Blighted Hands-On Preview: Drinkbox’s Psychedelic Action RPG

Blighted channels Severed’s distinctive visual identity

Drinkbox Studios may be best recognised for the Guacamelee games and Nobody Saves the World, yet my personal favourite from its catalogue is Severed, first released for PS Vita in 2016. Its touchscreen-led combat was enjoyable and its minimalist narrative compelling, but its exceptional visual style left the strongest impression on me. When I approached the station for my 20-minute session with Drinkbox’s newest game, Blighted, I immediately spotted traces of Severed’s beautiful artistic approach, despite the very different gameplay.

Bold, contrasting colours and a psychedelic atmosphere define every part of this isometric action RPG. The idea of a world tainted by corruption, fundamental to Severed, also resonates throughout Blighted. The hero belongs to a culture with an unusual and compelling custom for the dead: after a person dies, a tree seed is planted in their brain before they are buried. Once the tree grows and produces fruit, people eat that fruit to relive their ancestors’ memories.

Blighted’s corrupted world and combat

It is a captivating set-up and a beautiful, if admittedly peculiar, ritual. But when Sorcisto, the game’s villainous antagonist, discovers that consuming your people’s brains grants him their memories and mystical abilities, he devours the whole village. Regrettably for Sorcisto, the act causes Blight to consume him, turning him into a grotesque creature. As your village’s only survivor, you must venture through the perilous lands nearby, reclaim your people’s memories and overcome Sorcisto.

Although it is an isometric RPG, Blighted draws considerable inspiration from Metroidvanias and Soulslike games. While journeying through the world, the hero faces numerous hideous creatures, each with its own abilities. With stamina to manage, you can strike, dodge and parry opponents, or use a gun for ranged blasts that works on a cooldown. The stronger your performance, the tougher the game gets: during my session with the developers, they raised the Blight level through a debug menu that will not appear in the finished game, showing how much more forceful and aggressive enemies become when you are on a hot streak. The trade-off is that the rewards are better during these periods.

While battling and investigating the different biomes, you will tackle environmental puzzles, open up shortcuts and uncover details about the corruption infecting this beautiful world. You will also confront enormous bosses equipped with their own range of abilities. These towering, unholy beings unleash devastating moves, with colours signalling which attacks can be parried and which need to be dodged.

After I beat the two bosses I encountered, I gained their powers. There is a catch, though: your character has to eat their brains to obtain them. It creates an engaging narrative thread about how an unrelenting drive to reach our aims can sometimes turn us into the monsters we despise. I am eager to see how Drinkbox develops these ideas further through the story.

Boss abilities, exploration and co-op

Defeating one monstrous boss gave my character a stomp ability. It serves as an area-of-effect attack, but it can also destroy particular barriers. Having played plenty of Metroidvanias, that immediately appealed to the relevant part of my brain: returning to an area I had explored before the boss fight suddenly revealed fresh routes to investigate.

I spent the entire demo in two-player co-op. The full game will support this both locally and online, although it has been designed completely with solo players in mind. As in Soulslike games, it can simply be helpful to have another person draw a boss’s aggro for a while.

Blighted had my attention from the first time I saw it towards the end of 2025. Paired with the studio’s excellent track record and this immensely enjoyable demo, it is absolutely a game I will be watching for when it launches on Switch 2 and PC this autumn.