a game transform from a demo into the full thing is how your relationship changes with it. With Fogpiercer, for example, I was deeply enamored by the original concept, and did multiple runs of the demo just for fun. But once I got the full version, it actually took me a few hours to get back to that original state of joy.

Despite being a game about a train, the best game I can compare Fogpiercer to is Fights in Tight Spaces (or Knights in Tight Spaces, if you're more familiar with the fantasy version). But instead of a John Wick Man, you're a post-apocalyptic train running through a frigid world.

The game starts with choosing your lead locomotive and two cars you'd like to attach to it. These cars each have their own attack abilities, which manifest as cards that make up your deck (I know, stay with me). When your adventure begins, you pick a region to battle through and select encounters off of a grid-based map.

Each encounter then zooms in on your train as it's barreling along the track at full speed. The map is grid-based, but your train only exists on the single line in the middle. You can use your action points to speed up or slow down – shifting you forward or backward on the grid – but that's it for movement. The other grid panels above and below you get filled with enemy trucks and drones, which flood in from the sides. The battle is turn-based, and you only have so many moves you can make before the train's turn ends and the enemy team's turn begins.

Your job, in the simplest terms possible, is to kill the enemy before they kill you. Most of the evil trucks will display some kind of intent on the battlefield – a dash attack or maybe even a flamethrower against one of your cars or the locomotive itself. Your train and its cars have very limited HP, so you need to stop these attacks any way you can.