Yodanji

Yōdanji is a turn-based coffee-break roguelike that is probably best described as minimalist. You can play as a handful of yokai (monsters that represent different classes) and your goal is to proceed as far as you can in the dungeon while trapping and unlocking other yokai. The game is “old school” in all the unfun ways, from the basic skill-driven turn-based combat and punishing difficulty to the graphic sameness to the looping, unchanging soundtrack. You start with 3 or so yokai and additional ones can be unlocked by finding scrolls in yokai hunt mode. I picked this up because I was annoyed by the sheer volume of indie-roguelite-just-so-we-can-avoid-actual-level-design games on Switch and wanted a Real Roguelike, warts and all. Well, I guess got what I asked for (?), so there’s that.

I don’t want to completely dump on Yōdanji. It sets out to do a specific thing, and it accomplishes that, but it’s a very narrow, very specific thing. I played a fair bit and made 0 progress on unlocking yokai, and there’s not enough variety of gameplay or visuals to keep the game interesting to me. I think it would benefit greatly from any kind graphic and sound additions, but ultimately that’s just slapping a bit of window-dressing on incredibly simple, RNG-heavy mechanics. A certain subset of players will enjoy this game, but they are a niche within a niche, I think.

If I had this game on my phone I would probably play it while waiting for appointments and whatnot, but since it’s on Switch it has to compete with all the other games in my library. It’s another mobile-to-Switch port that ultimately works better in the mobile ecosystem, where it is competing with other mobile games for your attention.