REVIEW
Written byMizuniFrom the archive
This is a combination of ideas I never knew I wanted, but I'm glad I discovered it. A Roguelike that combines Space Invaders with Mega Man Battle Network and surprised me in the best ways possible.
To summarize the gameplay for those unfamiliar with the games mentioned: you find yourself on an 8x5 grid, where the bottom 3 rows are your area and the 5 above them belong to the enemies. A certain number of enemies are scattered across the grid, and you start in the middle of your area. You have a deck of cards that represent your actions, ranging from movement and attacks to more unique abilities. Each card can have a cost and receive upgrades that add extra effects, such as moving before using it, reducing its cost, playing it twice, among others.
On your turn, you choose a card, perform its action, and repeat the process until you run out of energy, cards, or decide to end your turn. After that, all enemies take their actions, whether it's attacking you and adding a Junk card to your deck for that battle, using a special action like protecting themselves, or, most commonly, moving toward the player's area. If an enemy reaches your area, it inflicts "Doom" on you on the following turn. Once you reach 5 Doom, you lose the run, with Doom essentially functioning as your health.
After completing a stage, the game lets you choose between 2 or 3 upcoming stages, each with its own reward. After a certain number of stages, you'll encounter a shop and eventually the bosses.
A good Roguelike strikes a balance between a game that doesn't hand you victory for free, while still giving you the possibility of breaking the game to the point where you feel practically impossible to defeat, whether through luck or your own strategic decisions. And without a doubt, StarVaders manages to achieve that.
And if I had to highlight the game's strongest aspect, it would be the variety of synergies available between cards, artifacts, and characters.
One interesting aspect of the characters is that they are selected in two stages. First, you choose the robot you'll use from 3 options, each with its own mechanics and pool of cards that can appear:
Gunner - Focused on ranged attack and bomb synergies, with a mechanic that allows you to play cards beyond your available energy, burning them in the process. This means you can only use them again if you have a synergy that allows it, such as freezing them to remove their Burn status.
Stinger - Focused on movement and close-range attacks, using the Shock mechanic and consuming it to generate more energy or activate additional effects.
Keeper - Instead of controlling a mech, you use cards to summon and control entities, alongside spells that can be used to manipulate various aspects of the game.
After that, you choose your pilot, which determines your starting deck and, most importantly, your starting artifact. This makes the same mech play differently depending on the pilot. For example, the Gunner has pilots like Roxy and Noel: one benefits from burning cards, while Noel automatically freezes a card, making you consider different synergies even when using the same mech.
Besides each mech having its own pool of cards that can appear, at the start of a run the game selects 3 synergy packs, which determine which cards can appear during that run. For example, synergies involving Starter cards, strengthening cards with that trait; Junk card synergies, turning cards that would normally be useless into the focus of your deck; or positioning synergies, allowing you to push and pull enemies or even yourself, among many others.
One advantage of this system is that, from the very beginning, you know which cards can appear, while also avoiding diluting the available card pool, which would happen if every card in the game could appear simultaneously.
As for the bosses, there isn't a particularly large number of them, but each boss is a completely different puzzle that will test your build and your ability to think strategically.
StarVaders is a game where every run feels different, whether because of the different enemies, the different synergies available in each run, or the different artifacts that modify those synergies themselves, among other factors. And that's what makes it an excellent Roguelike.
— Mizuni / Noobsnoplay