Vitalis

Waking up in a forest that doesn't want you to leave

Vitalis opens with a familiar roguelike premise filtered through a tabletop-inspired structure: you wake in an occult forest with no clear way out, playing one of several characters each carrying their own reasons for being there and their own story to uncover along the way. Rather than direct movement, a die cast decides where you go, with the tile you land on triggering combat, random events, item discoveries or narrative beats, all building toward a final boss guarding the way out. It's a small, distinctive premise for a solo-developed Early Access release, and its first wave of players is responding specifically to how well that dice-driven structure pairs with the game's grim, tabletop-flavoured presentation.

A hand-drawn, haunted-board-game aesthetic

Both of Vitalis's available reviews single out its look and feel as the game's strongest asset. One reviewer calls it "a beautifully grim, hand-drawn dungeon crawler that feels like a haunted board game found on an old 90s computer," recommending it specifically to anyone who enjoys "a beautifully twisted challenge." The sample's more detailed reviewer independently arrives at the same impression, praising the "absolutely incredible atmosphere and aesthetic" created by the combination of hand-drawn art and old- computer-style presentation, a specific and consistent point of praise given how central mood and atmosphere are to the game's occult-forest premise.

Numbers kept low, and stories that genuinely branch

That same detailed reviewer, who logged over three and a half hours, makes a specific design observation worth flagging: Vitalis deliberately keeps its underlying numbers low, so "each stat boost is noticeable" rather than lost in the kind of exponential number bloat common to many roguelikes. They also highlight real narrative branching as a standout feature, describing "very different story paths for each character" that shift depending not just on dialogue choices but on the player's own stats and luck during a run, a more ambitious structural choice than the reused, character-agnostic narrative shells many roguelikes settle for, and one that carries real replay incentive for a genre where a second attempt with a different starting character can otherwise feel like exactly the same run wearing a different sprite.

Where the difficulty and the dice start to bite

Set against that praise, the same reviewer is specific about where Vitalis currently struggles. They describe "some steep curves with some big enemies," specifically flagging the game's final encounters as requiring a character to be at or near max level to beat consistently, and note a heavy overall reliance on randomness throughout runs. On the technical side, they cite real UI friction, including having to click repeatedly just to advance dialogue text, and describe one specific incident where the game's core dice mechanic reportedly refused to roll at all, forcing them to reload a save to continue, a notable bug for a system this central to how the entire game functions, though they still logged over three and a half hours with the game overall and closed their review with a clear recommendation despite these specific frustrations, framing them as annoyances within an otherwise compelling loop rather than dealbreakers.

An actively developed Early Access entry

Vitalis's own history points to a developer who's been building toward this release deliberately rather than rushing it out. The game appeared at Steam Next Fest in June 2026 under its "Steam Fest" news post, and its Discord community has been running since April 2026, well ahead of the 19 August Early Access launch. That launch wasn't entirely smooth, a tutorial bug required a same-day hotfix, but the swift response and a further minor update the following day both suggest active, responsive post-launch attention exactly where this kind of dice-and-narrative-driven roguelike most needs ongoing balance work.

What the achievement data says about how far players are getting

Global achievement data, though limited to just five tracked milestones, offers a useful early snapshot. Nearly 97% of players have reached the game's basic "Welcome" achievement, but that figure falls sharply from there: just 18.1% have reached one specific normal ending, 12.1% have cleared a harder tutorial variant, and only 6.0% and 3.0% respectively have reached two further tracked milestones. Read alongside the detailed reviewer's account of a steep late-game difficulty spike, that curve is consistent with a game whose opening hours are broadly accessible but whose full range of character-specific endings remains, for now, out of reach for the large majority of its very early audience, a gap worth watching as the Early Access period continues and a wider player base has more time to push past its opening hours.

Final verdict

Vitalis arrives into Early Access with a genuinely distinctive premise, dice-driven TTRPG structure wrapped in a grim, hand-drawn presentation that both of its earliest reviewers describe with real enthusiasm, and narrative branching ambitious enough to give individual characters meaningfully different stories rather than a single reused narrative shell. Its two-review sample and five-achievement dataset are far too thin to call this a settled reception, and the same detailed account that praises the game's atmosphere and story branching also flags a steep late-game difficulty curve, heavy RNG reliance, and rough UI edges typical of a fresh Early Access build. At NZ$8.99, this is a reasonable, cautious recommendation for roguelike and TTRPG fans drawn to its distinctive aesthetic and dice-driven structure, with the understanding that both its balance and its polish are still very much a work in progress.