Despite not being one myself, I do seem to write about furry-adjacent games for this ole webbed site, don’t I? And I’ve got another one for you today! It’s called Break The Night, a hack ‘n’ slash with slick movement, roguelike elements, and magical girls inspired by aesthetics from the late 2000s, and while it’s still quite early days yet, I’ve been quite charmed by it.

Break The Night recently received a demo as part of this year’s SAGExpo, which for those not in the know, is a Sonic the Hedgehog fan game event that obviously doesn’t just feature Sonic fan games anymore. In fact a whole bunch of them aren’t Sonic-focused at all, the rest of which you can check out here, but we’ll focus on Break The Night for this time around. In Break The Night, you play as three roommates that find themselves trapped in a place called the Limit, a space between realities, after getting on a mysterious train (sounds like that’s on them). While attempting to escape it, they come across an evil, corrupting entity, as well as some magical critters that help them transform.

On the story front, that’s kind of it so far, it really is quite early days for the game. There’s a demo you can try out, just not on the game’s Steam page, as it’s more of a combat demo above all else. What is there, I like a lot, even if it’s very basic. You have a simple combo you can pull off with one button, another shoots your enemies up into the air or slams them back down again, and a spin attack to do some wide-ranging damage. This spin attack is presented as a card, which is what I’m assuming will be the roguelike elements, in that you can get different cards with limited uses to rack up cool combos with.

It does admittedly feel a bit limited in expressiveness, the thing that all combo-oriented action games should strive for, but again, I’ll forgive that because the juice on this narrow offering is there, marking some strong foundations to build upon. The character designs are in fact deliciously 2000s as well, and do feel like a nice progression of late 2000s over the Y2K aesthetic that has seen a real resurgence in recent years. Movement feels good too, you have a dash that with a well timed jump lets you shoot off into the distance, akin to the more complicated maneuvers you can find in Celeste.

I’m keen to see where it goes! In the meantime, you can wishlist Break The Night on Steam.