The Lonesome Guild is a Stylish Storybook Fantasy With Depth

The Lonesome Guild Preview
Despite its rather dour-sounding title, The Lonesome Guild is a celebration of cooperation and friendship. Each of the characters might carry a bit of pain or face a challenge, but that’s what the group is for. Being stronger together.

This tells you nothing about the actual game, though. The Lonesome Guild is an action-adventure RPG and puzzle game coming soon, with a demo now available on Steam. I had the chance to play the preview a little early and see what The Lonesome Guild has in store.

I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost
You start off by playing as Ghost, an adorable but melancholic little spirit character whose task is to reclaim his forgotten identities and memories. Without a corporeal body, Ghost can’t do much. But he can merge with living characters and doing so grants them special abilities or attacks, like massive hammers or ghostly arrows.

The Lonesome Guild has a recognizable action-adventure loop. Characters explore, fight monsters, collect loot, solve puzzles, and move on. What sets The Lonesome Guild apart is that all those familiar mechanics have an extra wrinkle: they only happen with the group working together.

Although it’s a single-player game, The Lonesome Guild could be called It Takes Six. Almost everything in the game — combat, puzzle solving, even leveling up — is a group effort. For example, getting to a treasure chest might mean opening three gates. This requires splitting up the group and controlling them separately so one character can move forward while another can pull a switch. Ghost gets into the mix, too, because while he can’t physically control an object, he can pass through walls and explore. The puzzles grow in complexity as the party continues to add new members.

Story Mode
Just like in a Souslike, the party in The Lonesome Guild heals at bonfires. But a big component of those short rest periods is the chance for party members to talk and tell their stories. In fact, it’s one of the ways that characters level up certain abilities. It’s a great way to make sure players pay attention to the story, and it makes sense in the context of the game. Unfortunately, some of the dialogue sections aren’t skippable, which is annoying during repeated boss battles.

Given that the player controls a group of characters, you might assume that combat is turn-based. In fact, it’s in real time, and it gets pretty frenetic and complex. Each character has a main weapon type and a special ability on cool-down. Ghost has a slowly building ability to create a once-per-battle ultimate-style attack. The flow of battle consists of tag-teaming between characters, using special attacks when ready, and waiting for Ghost’s ultimate. Common enemies come in groups. Bosses tend to be confined to a relatively small arena. This makes getting out of the way of AOE attacks a little challenging. The Lonesome Guild does a good job of onboarding players and teaching its systems. By the time the initial trio reaches the first boss, the player is ready.

The only frustration I had with combat was with a bit of sluggishness in the controls. Switching between characters takes a beat, and the dodge roll feels slow. The tactical opportunities that come from switching characters are engaging, but the pace takes some getting used to.

Pretty Pictures
The kingdom of Etere is rendered in a colorful, stylized storybook style with a vaguely steampunk element to the enemies and towns. The environments are varied and appealing, from lush countryside to enchanting castles and towns. The main quest is supplemented by short side missions supplied by NPCs. Exploration involves solving quite a few environmental puzzles, but at least in the demo, they’re logical and not too frustrating.

The Lonesome Guild looks like it could be another simplistic ARPG, but there’s quite a bit of depth in its systems, and there’s an emotionally varied narrative driving the action. I enjoyed previewing the game and look forward to seeing how the entire game unfolds.

***PC code provided for preview***