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Notes -
Another Friday game rec:
StarVaders is a great, well-paced, slick, and interesting follow-up in the 'rougelike deckbuilder' genre. I'd put it in the "A" tier with Astrea: Six-Sided Oracle and Monster Train (S tier being: Slay the Spire, Inscryption, Balatro half-qualifies genre-wise). The fun twist here being that instead of 1-3 enemies with bigger health bars, here you get a lot of smaller enemies slowly making their way down a grid towards you, Space Invaders style. You "pilot" a mech and the cards move you and shoot stuff along with the classic hand and energy management. It works really well, bosses are fun and interesting, and the game has different pilots and mechs with very interesting new mechanics (e.g. one you "puppet" self-destructible mini-mechs instead) with a good progression curve that is challenging but not quite as brutal achievement-hunting as some other games like it. Of note is how this game actively encourages you to set up disgusting near-infinite combos, and you can get them going a little earlier than usual, which is plenty of fun. Notably, you can get "hit" by enemy attacks, but instead of damage directly causing you to lose, it only adds a garbage temp card to your deck, which is a good balance. Rather, enemies who make their way down to the bottom three rows "channel" a doom point, which you are only allowed 5. Also, single-turn rewind is a nice spin on the concept: you only have three, but they also shuffle your deck, just not the field position, and you can equally use them to re-roll almost anything: any rewards, which route options are available to you, etc. The UI is excellent (often a pain point in games like this, so much appreciated), the music is great without overstaying, just a solid rec if you like the genre. If you haven't tried this kind of game, Slay the Spire is still the entry point IMO.
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