Nine Dots Studio, the developer behind cult classics Outward and Outward 2, has announced that its next title, a roguelike called Lost in Prayer, will be released in Steam Early Access in Q1 2025. It’s a brutal game in which every decision carries weight, and where one wrong move could have dire consequences.
The main twist in Lost in Prayer is that every enemy that kills you becomes a playable character you can use in future runs. This is where you can differentiate your play style, because every character has unique abilities that will spice up gameplay and open up new opportunities for victory. I quite like the idea of hitting insurmountable roadblocks, only to use the enemies that hassled me along the way to overcome them.
Lost in Prayer is a love letter to classic roguelikes like Caves of Qud
In its first developer diary video, Nine Dots studio makes it clear this isn’t a game like Hades 2, where death is a mechanic, and the systems are just as intricate. Lost in Prayer is a turn and grid-based roguelike inspired by the classics like Caves of Qud and NetHack: Legacy. Games that allow you to discover new things even after 100 hours of play time.
The developer is trying to balance the depth, variety, and complexity in Lost in Prayer, working to make the game more approachable to newcomers without sacrificing what makes the genre so engrossing. In the game, players are souls stuck in purgatory, attempting to find their way out of heaven or hell. It looks simple enough, but there’s complexity in how each route has an entire bestiary of enemies to die to and gain control of, all of which have their own skill trees to upgrade too.
This is the baseline for Lost in Prayer, the content on offer that you’ll have access to in early 2025. The developer is keen to stay true to the roots of the genre while iterating on it just enough to make something unique that can stand the test of time, just like the games that inspired it.
As is always the case with early access, the initial version of the game will be updated over time to include new features Nine Dots Studio wants to include. However, feedback from the community will also be a critical part of development. It’ll be interesting to see where early access takes the title’s development and what players ask for after sinking their teeth into it for a few dozen hours.
