RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore is a rogue-lite* that would easily have gotten lost in the tide of video game releases this year if it not for the fact it was published by Nicalis and has their stellar reputation to back it up. Developed by South Korean company Pixellore, it has a shiny exterior and is a perfectly pleasant, albeit for the most part undemanding, adventure. You take on the role of Remi, the generally impetuous and indignant lost girl of the game’s title, who is assisted by Lore, a talking magic book who provides your magic attacks.

The plot is pretty thin and is mostly just “defeat enemies so Remi can get home”, but the game has a lot of charm. The graphics are bright and colorful, and everything plays smoothly. Remi has six classes of weapons to choose from (one-handed sword, axe, staff, etc.), and each class has a wide range of quirky skins that provide a lot of the game’s visual variety, such as a broom, various sports items such as a cricket bat, and even a chocolate banana. There’s a good number of spells as well, although I imagine that most people will just find one they like and stick with it (the freeze spell, which stops enemies in their tracks, seems by far the most useful to me).

Combat is a simple affair, with two buttons for attacking and some basic combos. Remi can also perform a dash to get over short gaps or avoid enemies, which is linked to one of three meters. The other two are for health and magic attacks. Health drops aren’t super rare (generally at least one per room), but the other two meters refill gradually over time.

Although the combat isn’t very challenging, it’s definitely not completely mindless. After completing each room you’re given a rank based on time, damage taken and your attack combo, and the total rank per stage determines how many bonus chests you get as well as tying into some of the game’s various achievements. Each stage consists of about ten rooms, and there are three regular stages and one boss stage for each of the game’s four levels/worlds. There are no level-ups, but desserts form the currency that enable you to unlock spells and perks such as increased effectiveness of health drops. If Remi is defeated, she starts back at the beginning of the level and loses some of her currency, but all the spells and perks you’ve bought remain unlocked, which definitely isn’t very harsh of a penalty for a rogue-like – hence why it belongs more in the rogue-lite subgenre.

Each stage takes about 10 to 15 minutes to complete, so a single playthrough would take a few hours at least. There’s a co-op mode and New Game+ modes where you can add challenges to the gameplay (e.g. no health drops), but it’s somewhat annoying that you can’t switch between modes without resetting your progress in one of the other modes. New Game+ also adds a whole new set of dialogue. The game is in Japanese with English titles, and as with a game like Kid Icarus: Uprising, there’s a steady stream of for the most part amusing banter between Remi and Lore. Non-Japanese speakers will likely miss a lot of the battle chatter the first time you encounter it due to it occurring while you’re in the middle of fighting, but the dialogue repeats randomly, so you’ll be able to catch what you missed in a single playthrough.

All in all RemiLore is a perfectly enjoyable game with plenty of personality, and the New Game+ variations should offer a lot of challenge to those masochists who want to take them on. People looking for a really deep and generally challenging experience should probably look elsewhere, but this would be a great pick for anyone looking for a casual but fun Rogue-lite.

*A subgenre of rogue-likes. Rogue-likes tend to feature permadeath and procedurally generated levels, whereas rogue-lites tend to be more forgiving and a bit more fancy in the graphics department.

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RemiLore was developed by Pixellore and is published by Nicalis. It’s available on Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC (through Steam), Mac and Linux. We reviewed the Switch version.

Disclosure statement: review code for RemiLore was provided by Nicalis. A Most Agreeable Pastime operates as an independent site, and all opinions expressed are those of the author.