Rogue Waters is a swashbuckling fantasy that puts the tactics back in sword fighting

8.30.2024
By Francisco Dominguez, Contributor
Despite the name, sword fights are about so much more than the reverberating clangs of clashing blades. When I took a couple of lessons myself, I was surprised to find the tactics go far beyond the stabs, slashes, parries, and ripostes. Much like visual arts, sword fights are really all about space: the gaps you make for yourself to evade your opponent’s blade (or wooden training sword) and the space you deny your opponent to give them no escape from your fatal blow.

It’s clear from my Gamescom hands-off preview that roguelite turn-based swashbuckler Rogue Waters understands this concept better than most. Its piratical skirmishes follow one simple concept: with each attack, the attacker moves forward, and the defender retreats backward. If there’s no space to fall back, defenders take additional damage or risk falling overboard. In the event a defender’s desperate retreat takes them near an enemy, they receive an additional strike.

In this game’s turn-based setup, the player makes their moves all at once with a party of four pirates before their enemy can react. It’s ripe with potential for plotting satisfying ambushes. I’m shown how cunning positioning around a ship mast cuts off enemy pirates’ escape routes, so a single attack sees a hapless victim receive not one but three stabs as they ricochet between units carefully placed within a cutlass’s reach. When it works, it’s like witnessing an expert snooker shot, or the perfectly coordinated strategies games like Into the Breach and Divinity: Original Sin 2 enable so well with their positioning and opportunities for environmental chaos.
Rogue Waters Is A Swashbuckling Fantasy That Puts The Tactics Back In Sword Fighting Combat
It’s a clever system you’ll need to exploit to its limits to get your revenge against the nefarious pirate who betrayed you and your crew. Corrupted by toxins, he becomes more and more monstrous each time you face him, swelling from humanoid proportions into a giant threatening crab over the course of the game.

Przemysław Ślęzak, Creative Director at Hard West 2 developers Ice Code Games, wants players to feel smart in these swashbuckling fantasy battlegrounds as they learn to press the advantage and exploit the numerous interactive obstacles littered across the map.

“Imagine that you are overwhelmed by a number of enemies, and you've got no option to win,” Ślęzak says. “But then you figure out, if I do this and this and this and figure out the proper sequence of action, then you suddenly get an advantage. Thanks to that fencing mechanic, it's possible to have multiple options like this that can’t be seen from the beginning. This is really exciting to playtest. You can just interact with this super interactive scene figuring out how I can use this map and these obstacles.”

Not every fight is winnable. Sometimes, pressed against the might of the merchant navy, you just have to get away. In these scenarios, extraction missions pose a different test: simply escaping so you can survive to plunder another day.

The “rogue” in Rogue Waters doesn’t just refer to its cast of swarthy pirates—a classic "roguelite" structure takes players from battle to battle as they chart a path across the seas. You’ll manage your crew, upgrade your ship, and decide between keeping your crew afloat with conservative moves or risking it all for greater riches and rewards.
Rogue Waters Is A Swashbuckling Fantasy That Puts The Tactics Back In Sword Fighting Dialogue
Ślęzak understands that a roguelite’s random encounters and unpredictable battle generation can lead to frustrating (or even impossible) challenges. Pre-battle naval fights can even the odds, letting players weaken opponents or take out their cannons. And of course, it helps that the crew is immortal—there's no perma-death here—but some players might need a bit more help. In that case, you can release the Kraken and the worst supernatural monstrosities hidden in Davy Jones’ locker.

“I was always fascinated by sea monsters when it comes to pirates," Ślęzak says. "But we thought, ‘Well, it's too bad you always fight against them.’ But what if you could use the Kraken or maybe the Sarmatian Sea Snail [a cryptid giant snail with paws and antlers], a super exotic sea monster, but for your advantage? Let's do it. Let's combine your powers with the sea monsters. It’s already anarchy with the pirates against the hierarchy of the military, the merchants, etc. This fits!”

I saw the Kraken’s area-of-effect attack in action, and it definitely promises a chance to get out of some of the unfavorable scrapes that RNG can so easily land you in. I like to think my strategic smarts will see me through when I get to try the game myself, but I won’t say no to a deep-sea nuclear option when the situation calls for such drastic measures to keep me from walking the plank.

Rogue Waters comes out on September 30 on the Epic Games Store.