You are Blank. No, you’re not a character you can rename. You are an Angel that lost his sense of self, including his own name. Somebody attempted to kill Blank, and while he seems to be blessed with the power to never truly die, his brain is gone. And so, he leaves his house on a quest to reclaim what was lost.

Blanksword is a roguelike RPG that’s currently up on Kickstarter, and I had early access to its demo which is now available to everyone. The game’s development is led by Quinn K., and I suppose covering this is a bit of an apology to her for me rolling There Swings a Skull but not playing it because its topics bummed me out too much.

Blanksword is a surreal mix of comedy and horror. Immediately after getting murdered by a mysterious being only viewed as a looming eye, Blank has to beat up his door to leave his house. The only witness to this nonsense is also a guy dubbed the Angel of Ties – whose tie is draped over his nametag – and he absolutely has something to do with the murder. Traveling around the floating lands of Blanksword’s realm on Buglic Transport, Blank will bear witness to further silliness and bleakness in a search for self-understanding and knowledge of the world.

Normally I’d ramble more, but well, tis a demo and I gotta let the demo tell its own story. Overall though, I’ll say that the writing is fun, and do you like the grand RPG tradition of hating gods? Blanksword’s got you covered.

So instead, let’s get into action. When the game starts in earnest, Blank gets three choices of two moves to start with. Going on, you’ll find move scrolls that gives new moves and passives, and in true roguelike fashion, you should ideally work toward something that gels everything together.

There’s an absurd amount of status ailments and conditions to keep track of in fights. Bleed is a handy DOT effect, but someone will only suffer bleed if they have wounds and if they’re attacking. Shell also deals passive damage, and you usually shell up with moves that give temporary shields. Someone can fall into existential despair, but their emotional pain needs to be built up for that. Thankfully, Blanksword actually explains mechanics away when you mouse over text and symbols, so it’s easy to figure out what’s going on.

Fights are easy to grasp onto. Blank can usually perform two actions a turn, and you’ll definitely acquire a lot of stuff to play around with. Enemies project what their next move is, so you can easily plan around what they’re going to do. The most challenging fights that Blanksword has to offer is when there’s multiple enemies, because after all, Blank is just one man. I see Blanksword going in the same direction as A Ghostly Rose, which was another one-character RPG that balanced out growing game difficulty by giving its main character more actions per turn. Blank will really need more turns if the final game will end up throwing multiple enemies at him regularly.

Personally? I was all for building toward stuff that focused on wingrot. Call me the Angel of DOT, because there’s nothing more beautiful than slowly tearing something apart. Sure, big hits are cathartic, but seeing something slowly inch toward death, when the shields they put up can’t protect them? That’s cinema to me. Of course, some enemies can do that back, but that’s just the price to pay for my heaven.

You might get bad rolls and not luck into a good build. You might not get access to healing items or moves. And well, that’s just the price of playing a roguelike. I personally consider it a non-issue because after playing through bits of story, Blanksword’s runs are actually kinda fast. Besides, I generally found most of the stuff I ran into useful even if I don’t have a build taking full advantage of them.

While Blank can level up, those levels become moot upon death. Of course, it’s not a modern roguelike without incremental growth, as you can invest the essences that Blank acquires for little things like improved starting stats and increased inventory space. And speaking of leveling up, Blank starts the game unable to get experience points. It’s only when he acquires a little something for his head that he’s capable of retaining information like experience points… among other things. The description teases that Blank will be finding more parts for his brain in the final game. Hopefully, nothing goes wrong for him.

Blanksword has pretty good pixel art, but I gotta give it up for the music. Areas have pretty fitting music, from chill relaxing music for the few definitive safe places to some more ominous beats. The battle themes are my favorite bits of the soundtrack, though. They’re good energetic bops, and the worlds offer different tracks to fit their vibes and to provide variety. Always gotta appreciate RPGs that offer multiple battle themes.

Overall, I really liked my taste of Blanksword. The gameplay’s satisfying when it’s firing on all cylinders, the writing is fun and interesting, and the visuals and music is pretty good. If you like weird RPGs like OFF, this is definitely something for you – and hell, Quinn K was actually the original main translator for OFF, the DNA’s there. I definitely think this will grow into something promising.