Mercy or Murder?
Bloodgrounds begins with a question as sharp as any blade — when your enemy kneels before you, do you grant mercy and recruit them, or execute them for glory and gold? That single choice lies at the heart of Exordium Games’ new roguelite strategy, revealed during Gamescom 2025.
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The appointment itself came through Bernd Berheide, Daedalic’s head of PR, who first teased me with an unannounced Star Trek Voyage project (which you can read about in a separate interview). What followed was a triple feature: Coins, Crown & Cabal from Magni Games, and Bloodgrounds from Exordium. Three very different projects showcased together, each broadening Daedalic’s publishing profile.
Before diving into the interview, a word on the studio behind it. Exordium Games was founded in 2014 in Zagreb, Croatia, and has spent the last decade as a small indie studio chasing ideas across genres and platforms. Their portfolio includes Zero Reflex, a punishing bullet-hell challenge; Bear With Me, a noir adventure that found a niche following; Agenda, a political strategy sim; and Last Encounter, a cooperative twin-stick space shooter. Beyond those, the studio has developed some mobile games too.
That diversity reflects a philosophy of rapid prototyping and experimentation — pursuing whatever concept sparks curiosity, no matter the genre. The result is a body of work with little visual or mechanical overlap. Which is why Bloodgrounds feels so significant and a leap forward in scope and ambition for an indie team.
At the center of today’s interview is Blaž Klarić, a lead artist who has been with Exordium for nine years, who will guide and show us what this new game is all about!
Blood and Strategy
So what exactly is Bloodgrounds? In short: it’s a roguelite brawl where you play arena patron. You don’t swing the sword yourself — you build a squad of unlucky souls and send them to dance across the sand. The arenas are turn-based, grid-based, and everything is out to kill you. Pillars explode, traps chain-react, and the crowd yells for blood in oddly specific ways. (“Yes, yes, stab that one with this move, thank you.”) Ignore them, and you miss out on rewards.
The danger isn’t abstract either. Gladiators die, and when they die, they stay dead. Permanently. No magical healing tents or second chances. Their gear is buried with them, their spot in your roster gone. Blaž put it bluntly: “When your gladiator dies, they’re gone for good. You’ll feel it in your squad.”
What sells the combat, though, is how absurdly messy it is. Stylized pixel gore, fountains of red, all delivered with a wink. Blaž laughed while pointing out the inspiration: “I was inspired by Mortal Kombat 4 — the first one in 3D, with those huge low-poly droplets.” In practice, the effect is closer to retro VHS splatter comedy than raw shock value. It’s violent, sure, but it wants you to laugh at the exaggeration while still sweating over every move; it’s a strategy game after all.
And then comes the best part: the mercy kill. Sometimes, the enemy you’re about to finish isn’t a faceless lizard or skeleton, but a gladiator just like yours. Beat them down, and the game pauses. Do you give the thumbs-up and recruit them into your ranks, gear and all? Or go full thumbs-down, chop their head off, and let the audience shower you with gold? Blaž grinned: “The audience loves the gory spectacle if you execute, but if you show mercy, that fighter joins your team.” Either way, the fight doesn’t end when they fall — it ends when you decide their fate.
And if we strip all the fancy talk, the TLDR is this: Coliseum manager meets roguelite. Permadeath for your fighters. Strategic, grid-based, turn-by-turn combat. And outside the sand, a bit of city-building to amplify the spectacle. Very bloody, very much its own thing.
Let’s dive into the details, starting with the combat preparation phase.
Between Battles
So, like I said, there’s also a city-building side to the game. You manage Marevento and the events circling its arenas — this is where the real preparation and plotting happens.
The city begins as little more than a ruin, and step by step, you shape it into a hub filled with healers, trainers, shady alleys, and merchants who always smell weakness. Blaž put it this way: “Every building has its own character with dialogue, so it’s not just a shop or stat boost. They guide you through the game.”
Even your estate works as a half-player hub, tracking quests, stats, and the growing memorial wall of dead gladiators. And that’s where things get interesting: fallen fighters aren’t just forgotten. You can build memorials that grant permanent bonuses for the whole team, or if you’re more practical than noble, hire gravediggers to reclaim their gear. Do it once and it feels clever. Do it too often and Marevento starts whispering about your morals. Still, nothing says efficiency like reusing a perfectly good spear.
The management part comes down to resource planning — both people and gold. You can let gladiators heal naturally, which might mean skipping a few fights, or you can pay up to patch them faster and keep the roster moving. More fights mean more experience and faster progression, but there’s always the risk of losing your “investment” the moment they step back into the arena. So essentially, you’re tossing money either into fighters or into new city infrastructure and upgrades — and, to be precise, it’s all about finding the balance between the two.
Fate of Gladiators
In Marevento city, the fight starts long before your gladiators step onto the sand. The back alleys let you grease palms, spread threats, or outright sabotage rival teams. Pay a little, and your opponent might stumble into the arena with low morale. Pay more, and traps or explosives are already waiting in their corner. You can plant all sorts of contraptions like cannons or other machines straight into the fight. Dirty and effective, but again, it’s the same pool of resources you rely on for training and upgrades, so you need to balance those choices with your overall strategy.
Arena Biomes are not just cosmetics. During the demo, I saw frozen floors that made movement clumsy, poison-heavy jungles, and desert arenas that chipped away at health. Blaž explained it clearly: “Every arena has its own theme. The jungle, for example, is all about poison — the lizardmen, the jars, even the floor itself can poison you. You always have to adapt.”
The crowd refuses to stay in their seats. They throw items into the pit – buffs and debuffs. “Both your gladiators and enemies can pick them up,” Blaž confirmed. That forces decisions: swing for the kill, or sprint across the grid to deny your opponent from grabbing a free advantage.
Progression is experience and skills your gladiators carry over — and of course, the gear and tactics you drag along with you. Every weapon swap changes the basic attack, armor shifts stats, and each new piece nudges your strategy in a different direction. You get gladiators’ equipment off greedy merchants, dig it out of graves, or loot it mid-combat when things get messy.
And as we talked about earlier, sometimes it’s not beasts or lizards you’re finishing off — it’s a gladiator just like yours. And again, the choice is yours: bring them into your roster or cut them down for the crowd’s delight.
This is where Bloodgrounds bares its teeth. It’s less about perfect positioning or flashy combos, and more about how far you’ll go, who you’ll throw into the grinder, and the reputation you’ll build in a city that thrives on spectacle.
Pollice Verso: Thumbs Up or Down?
Bloodgrounds is still in development, with a demo already out on Steam and full release planned for 2025. The demo itself offers around 2.5 to 4 hours of play — 6 of 9 gladiator classes, 7 of 13 buildings, early upgrades, and a level cap of 5 out of 15. Enough to taste the loop, not enough to see the whole arc.
Replayability is where the game sharpens its edge. Procedural arenas with randomized hazards keep the fights unpredictable, while the roguelite progression — permadeath, recruit-or-execute choices, city upgrades, sabotage, loot — stacks into a loop built for dozens of runs. Some will feel glorious, others will collapse in failure, and that’s the draw.
It’s scrappy, ambitious, and very much an indie experiment. One moment you’re patching a wounded squad, the next you’re looting graves or rigging an arena with explosives. Bloodgrounds keeps asking “what if?” and then lets you find out the hard way.
But in the end, this is an arena — and every arena needs a verdict. I’ve given you my impressions from Gamescom. Now it’s your turn: check out the Bloodgrounds demo on Steam, play a few rounds, and decide for yourself — thumbs up or thumbs down?
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