Double Dragon Gaiden: How Roguelite Elements Add to the Beat ‘Em Up Classic

The iconic Double Dragon brothers return for some tag team, beat ‘em up action with a roguelite spin! The year is 199x in an alternate New York City. The city has been ravaged by nuclear destruction, leaving chaos and crime to take hold of the city. Unable to sit still and allow this havoc to be wreaked further, Billy and Jimmy Lee (with the help of some new and familiar faces, and you – of course) take it upon themselves to free their city from its four major criminal gangs.

Dynamic Level Select

Once you’ve decided to take on the four major gangs, it’s up to you to decide in which order you’d like to take them on. Each gang takedown is a mission and the order itself in which you choose the missions will shape how you experience the levels. The first level will be the simplest in terms of the number of mission sectors, enemies, and overall difficulty. When a gang is defeated, all remaining gangs levels up, increasing the size of their hideout and recruiting stronger and tougher minions. This allows you to experience different sectors of the missions through multiple playthroughs.

Purchasable Upgrades

Throughout the course of the game, you will have the ability to earn in-game cash. There are a couple of different ways to earn cash, including performing special KOs, completing bonus objectives, maintaining combo and special KO chains, and more.

This cash can be spent on randomized purchasable upgrades for your individual tag team fighters. For example, you can strengthen your duo by upgrading to increase the damage of melee attacks for one fighter and then upgrade the speed in which SP is auto regenerated for the other. Conversely, you can save up your cash to purchase revives or convert your remaining cash into tokens at the end of a playthrough.

Token Shop

Tokens are in-game currency that allows you to buy additional unlockable items. They’re earned through exchanging your remaining cash at the end of a playthrough. Once you’ve raked in enough tokens to spend, head on over to the Token Shop where you can spend your hard-earned chips.

Purchase items such as unlockable playable characters (keep an eye out for some familiar faces), tips to help improve your gameplay from the developer themselves, art from the game (including the city map and character concept sketches), and music.

Game Modifier

Having trouble building up your token stash? It might be time to modify your gameplay experience then. When you start a new game, you’ll be given the option to tweak the game’s difficulty (including the ability to play in permadeath for an extra challenge or infinite continue). The harder you make a playthrough’s difficulty, the lower your cash to token exchange rate is, allowing you the possibility to earn more tokens at the end.

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons is coming this summer to Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. For more information on Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons, visit DoubleDragonGaiden.com or follow @modusgames on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Discord.