A rogue-like deckbuilding game with depth
Not just another deckbuilder
Hello Game Scientists!
I’m usually not a fan of puzzle games because of the limited ways that they can be solved. Into the Breach comes to mind as one of those games that I stepped away from for precisely that reason: it felt too restrictive. On the surface, Star Vaders resembles Into the Breach, but there’s so much more that I think you’ll enjoy (I certainly did).
Check out the Steam page here.
The meat of this game is played out on a 5 x 8 board, on which you and the enemies take turns moving and shooting. On your turn, you choose a number of actions based on your hand of cards that you draw. The number of actions is flexible—there is a number under which you won’t incur any penalties. But you can choose to go over this limit, which will overheat and “burn” your cards, making them unusable for the remainder of the combat encounter.
I like that you have the option of going over the action limit. Sometimes, it’s worth taking the penalty if it means you can take that one extra shot to clear the board of enemies. You’ll want to consider your options carefully, because if you burn too many cards early on in an encounter, you may not have enough actions to take later on.
Once you end your turn, the enemies will act, shooting and then moving one square downward (for most enemy unit types, some have special moment rules). If an enemy moves into the last three rows on your side and stays there for a turn, they will automatically disappear but you will accumulate Doom points. These Doom points carry over from encounter to encounter, so it is in your best interest to not pick up these points at all. If you accumulate too many, it’ll be game over.
After most combat encounters, and at other points in the game, you’ll be rewarded with new cards that you can use in your next encounter or upgrades to existing cards that add or enhance those cards. Since this is a rogue-lite, the cards and upgrades that you have to pick from are random.
The best games are easy to learn and play but have lots of room for depth and tactics. I think Star Vaders fits that description very well. The choice of actions are simple and clear, but how you combine them, when you burn them, and what you upgrade all combine for an unexpected number of ways to get through any combat encounter, even though you only have 40 squares to consider.
You can try the Star Vaders demo on Steam right now, but I’m looking forward to its release in 2024!
Make sure to subscribe to the newsletter for more reviews and thoughts on creating content in gaming. Also, let me know how I did in today’s post by clicking one of the options below (it’s all anonymous):