Have you heard of this game where you play as a blue dude shooting things out of your arm, choosing the stages while you platform your way through stages and attempting to defeat the boss at the end?
Gurei, a game by a two-person Brazilian developer team, Lobo Sagaz Studio, and published by Astrolabe Games, is a game just like that, minus all the crazy platforming, and instead of blue, everything is gray. That’s my overly convoluted way of saying that Gurei is a boss-rush game. One that lets you choose the order in which you tackle the 10 bosses, and choosing the order determines how much power the bosses have. The later you choose to attempt a boss, the more of their power is available to them. This means strategizing the order in which you tackle them! How fun!
The Kami you know is better than the Kami you don’t
Gurei’s gameplay is simple: You play as Rei while you pick bosses, called Kami, to kill. Upon doing so, you gain the Kami’s main ability. You carry over that newfound ability onto the next Kami you attempt, as well as an extra “life” in case you fail. However, each Kami you defeat, the ones remaining steadily get stronger, with the last one you choose to kill becoming the “final boss”, complete with all its abilities. And when you’ve run out of “lives”, you’ll need to start all over again, to the very first Kami. Therefore, the strategy with Gurei is balancing between your survival and tackling Kamis with familiar, predictable, or manageable difficulty, versus risking an unpredictable change or a Kami that grows into a boss with movesets you can’t handle.
Luckily, the gameplay loop in Gurei feels so quick that it doesn’t hurt to experiment; you won’t know what you can handle unless you try! The game has ten bosses throughout the small castle grounds. Each one has a unique mechanic, move set, and ways to defeat them. Having certain abilities will also help in defeating them in later stages.
Each time you defeat one, the remaining Kamis regain some of their abilities. For example, the Cat Kami, who has a limited-time, second-life type of special ability, will bombard you with more projectiles in an attempt to kill you before her time runs out, the later in the run you choose to tackle her. She gets extremely overwhelming (especially for me, who sucks at dealing with projectiles) even as the 4th boss. Also, her special ability is extremely useful for the longevity of my run, so I often chose to attempt her as the 1st or 2nd boss.
As a boss-rush game, Rei needs to control well. Unfortunately, the options in Gurei are quite barebones, and there isn’t a way to change the keybindings. Thankfully, the number of buttons you’ll need to remember is minimal, especially because the abilities you’ll gain from the Kami are an extension of your existing move set. This allows you to control Rei well through muscle memory and to use directional buttons to move Rei, if you so desire. So even though it felt weird at first to use R2 (on PS5’s Dualsense) to dodge, overall, Rei felt great to control.
Since Gurei has roguelite qualities, once you’ve failed too many times and you can no longer be brought back, you’ll need to start all over again. The game keeps track of your previous attempts in the main menu so that you can make changes in your strategy for your next attempt. However, only the bosses restart; the rest of the world stays the same and remembers everything else you’ve done. This is fantastic when it comes to the NPCs you’ve met along the way!
Did you think I wouldn’t notice that the title is Japanese for Gray!
Gurei (get it? Get it? Grey! Hahahaha, ok, I’m done) is set in a fantastic, hand-drawn, monochromatic world. A worn-down, Japanese-infused castle set in gray, both metaphorically and literally. Rei, the main character, is a human spirit bound by the duty to defeat mystical entities called the Kami and obtain their power. The overall story and Japanese lore are sprinkled throughout the many NPCs hidden within the castle grounds, as well as the Kami themselves. It’s a game that prioritizes gameplay over narrative, with the narrative seen as optional. However, talking to all the NPCs was part of what made me really enjoy Gurei.
Every three bosses you kill, a new NPC will pop up somewhere in the castle, and they all want something from you. The fun part is figuring out how to give them what they want. When you defeat a Kami, a part of them stays with you, allowing them to drop comments about other Kamis or NPCs you encounter. This gives Rei’s solitary endeavour a bit more life, especially when your progress with them carries over even after you’ve respawned. They become important tenants, and the castle is your home.
You’ll know this castle like the back of your hand. Which is important because strategizing the order in which you defeat the Kami is important, as well as helping the NPCs, which is fun; this gives Gurei a good amount of replay value. Even after you’ve attained an ending (there’s also a hidden True Ending), you’ll want to, as I have, start over again to challenge other Kamis in their full power. It’s great for a quick gaming session (you can complete a successful run in under 40 minutes), or longer ones when you’ve figured out a winning strategy and are finally locked in on a Kami after failing several times!
The world is concise, well-designed, and purposeful. It’s simple, hand-drawn aesthetics suit the game well. Most of the game’s background sound is also subdued, unless you’re in the middle of a heated Kami battle. During those times, you’ll be treated to crisp-sounding sword slashes and well-placed sound cues warning you of incoming boss attacks.
Gurei is Gurrreat!
Lobo Sagaz Studios made a game that knows exactly what it wants to be: a boss-rush game with immense replay value, featuring a dynamic difficulty system where your decisions determine how strong the bosses are. A game that feels good to control, a concise world that’s fun to explore and NPCs with lore waiting for you to discover. I often dislike boss-rush games, I’m not going to lie; however, Gurei gave me a satisfying challenge that I was dying to overcome.
Gurei was reviewed on PlayStation 5. We’d like to thank publisher Astrolabe for providing us with a review code for purpose of this review.
