Game: KAZ
Developer: Kalinarm (solo)
Publisher: HAKURO
Genre: Arcade Score-Attack Roguelike
Status: Out now
Platform: PC (Steam)
Price: $6.99 / €6.99 / £6.29
Modes: Five
⚡ KAZ is out now on Steam — a minimalist, grid-based score-attack roguelike from solo developer Kalinarm and publisher HAKURO, built around chasing a high score until you notice what time it is.
💰 $6.99, With 15% Off at Launch
Under seven dollars, discounted further for a limited window — and the content doesn’t stop there. Weekly and monthly challenges unlock post-launch, which is an unusual amount of ongoing support to commit to at this price.
145+
Quests
110+
Items
35+
Maluses
25+
Themes
5
Modes
Only three fingers required
KAZ is a grid-based arcade roguelike about chaining combos, balancing buffs against curses, and pushing a score higher than it has any business going. The visuals are trancelike, the soundtrack is interactive, and the input scheme is deliberately tiny.
It’s the work of Kalinarm, a solo developer, published by HAKURO — and it’s out on Steam now.
No Stress Mode Isn’t a Difficulty Setting
♟️ Limited Moves Instead of Limited Time
This is the smartest thing in the announcement. KAZ’s default runs are twitch affairs — quick reactions succeed and, as the developer puts it, thinking means failure.
No Stress mode swaps the time limit for a move limit. Same grid, same items, same systems — but now you can sit and plan.
That isn’t an easy mode. It converts a reflex game into a turn-based puzzle game using identical content, which means one purchase covers two genuinely different audiences. Most score-attack games accommodate slower players by handing them more time; KAZ hands them a different game entirely.
It’s a genuinely efficient piece of design for a solo project. Rather than building separate content for players who don’t want reflex pressure, Kalinarm changed the constraint and let the existing systems do the work.
Themes Are Mechanics, Not Skins
🎨 Twenty-Five-Plus Themes, Each Changing How You Play
KAZ’s themes aren’t cosmetic layers. Each one unlocks unique playstyles and power-ups, so picking a theme is a build decision as much as an aesthetic one — you’re choosing a vibe and a bonus.
More interesting is where they come from. Themes are made by KAZ community members, established artists, brands and other games — including collaborations with Rhythm Doctor and Linkito.
That’s three jobs at once: cosmetics, mechanics, and a collaboration showcase. For a solo developer it’s also a content pipeline that scales without scaling the team.
The Linkito crossover is a nice touch, incidentally — that’s Kalinarm’s own previous game, a logic puzzler about connections, folded into KAZ as a playable theme.
🎯 Five Modes
From timed score attack runs through to the move-limited No Stress mode, with 145+ quests spread across them.
🧪 110+ Items
Weapons, items and spells to experiment with, feeding into an endless endgame of meta combinations.
☠️ The Curse Gauge
Fill it and you must take one of 35+ maluses — which might unlock a hidden power or end the run early.
📅 Ongoing Challenges
Weekly and monthly challenges unlock after launch, with leaderboards to climb.
The curse gauge is the risk mechanism holding it together. You don’t choose whether to take a downside — you choose which downside, and one of those 35-plus maluses might turn out to be the thing that breaks your run wide open. Forced decisions with genuinely uncertain outcomes are a reliable way to make a score chase tense.
The Soundtrack Keeps Pace With You
🎧 Music That Escalates With Your Score
As your score climbs, the soundtrack intensifies to match — until, in the developer’s phrasing, you’re conducting a score attack symphony.
It’s the same idea we flagged in Devolver’s HYPERDROP recently, and it works for the same reason: in a game whose entire reward is a rising number, making that climb audible means you can hear a good run before you’ve read it.
KAZ pairs it with a deliberately minimal control scheme — three fingers, per the developer — which opens onto what’s described as nearly endless run permutations. Easy to pick up, hard to master, and the reason “just one more run” appears twice in the press release.
🕹️ Arcade
🎲 Roguelike
📈 Score Attack
🔲 Grid-Based
🌈 Psychedelic
🎯 Single-Player
Languages and Availability
KAZ launches with full English audio and text, plus text localisation in French, Italian, German, Polish, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian and Simplified Chinese. Nine languages at launch is a substantial commitment for a solo-developed game at this price.
Who’s Making It
👤 Kalinarm
A solo game developer, previously behind Linkito — a puzzle-based logic game about connections, which now also appears inside KAZ as one of its playable themes.
🏢 HAKURO
A publisher focused on projects with clear creative vision, acting as a strategic partner to developers rather than a traditional gatekeeper. HAKURO is part of the PixCapital group, an early-stage investment firm working exclusively in games.
KAZ is available on Steam now for $6.99, with the 15% launch discount running for a limited time.
Hi there! I’m Marie, also known as CtrlQueen. I’m passionate about keeping up with the latest in gaming news and sharing my insights. RPGs steal my heart with their rich narratives and immersive worlds, but I also love unwinding with fun, casual games. Whether you’re here for deep dives into game mechanics or just to chat about your favorite casual game, you’ve found the right place! Let’s game and explore together.
