Ludography
65/100
Critics1 review
68/100
Metacritic10 critic reviews
More scores
Metacritic usersuser score
71/100
GameFAQsJust Right
2/5
Player reviews
68% positive428 reviews
Steam Deck
Playable
Runs on
Windows
Price
US$19.99

Where to get it

MythForce cover

2022 · Beamdog · Action-adventure · Adventure

MythForce

Inspired by beloved 80s cartoons, MythForce unites swords & sorcery with gripping 1st-person combat in a roguelite adventure fit for Saturday mornings. Brave the dungeon alone or join forces with friends to take on an ever-changing Castle of Evil!

Released
20 April 2022
Platforms
Nintendo SwitchPlayStation 4PlayStation 5WindowsXbox OneXbox Series X/S
Genres
Action-adventureAdventureFirst-person shooterRoguelikeRole-playing
Developers
Beamdog
Publishers
Aspyr
Modes
Co-opMultiplayerSingle-player
Perspective
First person
Themes
ActionFantasy
Country
Canada
Age ratings
PEGI 7ESRB TCLASS_IND 10USK 12GRAC 12+ACB PG
Languages
Chinese (Simplified), English, English (UK), French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish (Spain)
Time to beat
5hmain story6hcompletionist

About

Mythforce is a 2023 roguelite video game developed by Beamdog and published by Aspyr. It was released for Windows, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and X/S, and Nintendo Switch.

Players say

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Players control one of four heroes based on Saturday-morning cartoons and enter procedurally generated dungeons. The characters include a melee-oriented knight who can throw her shield, a rogue who can teleport behind enemies and backstab them, a ranger who can shoot fire arrows, and a mage who casts fireballs. Mythforce is played from a first-person perspective and is a dungeon crawl game with cel-shaded art. Like modern roguelite games, players retain some progression after losing the game, and they can use gold found before they died to improve their next character. It has cooperative multiplayer that supports up to four people.

Development

Developer Beamdog is based in Edmonton, Canada. Studio co-founder Trent Oster said he was dubious of the concept when he first heard it, in part because they proposed to use Unreal Engine, which was known for photorealistic graphics. Oster gave the developers three months to prove the concept. When he saw the result, he agreed to make the game.

Beamdog consulted with Mark Cappello, an artist who has worked on both cartoons and video games, to get the aesthetics correct. The cartoon-like graphics require what they said is "a surprisingly large amount" of custom post-processing. Because they were avoiding realistic graphics, many premade tools designed for the Unreal Engine were not usable. , and SilverHawks.

Reception

PC Gamer, who reviewed the game in April 2022, said that the focus on roguelite meta-progression seemed to be at the expense of variety during the current run and causing the combat to be too punitive. Eurogamer reviewed it the same month. Though they praised the art, they found the gameplay "simultaneously overwhelming and glacially paced". They felt the characters were underpowered, which they said was "especially jarring" compared to its cartoon influences, which they felt implied that they would be playing as powerful heroes.

Mythforce received mixed reviews on Metacritic. Rock Paper Shotgun said they were not blown away by Mythforce and were expecting something funnier and more reliant on its cartoon-like aesthetics. Though they said it lacks the variety and staying power of its competitors, they recommended it to fans of cooperative multiplayer games who are looking for mindless fun. Nintendo World Report said they encountered so many software bugs and performance issues on the Switch that it was "playable only by the skin of its teeth". They recommended against playing on Switch until it received a patch, though they said it was, at best, "a fun but uninteresting game".

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
WindowsEarly Access20 April 2022Worldwide · Worldwide 12 September 2023
Xbox Series X/S12 September 2023Worldwide · North America 12 September 2023
PlayStation 412 September 2023Worldwide
PlayStation 512 September 2023Worldwide
Xbox One12 September 2023North America · Worldwide 12 September 2023
Nintendo Switch12 September 2023Worldwide

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Collections1 collection

Years

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.