The recently-added Steam listing for Golden Light of Rose makes it out to be an experience very similar to the original; players will delve into a grotesque labyrinth known as The Gut and scavenge for weapons, keys, and friendly familiars while hunting down hoards of horrific meat-based marauders. It’s a surreal endeavor that constantly contorts commonly-held rules of game design and shares something in common with other weird indie games like Inscryption.
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Of course, much like the original, Golden Light of Rose touts a unique co-op mode. While most co-op titles like It Takes Two or Cuphead focus on comradery and friendship, the upcoming Golden Light prequel will probably be more of an examination of a shared penchant for masochism. Splitting scarce resources up among two players and arguing over who will get to eat the map or the empty revolver in order to regain health makes for some particularly gruesome gameplay scenarios.
As outstanding as the original Golden Light was, the announcement of a sequel this early after its release—or of any kind of sequel at all—comes as a bit of a surprise. Mr. Pink is primarily known for non-serialized works of a sort that would fit well into any of the Dread X Collection collaborative efforts—and, indeed, he contributed a game to 2021’s Dread X Collection: The Hunt. However, the avant-garde nature and ambiguous story of Golden Light make it an odd candidate for a sequel. Golden Light of Rose will tell the tale of the titular character who served as an important figure in the first game, but players who managed to suss out all of the narrative’s intricacies and can fully appreciate a new Golden Light story must relatively few.
Still, co-op horror roguelites remain very rare, even in an era totally saturated by procedurally-generated perma-death experiences. Golden Light and its upcoming prequel will share this strange niche with Returnal and its new co-op mode, but, on the whole, this could be an important installment in an up-and-coming gaming subgenre.
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