When Nindie Nexus got the code in for Nerdook Production’s Reverse Crawl I was initially excited. I loved Vertical Drop Heroes HD, the dungeon falling roguelike from the same developer. Unfortunately, I was too busy to review anything at that moment. When I came back from my hiatus and Reverse Crawl was still available, I quickly snapped it up. I had only played the one game from them previously, but that game showed me a lot of potential in a developer that understands how to make fun games.

Developer: Nerdook Productions

Publisher: Digerati

9 Hours Played // Review Copy Provided // $12.99

Just because Vertical Drop Heroes HD was a success, doesn’t mean that Reversal Crawl will be. They’re very different games. Reverse Crawl is a Tactical RPG. You control a fleet of units and move them across a battlefield to fight opposing forces. Each mission is made up of rounds where a you select a team from a list of unlocked ones. That team stays on the field until the enemy unit is defeated or your selected team dies. After that a new round starts either you select a new troop to fight the remaining enemies or your survivors face off against the next group of enemies.

During your turn clicking a red tile will have the current unit attack the enemy on that tile, clicking a blue tile will move the unit to that tile, and clicking a yellow tile will move the unit to that tile and let you attack an adjacent enemy

Choosing between units is a key part of the strategy aspect of Reverse Crawl. Each team has unique mechanics with their own little quirks to learn. Once the skirmish starts, turn order is decided by a unit’s initiative; the higher the initiative the sooner they act.

Units have various stats that determine how they’ll play on top of initiative. Range, dodge chance, critical chance, and movement ability all play roles in how each soldier plays. Additionally, units have intrinsic abilities that make them better suited to face off against a particular foe. For instance, Zombies have innate magic resist, so they’re a strong choice against wizards. Enemies use the same type of system. Clerics can stun any undead creature, for example. Those are only two examples, but there are a large number of different unit types to discover and learn.

Unit selection contains even more depth thanks to the trait system. Each group has a trait randomly assigned to them from a pool. Traits can be either positive or negative affects. Picking a unit with the “Armored” trait means that unit will have an increased amount of armor for that encounter. Picking a unit with the “Outnumbered” trait spawns an additional enemy than the ones listed. Rerolling for a different set of traits is possible a few times if there is a specific combination that you prefer. Traits are either automatically present at the start of the game or can be unlocked from certain story decisions.

Traits can also be both positive and negative like in the case of the “Vicious” trait

If that wasn’t already enough systems involved in the combat, each type of soldier is also customizable. The story mode offers troop-specific upgrades as a reward. These upgrades can drastically change how a unit plays. When I first unlocked the sirens, creatures that take control over an enemy soldier for one turn, I thought they would be terrible, which they might have been. Reverse Crawl has an optional upgrade for them to become ranged attackers instead of melee. This upgrade meant that my sirens could set up at the opposite side of the map and have the enemies fight themselves until the last one standing has to limp their way to where my sirens were perched.

I would generally favor improving my current units, but all of the options seemed like they would be viable options

On top of being a fun Tactical RPG Reverse Crawl contains a story mode that is actually great. The story is intriguing and twisty in ways that I won’t spoil. The basic premise is that your character was once the king of the Northern Kingdom. One day, his castle is invaded by the Red Queen. She’s victorious in her siege and kills the king. His daughter, who is quite proficient at necromancy, brings him back as a revenant to take back his throne. The whole thing is very fun.

This is foreshadowing

The only downside is that the game is sold as your characters being the bad guys, which they really aren’t. The Revenant King is kind of an idiot, but he isn’t evil. The guy just wants his kingdom back. The necromancer princess is an amazing character. She’s enthusiastic in the face of adversity, useful in a fight, and resourceful. I genuinely like them both. All their troops are traditionally evil characters in fiction such as goblins or dark elves, but even they have likeable personalities. It’s possible the story is an examination on how the only difference between evil and good is perspective, but that never really felt like the case.

The main driving factor of the characters being likeable is how well-written they are. The flashes of brilliance in the writing are rare since most of the in-game time is spent in the battles. But, when a chance for characterization does show up, it doesn’t disappoint.

Early in the story, my characters ran into a group of dark elves. The dark elves insult the nation they find themselves in in passing which cues the revenant king to shout how they shouldn’t insult his kingdom. This leads to a fight since the dark elves traveled to the Northern Kingdom to kill its ruler.

Later in the story, the revenant king and the necromancer princess are talking. The king asks why she brought him back. She simply couldn’t imagine navigating this world with it’s new Red Queen adversities alone. She had the capability to bring her dad back, so she did. These aren’t revelations in the form of characterization, but taking offense that someone insulted something you own or not wanting to face something difficult by yourself are relatable things about these characters. Small touches like these are something that I really appreciate. Especially in a game that I honestly didn’t expect to have them.

Reckless anger is relatable to me

The two moments mentioned about above actually aren’t guaranteed encounters. Before every mission, you choose between three goals that will unlock a new unit, give you a new spell, earn bonus experience, or something else generally useful. After enough normal missions, you have to play through a story mission. Successfully completing that mission gives a choice of what strategy you want to employ in the journey to defeat the Red Queen.

An early story mission involves defeating one of the Red Queen’s generals. The choice after that mission is between killing the general, letting him go, or keeping him locked in a dungeon. Naturally, I killed him. I had to fight him twice so far and I didn’t want to bother with him anymore. Then I didn’t. I don’t know if he would have shown up later if we let him go, because he was no longer my problem.

These are examples of normal missions that are available between bigger story missions

This review has been mostly glowing so far, and I don’t want to paint Reverse Crawl as a perfect game since it isn’t. There are problems here (bad graphics, occasional bugs), but they never felt important enough to mention over the things that Reverse Crawl does well. I have a finite amount of words to cover Reverse Crawl and I would rather spend those words telling you about what the game does well over the small handful of problems I encountered. I think this game is a welcome catalog addition for anyone looking for a good Tactical RPG with enough content to tide them over until the big Tactical RPG releases this summer. Even if you don’t have much experience with the genre, like myself, there’s still a lot of good stuff here.

Already played Reverse Crawl, but want another Tactical RPG? Here are our reviews of Into The Breach and God Wars. Share your thoughts with us by joining our Discord. Nindie Nexus is an ad-free passion project – consider buying us a coffee.