I bought Sephiria because of the bunny.
That is the entire reason. I saw soft pixel art, a little rabbit holding a sword bigger than its body, and a town I wanted to nap in.
So I made tea, got into my pajamas, and settled in for something gentle. I died four times in about twenty minutes.
If you are anything like me and you wandered in expecting a cozy afternoon, this one is going to ask more of you than that. The good news is that it stops feeling unfair pretty quickly once you understand what the game actually wants from you.
Here is what I wish someone had told me before my first run.
So what is Sephiria?
Sephiria is a top-down action roguelite from TEAM HORAY, the small Korean studio behind Dungreed. It left Early Access on July 31, 2026 with its sixth and final chapter.
You play as a brave rabbit trying to save Bunnyville, which sounds adorable and mostly is. Underneath that there are six chapters, more than sixty enemy types, and over ten bosses waiting for you.
It also has online co-op for up to four players, with item trading and revives. Think of the art as Stardew-adjacent and the combat as something much sharper.
Repair your house before you do anything else
This is the tip I most wish I had known on day one.
There is a Home Repair quest sitting in town, and it unlocks your entire permanent progression system.
Go collect 2 Wood from the forest southwest of town, then use the Hammer to fix up the house. Doing that opens the Talent menu.
Talents carry over between runs, which means every death starts making you slightly stronger instead of just costing you time. I ran three full attempts before I bothered with this and I still feel silly about it.
Take the boring talents first
Every instinct will tell you to grab damage. Please ignore that instinct for now.
Start with Survival, Endure, and Wisdom. These keep you upright long enough to actually learn how enemies behave.
Once you can clear the early floors without panicking, move on to Swiftness, which gives you attack speed and an extra dash. That extra dash is worth more than it sounds.
The logic here is simple and a little grim. A dead bunny does no damage at all.
Where your sapphires should go
Sapphires are the currency you earn when you die, so you will not be short of them. They go into Destiny Inscriptions, which are permanent upgrades.
Put your first ones into Talent Points. More talents means more of everything else.
After that, grab Level Up Restoration. It heals you when you level up mid-dungeon, and in a game this stingy with healing that is enormous.
Leave the Dice Inscription for later. Re-rolling rewards is lovely, but only once you know which rewards you actually want.
Pick a weapon that forgives you
There are six weapon branches and each one has more than fifty upgrades. That is a lot of choice for someone still learning where the walls are.
Start with Sword and Shield. You get a three-hit combo, a guard, and a sweeping special that hits in every direction when you attack out of a block.
If you would rather keep your distance, the Crossbow is the other friendly option. Its arrows pierce up to two enemies, so crowded rooms feel less overwhelming.
Leave the Dagger and the Katana alone for a while. Both are wonderful and both punish you hard for mistimed inputs.
One more thing. Pick a branch at the start of a run and stay with it, because spreading upgrades across several weapons leaves you weak in all of them.
Everything warns you before it hits you
Almost every enemy in Sephiria flashes red lines showing exactly where its attack is about to land. Once you notice these, the game changes completely.
The trick is patience. Wait about a second, let the lines converge, and dash at that moment rather than the instant you see red.
Your dashes are limited, so spamming them leaves you standing still with nothing left at the worst possible moment. I learned that one repeatedly.
You can also press right-click just before an attack connects for a parry. Practice this on the weaker enemies in the first floor of Mole Stronghold where a mistake costs you very little.
Your backpack is your real build
This is the part I misread for hours, so I want to be clear about it.
Your inventory is a grid, and where things sit inside it matters as much as what you picked up. Artifacts give you effects, and Tablets boost whatever is placed next to them.
Watch for the little arrows on items. Those mark adjacency, and some artifacts will level up when you put the right neighbor beside them.
You get five artifact options every time you level up and you choose one. Choose with a plan rather than grabbing whatever has the biggest number.
Build around one to three combo effects and let everything else support them. A board you can explain in a single sentence will beat a board stuffed with unrelated goodies.
Sell anything that does not fit. Merchant currency for a build you are actually running is better than a shiny artifact doing nothing in a corner.
Artifacts worth grabbing early
A few of these made my early runs noticeably smoother.
Golden Maple Leaf gives +15% experience drop, which means faster levels and more artifact choices. Mini Ballista and Golden Handbell both give you a companion that pulls attention off you.
Völuspá handles piercing damage nicely for grouped enemies. Yellow Planet fires passively while you focus on dodging, and Chakram chips in damage on a timer.
None of these ask anything of your reflexes, which is exactly why they are so good while you are still learning.
Healing barely exists, so stop taking hits
You will often finish a floor at the health you started it with. That is normal here.
Your options are level-up healing, regeneration potions from traders, heart-marked stones that raise your maximum HP, and Green Heart nodes on the map. Consumables from broken containers are used by holding R.
None of that adds up to a safety net. Avoiding damage is the healing.
Break everything and let the room help
Smash every box, barrel, and crate you walk past. They hold gold and consumables, and gold is what makes traders useful.
TNT crates are genuinely excellent when enemies bunch up. Traps are too, since anything that steps on one triggers it within about a second.
Use your knockback to shove enemies onto traps and keep them there. It feels a little mean and it works beautifully.
Read the map before you commit
Each dungeon lets you choose a path, so match it to what you need right now.
Early on, favor artifact nodes and Root Miracle nodes, since a run-defining effect early is worth more than gold you have not earned yet. Visit Wandering Merchants once your pockets are full.
Mini Boss areas level you faster, so take those once the combat feels steady rather than frantic.
In any fight, kill the ranged enemies first. Nothing ruins a good melee exchange like an arrow arriving from off-screen.
And before a boss, hire a mercenary if you can afford one. Even a distraction buys you the seconds you need.
Costumes and company
Costumes are small bonuses, but small helps. Brown Rabbit gives +6% evasion while you are still learning, and Braided Hair Rabbit offers +7% attack speed with +12% move speed once you feel quicker.
If you have a friend around, bring them. Four-player co-op with revives and item trading turns the difficulty from a wall into something you laugh through together.
Is Sephiria worth sticking with?
I went in wanting a soft evening and got something that kept telling me I was doing it wrong. For about an hour I was ready to refund it.
Then the backpack clicked. I put a Tablet next to the right artifact, watched the whole board light up, and suddenly the run belonged to me instead of the other way around.
That feeling is why I keep opening it. Sephiria is not the cozy game its bunny promised, but it is warm in its own strange way once you stop fighting it.
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Screenshots are from the Sephiria page on Steam and used under Fair Use.