Video Game / Rotwood

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Rotwood is a 2D side-scrolling Beat 'em Up rogue-lite, developed and published by Klei Entertainment released on Steam in Early Access on April 24th, 2024. An update on January 3rd, 2025 came out along with a price increase. The game was later released in full for Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch 2 on March 3, 2026.

A mysterious corruption is infecting the woods, causing the local wildlife and even once inanimate vegetables to grow big and turn aggressive. Play as a Funny Animal, Fish People, or an imp, utilize 5 unique weapon types with a myriad of combos and moves, and bring the fight to the monsters.

Join up with 3 other players locally, online, or even a mixture of both, prepare at Flitt's camp, and take back the Rotwood together!

Previews: Announcement Trailer👁 Image
, Steam Next Fest 2024 Trailer👁 Image
, Early Access Trailer👁 Image
, Cinematic Trailer👁 Image
, Cinematic Gameplay Trailer👁 Image
, Launch Trailer👁 Image

Rotwood provides examples of:

• Action Bomb: Scramblers are eggs that run at and dive towards players, detonating on impact with the ground.
• And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating: Completing Toot's combat challenges awards various cosmetics and furniture blueprints.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: The Bulbug Eyes headgear allows the wearer to deal damage through enemy shields, and even generate their own shields if wearing the Exoskeleton part of the armor set.
• Bottomless Magazines: Of a sort. Cannons and bows never run out their reserve ammo, with cannons only needing to be reloaded after 6-10 shots.
• Breath Weapon: Arboreels in the Ruined Capital try and take players by surprise by dropping from the sky and breathing fire in a line.
• Bubble Gloop Swamp: The Molded Grave map is covered with acid traps and enemies that attack with acid.
• Cast from Money: The Ribbat Surcoat removes some Teffra after being hit to heal back some of the damage taken.
• Chain Lethality Enabler: Many powers grant bonus effects on hit or based on a player's hit streak, or even critical hit frequency such as with Feedback Loop (increases percentage critical chance each time a critical is struck).
• Chain Lightning: The Static set of powers either apply static in a spot or onto an enemy. When the charge is strong enough, it unleashes across multiple enemies nearby.
• Charged Attack:
  • Many hammer combo chains involve timing when to hold heavy attack for a charged strike.
  • The bow weapon line is all about properly timing the release of the attack button for a stronger Focus Attack.
  • The Bugbuster hammer makes light attacks chargeable for extra damage, and the Shellshot Blunderbuss's weapon skill can be held for a strong attack.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Different colors indicate the type of damage dealt: Dull red for normal hits, light blue for focus hits, purple for critical hits, and green for the target healing instead.
• Combat Resuscitation: In multiplayer runs, incapacitated heroes can be revived by those still standing by being interacted with for a few seconds. On lower difficulties, there is no cost, whereas on higher difficulties it will transfer some of their health to the downed ally. As a form of Controllable Helplessness, players can press either attack button to try and wave their comrades over. In a more useful move, they can press the dodge button to rapidly flop to a more advantageous position to be rescued.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: While bosses are affected by cold attacks, they can no longer be frozen.
• Cosmetic Award: Emotes can be earned by completing Nimble the Crow's challenges, which can range from avoiding environmental hazards, to taking no damage or drinking your potion until reaching the boss.
• Critical Hit: Appearing as large purple numbers when dealt to an enemy.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The dodge input is shared for all weapons, except for when using a cannon. For those, dodge occurs at the same time as a heavy attack (due to the recoil), sharing its input button, whereas the old dodge input now reloads. It's not unlikely to take a few hours to adjust when learning this weapon type.
• Dash Attack: All spears can do this by dodging in a direction, then pressing light attack during the dodge. Bullrog's Turn Around Punch weapon skill lets the player unleash a haymaker in a direction.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Failing a run to a Nightmare-imbued boss rot will have Flitt comment on its demonic appearance and how much of a tougher foe it turned out to be.
  • Players who fully unequip all their armor will find the camp's NPC's have some thoughts on the chosen lack of attire.
• Doppelgänger Attack: A move used by the Enigmox boss, summoning 2-3 clones with weak HP but capable of dealing full damage. Fitting for a trickster boss known as The Illusory Vixen.
• Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer: Any player joining will drop into the current room in-progress. The only downside is lacking power upgrades found up to that point, even not being given a freebie choice originally presented to all players at the start of a run.
• Elite Mook: Halfway through each run is a miniboss room. Higher Frenzy levels will have minibosses spawn in regular combat rooms, though with reduced HP.
• Equipment Upgrade: Armor and weapons are improved through collecting and spending materials and resources on them.
• Essence Drop: Enemies drop minor amounts of Teffra, which appears to be corrupted essence and can be used to upgrade powers, or purchase new ones during a run.
• Glass Cannon:
  • Zigzagged as generally heavier armor offers better defense at the cost of movement, but mostly it's the powers and weapon of choice that determines a player's damage potential.
  • Taken to the extreme with the Body of Light power, reducing the player's health to a maximum of one but granting 300% damage. It is removed if they die and are revived by a teammate after.
• Ground Punch: The Bullrog and Groak minibosses can do this as an attack.
• Hard Mode Perks: Replaying completed stages on Frenzy difficulty unlocks additional armor and weapons for purchase upon reaching the shop. Higher Frenzies also increase the amount of Core Stones dropped by the end boss.
• Harmless Freezing: Averted. Bonechill Quarry has cold snaps blowing through on occasion. If players don't stay warm during these periods, they will freeze solid for a few seconds and take a moderate chunk of damage. Certain enemies in this section have moves that inflict freeze as well.
