Bless You Again Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Play
The first boss chopped my head off, the camera watched the head roll across the floor, and I kept talking as the head about how inconvenient this was.
Bless You Again is a 3D action roguelike from Gino Inc. with a cel-shaded anime look. You play a young magician called Lily, descend into a dungeon, die, and come back a bit stronger each time. The first proper boss I met chopped my head off, and the camera watched the head roll across the stone floor while my body stayed on its knees. I kept talking as the head about how inconvenient this was. I picked it up at Steam Next Fest because the trailer caught me, the art caught me, and the die-and-retry idea sounded like my sort of thing.
Play, if you want a 3D action roguelike that leans on build moments and you can sit through a long opening cutscene. What stood out most to me is the two builds I ended up with inside one session: a face-tanking Lily carried by Hope Core, and a Yoru build that one-shot whole floors on a charge attack. I would want more of a thread for why Lily is climbing before I came back for a serious run, and I would want the skill trees on each character to open up more than they do in the demo. Three more characters are still locked behind the demo wall. If the full game widens the roster the way the demo hints at, this is one I would come back to. Anyone after a story-driven or slower paced game can leave it.
Pros
- The build moments pay off hard. Hope Core turned Lily into a tank with lifesteal, and by the midgame Yoru's Arcanist Spin was clearing whole rooms in one attack.
- The animation and the art carry the tone the whole way: a cel-shaded look that holds up in motion, Japanese cutscenes I watched end to end instead of skipping, and enemies drawn well enough that it is clear what each one does before it does it.
- Lily and Yoru play as if they were designed by two different people. Lily is a spell-stacker who wants to stay in motion; Yoru is a charge-and-release bruiser who wants to stand still. Switching between them changed how I read every room.
Why did I pick this one up?
I had watched the trailer and nothing else. I went in knowing roughly that the Roguelike loop was the hook: fight the dungeon, die, come back and go deeper. The intro cutscenes are in Japanese with English subtitles, so I was reading. They also run long before you touch anything, and I remember being impatient to start playing. By the time the first fight arrived I had changed my mind about them. The cutscenes are properly animated and the voice work holds up, and the look carries straight into the dungeon fights that follow.
What do you actually do?
You play Lily, a magician with a staff. Basic attacks on left click generate mana. Spells on Q and E spend it, so the loop is a few swings and then the spells go off. There is a dodge on shift; a perfectly timed one gives mana back, which I never managed because I face-tanked everything from the first room. I liked the Hack and Slash shape of it. This is Action combat — you are always in among the enemies, not peeking from behind cover. On level up you pick a Blessing. Every floor transition offers a Skill choice. The floors themselves have modifiers: double XP, double damage both ways, strong enemies with more chests, a calm rest floor with one. Mid-run I grabbed a Blessing called Hope Core, which gives you plus two damage received but recovers 10 HP for every enemy you defeat. That turned my face-tanking into a working strategy, and from then on I was healing back to full with every room I cleared. The rest of the run was me working out how big a group I could pull before they ran me out of health.
Who else can you play as?
After Lily finishes a run there is a second character to try. Her name is Yoru, she carries a hammer the size of her torso, and she felt weaker at first because her attacks are slow. Her magic is a charge attack called Arcanist Spin and a Blood Slash that costs HP instead of mana. Both lined up with the Hope Core build I had already settled on. By the sixth floor I was standing in the middle of a room, charging the spin, and the whole room was dead by the time I stopped turning. One-hit speedruns of entire floors felt disproportionate in a way I enjoyed.
What is between runs?
Dying bounces you back to Lily's base, which plays as a quiet wander around a small house and a candle-lit shrine. The shrine is where the meta progression lives. It is called the Memoria and it hands out passive abilities based on how many magic stones you have collected. The base also has a photo mode. The first time it opened I was asked to take a picture of a bookshelf, and the game nudges you toward further photo spots as you explore. I did not understand why I was taking the photos, and I am not attached enough to Lily yet for taking her picture to feel like something that would matter to me.
How does the dungeon feel?
The dungeon looks good. Enemy variety carries the floors: small shooting slimes that pepper you from distance, splitter slimes that make three of themselves when you kill one, little creatures I kept calling woodlice because they looked like half goblin half woodlouse, and heavier enemies with slow fields around them that I liked for being interesting and hated for ruining my abilities.
Underneath, there is less going on than the first rooms suggest. Layouts start repeating visibly inside the first hour, and a couple of the floors I rolled were a single room and nothing else, which took the air out of them. The map on offer is a full-screen ghost map laid over the whole scene. I would have preferred a mini-map in the corner, so I turned the map off and spent the rest of the session getting a bit lost.
What will the full game need?
The demo is open about being a slice: a prologue, the first of five dungeons, two of five characters. What it is less open about is what the climb is for. I kept wanting a thread of story behind why Lily is going deeper, and I kept wanting a goal that sat above the per-run modifiers. Three more characters are hidden behind the demo wall, so there is already a sense that the roster will shift how a run plays, and I would like to think the skill trees on each one go a lot deeper in the full game than they do here.
Game Info
- Developer
- Gino Inc.
- Publisher
- Gino Inc.
- Released
- 12 October 2026
- Platform
- PC
- Multiplayer
- No
- Controller
- No
- Playtime
- 1h
View on Steam
Watch the complete live play on YouTube
Tags: Action, Indie, Roguelike, Hack and Slash
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