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Ex Sanguis Review: Lightbulb Crew's Tactics Roguelike Refines the Othercide Formula
ReEx Sanguis Review: Lightbulb Crew's Tactics Roguelike Refines the Othercide Formula
Lightbulb Crew's Ex Sanguis brings the striking grayscale-and-crimson aesthetic of Othercide into a faster, more forgiving roguelike tactics loop, trading brutal attrition for snappier runs and more frequent victories.
Lightbulb Crew has returned to the tactics genre with Ex Sanguis, a new turn-based strategy game that shares the striking visual identity and roguelike structure of the studio's 2020 debut, Othercide, while streamlining its punishing systems into something faster and more approachable. The game has quietly become one of the year's most compelling tactics releases, arriving alongside higher-profile titles like Star Wars Zero Company and Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave but carving out its own space through a tighter gameplay loop.
Ex Sanguis is not a direct sequel to Othercide, but the lineage is unmistakable. Both games feature a grayscale world punctuated by vivid crimson, a party of elegant women warriors, and turn-based combat that rewards chaining environmental effects into explosive cascades. Where Othercide demanded patience and punished failure with permanent losses, Ex Sanguis leans harder into roguelike conventions to deliver shorter, more digestible runs. Players can boot up the game, play for twenty to thirty minutes, and walk away having secured a few small victories that carry forward into future attempts.
The structural shift is most visible in how the game handles its units. In Othercide, players commanded an army of daughters, sending squads of three on missions and sacrificing one daughter to heal another. Death was permanent, new units cost valuable resources, and the entire loop revolved around tragic attrition. Ex Sanguis replaces daughters with stillae, warriors who heal automatically between missions and are replaced automatically if they fall in battle. After each mission, every stillae chooses one upgrade from three options, and a limited-use re-roll feature lets players discard undesirable choices, making it easier to replicate successful builds.
Combat in Ex Sanguis revolves around a shared pool of action points. Each stillae has a set number of points per turn, and every action — moving, attacking, using abilities — consumes a portion of that pool. Weaker, faster attacks cost less than stronger ones, and moving a great distance drains more points than taking a few steps. A stillae can end her turn early after spending only half her points, but players can also push a warrior beyond her limits, spending the second half of her points for extra actions at a cost. Doing so pushes her next turn further back on the battle timeline, forcing a careful calculation of when to risk overextension.
Environmental hazards play a central role in the moment-to-moment tactics. Certain hazards can trigger explosive chain reactions, and some stillae can be equipped with abilities that stack specific effects together. Success often depends on recognizing when to trigger these cascades and how to position units to maximize the fallout. The result is a combat system that feels familiar to veterans of the genre but rewards experimentation and quick decision-making over long-term planning.
The contrast with Othercide extends to the overall pacing. Othercide was designed as a brutally challenging tactics game first and a roguelike second, with runs that could stretch across many hours and failures that wiped out entire squads. Ex Sanguis inverts that priority, emphasizing short runs, frequent checkpoints, and incremental progress. A failed attempt is less devastating, making it easier to immediately start another run. The game encourages players to accumulate small victories on the way to major ones, rather than demanding perfection against bosses.
That shift does not come at the expense of depth. The time-based action system, the chain-reaction mechanics, and the upgrade choices all provide meaningful tactical decisions. But the game's forgiving structure means players spend less time recovering from setbacks and more time engaging with the combat itself. For players who admired Othercide's atmosphere but found its difficulty exhausting, Ex Sanguis offers a version of that experience that respects their time.
Lightbulb Crew has not abandoned the identity that made Othercide memorable. The grayscale-and-crimson palette remains, the all-female cast remains, and the turn-based bloodshed remains. What has changed is the rhythm. Ex Sanguis feels like a studio refining its ideas rather than repeating them, and the result is a tactics game that stands on its own merits.
