Key facts
- Annihilated is available for PC.
- The four defeated heroes—a magic-less mage, a doll-like warrior, a voiceless hero, and a priest serving a new power—each provide distinct gameplay and story routes.
- The reviewer praises the writing as excellent aside from some fumbly localization and says the characters grow with complicated motivations while examining the hero's journey from new angles.
- The reviewer criticizes the roguelike structure as largely perfunctory and boilerplate, serving mainly as a vessel for combat and variables between story scenes.
Shacknews published a review of Annihilated on Nov. 12, 2026, calling the PC dungeon-crawling roguelike a disturbing subversion of the traditional hero’s journey.
Shacknews casts the player as a nameless Soldier, sole survivor of their own squad, sent into the depths to learn why an adventuring party has gone silent. It sets up the familiar fantasy frame: a Demon King threatens the world while a blessed hero leads adventurers into The Dungeon to fight monsters, defy traps, collect treasure, and confront a final boss. In this game, those blessed heroes have already been utterly defeated.
The Soldier investigates the defeated party by choosing one of four fallen heroes—a magic-less mage, a doll-like warrior, a voiceless hero, and a priest serving a new power, Shacknews says. Each choice changes combat options, the paths taken, and the revelations about events before the Soldier arrived. Every route feels distinct and meaningful because the characters interact with game systems in unique ways, tying narrative to gameplay.
Annihilated is a hybrid of a turn-based roguelike RPG and a visual novel with branching story routes, Shacknews describes. Each run lasts only a few hours, but several distinct runs are available, giving players reason to experience every route.
Shacknews praises the writing as excellent apart from some fumbly localization. The characters grow with complicated motivations while examining the hero’s journey from new angles. The reviewer expected the premise and opening to descend into schlock and edgy brutality but found the writing heartful and intelligent, even coming to care about a slime.
Shacknews’s closing bullet list names storytelling that subverts hero’s journey RPGs, a twisty visual novel-like story with meaningful branching paths, and cool combat using the player character’s role well as strengths. The downsides are weak or pointless roguelike elements and fumbly localization.
The roguelike structure is largely perfunctory and boilerplate, serving mainly as a vessel for combat and variables between story scenes, Shacknews criticizes. Map paths lead to a fight, an event, treasure, or a rest camp. Players can trade points earned for extra healing, temporary weapon or card upgrades, or save them for experience points.
Levels persist across attempts, so dying only makes the player stronger in a linear fashion, and once past a room, it ends unless a new game begins, Shacknews says. Some cheeky events kill the player outright when stats do not line up or the player has saved no points to bail them out. The reviewer calls these events interesting but annoying. Dying does not set the player far back, so progress may require grinding or luck.
Combat rests on two pillars: a weak character who breaks enemies to loot items through quick-time events, timed button-press prompts with sweet spots on a bar, and a companion whose traits shape basic ability use, Shacknews says. Breaking enemies and chests yields weapons far stronger than the default sword with limited uses, and broken items deliver a final burst of extra power. This encourages players to use items rather than be conservative, making combat more scrambly than deck builder-like.
Late-game Undertaley elements make the final boss encounter longer than it ought to be, feeling more annoying than clever, Shacknews says. The review concludes that Annihilated is not a great roguelike holistically and that there was probably an opportunity to explore a different genre with better results. The piece concludes that the game is really about story payoffs and finding fun in combat rather than level structure.
Still, Shacknews calls the game one of its favorite roguelikes, though more as a technicality because its best pieces have nothing to do with roguelikes. The review says Annihilated will stick to the reviewer’s brain for a long time because it subverts genre trimmings and tells compelling stories with darkness, humor, and heart.
Shacknews says Annihilated is available for PC. The review discloses that the publisher supplied a code for the assessment. Staff avoids generative AI in its content and bars use of its material for AI training or text generation.
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