Flame Keeper from Untold Tales and Kautki Cave is a colorful top-down action roguelite on Nintendo Switch. Learn more in our Flame Keeper review!

 

Flame Keeper from Untold Tales and Kautki Cave is a colorful top-down action roguelike on Nintendo Switch. You’ll be taking on the role of Ignis, a very special charcoal with a fire for justice. Your task will be to defend and protect Vulpis Village and its inhabitants from the forces of darkness. You’ll be going up against a variety of creatures who are up to no good, rushing to attack Ignis as soon as he sets foot in their territory. The good news is that his fiery fists will certainly help him get the job done!

You’ll move your character with the left analog stick using light attacks with the Y button and heavy attacks with the X button. The B button can be used to jump, and you can then press the A button to do a stomp. You can dash with the R button, which is useful for avoiding incoming attacks or destroying some obstacles. Jumping and dashing will consume some of your stamina.

 

The L button can be pressed to zoom out, which will allow you to get a better view of things as you try to find the magical lamps needed to boost the Fire Camp so that you can complete each level or find the enemies that you need to defeat on your journey. You can gain some additional skills during each of your runs by collecting scrolls. These abilities will be mapped to the ZR button. Once you use one, you’ll have to wait until the cooldown period is over before you can use them again.

The ZL button can be used to perform a context-sensitive action, such as eating a bunch of shrooms to boost your armor, attack speed, or energy regeneration, opening a totem with your energy or grabbing a magical lamp. To complete each level, you’ll need to use your energy to power the Camp Fire. To be able to fully energize it, you’ll have to find the magical lamps that need to be returned to the Camp Fire. Some stages will be of the Survival variety. During Survival levels, you must defend the main storage from the horde of enemies trying to destroy it. You can use your energy to activate obstacles that can help you slow them down or aid you in attacking them so that you can use your abilities to defeat them before it’s too late.

 

The resources that you collect can be used to upgrade your skills. You could, for example, improve the power of your light attacks, make it possible for the dash to deal damage to enemies, increase the damage of heavy attacks, increase the range of the damage dealt by your stomp, gain the option of setting enemies ablaze to deal some extra damage, make it possible to restore your stamina when defeating an enemy with a dash, or adding bullets that spawn after a stomp. You can also use resources to boost the different obstacles and defenses you can activate during Survival levels.

Resources can also be used to upgrade the runes building. This will allow you to boost the number of slots in which you can add runes with passive abilities that will help you survive. The runes you can add to slots include Close One, which will regenerate some of your energy after each encounter; Oh no, not again, which lowers how much energy is lost when falling into a bottomless pit; Powerful, which boosts your starting HP; or Magneto, which attracts resources and energy to your character. Do know that you’ll first need to collect all pieces of a rune before you can activate it!

 

Flame Keeper is a colorful and fun top-down action roguelite on Nintendo Switch. That means that even in defeat, you’ll be able to slowly but surely make some progress. As you boost your skills, complete new runes, and add them to your available slots, as well as learn from your mistakes, you’ll be able to keep Vulpis Village and its inhabitants safe. The team plans to continue developing the game as it adds more content and improves and refines the overall experience. That means you can look forward to exploring new biomes, taking on new enemies and bosses, gaining access to new perks, and more. Flame Keeper is out on Nintendo Switch at an $11.99 price.

Disclaimer
This Flame Keeper review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Untold Tales.