Flick Shot Rogues is the newest entry into the “cause physics to happen by throwing stuff around” side-genre that is so addicting for people like me who like to combo off chains of explosions.
This time around you’re chucking pirate-themed discs at crabs, monkeys, and tentacled-monsters, and in doing so you can reap the rewards that come with exploded hockey pucks.
It’s all in the flick of a wrist
Your goal in Flick Shot Rogues is to get the riches at the top of an island littered with baddies, all of whom attack you on sight. Barrel launching squids, sword-wielding monkeys, and turret throwing pirates are all between you and unlimited money.
Areas are traversed through a Slay the Spire-style map with the usual node choices. These consist of battles, upgrade anvils, shops, and various NPCs to meet.
Your puck is aimed and flicked by simply dragging the mouse in the opposing direction of where you want to aim. In fact, the whole game can be played with nothing but a mouse. It’s really intuitive, with outlines marking where your shots will end up and clear indications of where your attacks will land.
Enemies clearly indicate their attack patterns as well with exclamation marks and red circles. While I wish the map would cross out where you’ve already been, the rest of the presentation is very well done.
Shot variety
Flick Shot Rogues has a variety of ways to set-up your run, with a bunch of combinations between characters and passive trinkets to attach to them. You can only bring two characters for each run with one trinket a piece.
I personally really like taking the fire damage trinket with the girl who launches frogs, and then dealing out lightning damage with the swordswoman. Most of the difference between runs has been choosing what characters and trinkets to start with. There is also tons of passive upgrades to be found in the runs that act as tech trees for your trinkets/characters.
I really like the build-crafting aspect in Flick Shot. You can create some really zany stuff, such as bombs going off and multi-hit combos with barbed wire, all while being pulled together with electricity.
There are flaming fire totems that you can upgrade to hurt enemies passively. I love abusing the knock back of the frogs to push enemies into clumps for a big explosion. While it is a bit limited since you can only take two trinkets on a run, there’s just enough variation in terms of how each one can work together to make some really silly stuff.
One of the coolest mechanics is the champion system. Each map will have higher powered enemies that stand on gold discs. If you take out all of the gold discs, everything else on screen will also die. It rewards accurate shooting and interesting enemy prioritisation over simply smashing into things at random; it adds a strategic element that makes encounters a lot more fun.
Flick Shot Rogues is a blast to play. There’s nothing better than shooting tactile objects around and watching glorious explosions go off while the screen shakes and gold flies everywhere. The run variety is high enough to bring you back to try different setups if the fun pirate soundtrack doesn’t keep you around on its own. If you like the growing list of physics-based rogues, give this one a (flick)shot!