• Healing Potion: Every player begins their run with one, which will restore 500 health to the drinker and 200 to any other player near them. More can be found in a couple shop types for a small fee.
• Helpful Mook: Torchflies provide a source of warmth for adventurers exploring the Bonechill Quarry and so are generally better defeated last. Towards the end of the Quarry, a room shows up where there are no torches and only Torchfly enemies providing warmth.
• Invincible Minor Minion: A potential Teffra mutation can summon a couple ethereal ghost enemies that can only be avoided, and will disappear after the room's completion. Unlucky adventurers can find this appearing during the final boss room.
• Limited Loadout: Players can choose from 5 weapon types (after unlocking the base variant of each), but can only take one into a run. The idea is to tailor an effective build using the random passive powers found during a run, using their chosen armor for the run, while understanding the specific moves and playstyle enabled by their weapon of choice.
• Macro Game: Players slowly unlock more areas, with weapon and armor types contained within area shops. Defeating bosses grant Heartstones which give a selection of passive bonuses for that player.
• Mask of Power: The Bulbug Eyes headgear.
• Metal Slime: A rare combat room can appear, spawning many golden Zucco enemies while jaunty music plays. Players need to kill as many as they can before the enemies dive underground and disappear.
• Monster Adventurers: Of a sort. Parties can consist of imps, fish people, and beastmen all fighting against the infecting Rot.
• Mook Maker: Mothball and Scrambler Nests spawn endless versions of their respective enemies until destroyed.
• No Body Left Behind: Any enemy other than bosses end up disappearing upon defeat.
• Perfect Reload Command: To reload cannons, the player needs to double-tap the reload button; the first begins the process and the second is where the timing lies. There are 3 separate reload speeds: Pressing reload as the cannon touches the ground is the quickest and will have all the cannonballs scooped inside in a single motion, before immediately raising the cannon back to a firing pose. Pressing it too fast will have the cannon slip backwards out of their hands, but the cannonballs will still be pushed in all at once. Pressing it too slowly has them lay the weapon on the ground instead, before scooping the first half in, then the second half.
• Pinball Projectile: The Striker series of weapons are all about bouncing between targets and being knocked around by enemy and ally player attacks alike.
• Plant Mooks: Peashooters and Treeks.
• Power at a Price: The Quetzi Waist Guard deals damage to the player whenever they pick up a power, but upgrades it once immediately. Generally the strength of consistently upgrading many powers without requiring Teffra will quickly offset the health lost.
• Purple Is Impure: The general corruption and corrupted objects are all a deep purple, including Teffra and Heartstones. Heavily Rot-imbued enemies are given a purple-tinted appearance.
• Recoiled Across the Room: Cannon heavy attacks count as an invulnerable dodge, and knock the user back based upon their amount of movement speed and inversely to their weight. This can mean heavy armor users with no movement bonuses will barely move and simply stand their ground. While players who are lightweight and quick (or even shrunk, which both increases movement speed further and reduces their weight) will be knocked far to the other side of the screen, if not the entire opposite end of the room.
• Rewarding Vandalism: Environmental objects scattered about are often useful to strike and keep your combo counter active, but wearing certain armors offer additional effects.
  • The Antleer armor set grants bonus damage, defense, and movement speed based upon how many objects you have personally destroyed during the run, depending on which armor piece(s) are equipped.
  • The Ribbat Legs cause each object to drop some Teffra upon its destruction.
• Shout-Out: The Bullrog enemy is a bull boxer, referencing Balrog.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Bonechill Quarry and Splintershard Cavern.
• Snake Oil Salesman: Doc Hoggins shows up as the game's potion salesman (as an actual snakeman) complete with this aesthetic in his speech and shop decor. Unlike most examples, these potions very much work as advertised; even if he is quite enthusiastic in encouraging the player to dump out any potion they may already have just to make room to purchase his instead.
• Spin Attack: Utilized by some enemies such as buffed Zuccos, Floracrane, and the Swarm boss, to name a few. The player also does this in a hammer combo string by dodging in a direction, pressing light attack in the opposing direction once, then holding heavy attack through the rest of the spin.
• Stationary Boss: Mother Treek is currently the only boss who doesn't move from her spot. Doesn't stop players from 👁 This example contains a YMMV entry. It should be moved to the YMMV tab.
  using portal powers on her however.
• Stat Sticks: Some builds, such as the Gnarlic Headstalk build, involve holding a strong yet lightweight weapon in order to run as fast as possible repeatedly into enemies, while never pressing the attack button. A Striker is often chosen due to many of them being lightweight while having similar damage to other classes. A proto-weapon variant is then chosen due to it having omni-slots, thus fully compatible with any gem type. Then continually stack movement speed gems and powers.
• Summon to Hand: Strikers can be recalled by the player who threw them by pressing the attack button while empty-handed. The returning balls can strike enemies on their way back.
• Suicide Attack: Non-elite Gooseberry enemies do this after their health is depleted, even if overkill damage was done.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: Boss variants of each weapon type can be crafted by defeating Super Frenzy boss versions, incorporating some of their visual design and one of their powers into it. Players must first craft a proto-weapon as a blank canvas, then kill the boss with it, imbuing it with power. Then bring both the charged weapon and the super heartstone they just got (or a different boss stone, for that power instead) to Hamish the Blacksmith, where he will fuse them into the final weapon.