Developed by Brighton-based studio ITEM42, PERISH brings together a unique mix of ancient Greek mythology and tense co-op shooting into a rewarding roguelike. Doomed to wander the black sands of Purgatory, you are an amyetri: a corporeal spirit looking to bargain your way into Elysium.
You start with nothing but a broken sword, hacking away at hordes of revenants that ceaselessly spawn into each stage. Keeping on brand with the ancient Greek theme, the journey ahead seems like a Sisyphean challenge. However, it isn’t long before you start to earn yourself a small cache of Danake, exchanging this blood-stained currency of the underworld for a growing array of permanent upgrades.
With a decent number of equipment slots available, PERISH offers a satisfying amount of flexibility when it comes to building character loadouts. There are more than 10 weapons to master, from handaxe to hunting rifle, javelins, and bladed gauntlets, each with their own upgrades to unlock. Combining these with your Crown and up to six Rings will confer a variety of gameplay bonuses, such as dealing poison damage to nearby enemies or increasing the power and capacity of your throwing daggers.
Combat has a satisfying heft, regardless of weapon choice. Enemies will stagger and crumble under punishing melee strikes or a well-placed ranged attack, with players able to block, dash, and unleash a Spartan-like kick that pairs perfectly with the game’s many environmental hazards.
Those first several runs will have you playing the same series of stages, albeit with randomly cycling objectives. Defeating bosses and hitting certain progress milestones will allow you to take different paths without needing to start each run completely from scratch. The further you get in PERISH, the more weapons and equipment you will discover, though they come with a cost. Danake flows with every kill and completed objective but if you die mid-stage without extracting, you’ll lose the lion’s share. Escaping the revenant hordes with a full purse and a slither of health feels immensely rewarding.
Each time you complete an objective, you’ll also get to choose 1 of at least 3 power-ups that will reset when you either extract or die. Some of these gameplay modifiers are more subtle than others – frying enemies with thunderbolts on a successful block, or leaving a trail of toxic puddles in your wake, as two examples. Combining these with your carefully curated character loadouts can lead to all sorts of fun possibilities though your biggest advantage is PERISH come from playing in an online squad. While the game does allow for solo play, it’s clearly meant for teams of four in co-op, working together to fend off enemy waves, complete objectives, and take down powerful bosses.
PERISH is an intriguing chimaera of game design choices and thematic influences. Wanting to learn more, we talked to Bret Ware, ITEM42 tech artist, sculptor, and game designer:
TSA: Was it always your plan to use Greek mythology as a setting/inspiration for PERISH?
Bret Ware: Early on, while the programmer and I were experimenting, PERISH initially had more of an occult vibe, essentially a mix of sci-fi elements and biblical elements, but then I found the fantastical Greek- and Roman-inspired ruins of Charles-Louis Clerisseau’s watercolours and decided to take it in that direction. I thought that his drawings and paintings were a great inspiration for some neat environment tile sets.
TSA: How does Greek mythology lend itself to the looping nature of a roguelike?
Bret: I studied Plato’s Republic amongst other classical texts at university, and one of the stories within the collection is the ‘Myth of Er’. It reads as a sort of precursor to the concept of heaven and hell, and that one’s actions in life determine where one goes after death. So we took that initial account of the Myth of Er and “gamified” it, so that the actions of players on the journey through the campaign determine whether they get the bad ending and end up in Tartaros, or the good ending and end up in Elysium.
TSA: How did you overcome the challenge of adapting Greek myths and monsters for a first person shooter? Was it a struggle to remain authentic?
Bret: The experience of adapting mythology for a shooter had some advantages and disadvantages. There is such a wealth of rich lore in classical texts already, and I wanted to explore some of the lesser-known elements of classical mythology. Including this research in the game gets the right kind of people very excited when they learn how to achieve the “good ending” of the game by reading the codex and the lore entries. The disadvantage is that it takes time to get things right, and you need to work to find the balance between twisting existing stories to fit the game (which I did a lot) and inauthentically breaking the rules by getting basic facts wrong (which I did sometimes).
TSA: What is the team’s favourite myth or monster that appears in PERISH?
Bret: My favourite myth in PERISH is Talos, the bronze automaton. It’s an obvious story, but I think we did him right in a cool mid-campaign mission: instead of the obvious possibility of battling him in a boss fight, you must reassemble him in an enormous Hephaestian foundry by pulling switches and levers and filling his body with ichor through his neck. I came up with this mission after reading Adrienne Mayor’s informative and accessible book, “Gods and Robots”. My favourite character involves Hipparchia of Maroneia, where I recast her (originally a Cynical philosopher) as a fallen oracle who knows the true path to Elysium against the corrupt inversion of Pythia, the original oracle, who acts as narrator and deceiver through the campaign to the player.
TSA: What was the most surprising fact about Greek mythology you discovered during your research?
Bret: I learned many surprising and hilarious things while researching PERISH. Classical mythology is so rich and vibrant that, when you read about it, it seems to come alive for a brief moment. I will mention two things that made me laugh: firstly, I stumbled across a comical epic called “Batrachomyomachia”, or the war of frogs against mice. Some of the depictions of frog-on-mice violence are actually rather disturbing. I was completely unaware of this before researching PERISH and found it utterly hilarious. The second is that, while researching the “mystery religion” (for lack of a better phrase) of Orphism for the main story, I learned that it was forbidden for its practitioners to consume beans. Yes, broad beans, of all things…
PERISH is now available on PC, via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG.
