At this stage of my life it is beginning to really feel like I’ve performed just about something you’ll be able to think about within the type of a roguelike deckbuilder. Spaceship battles? Played it. Inventory buying and selling? Played it. Throwing canine into an enormous pit? You higher imagine I’ve played it.
So when one comes together with a genuinely novel concept, my ears do are likely to prick up. Mechborn is unquestionably that, inserting playing cards and turn-based fights right into a world of big mechs battling kaiju.
It’s a great concept, and the chunky visuals and hi-tech UI promote it effectively. With music that has greater than a contact of the Pacific Rim theme to it, and surreal monsters proper out of a ’90s anime, it wears its influences on its sleeve—but it surely does them justice.
A roguelike deckbuilder lives or dies on its mechanics, nonetheless, and heading right into a run with an early construct of the sport, I used to be at first anxious Mechborn could be fashion over substance. The very simple early battles make the sport appear formulaic—confronted with a deck stuffed with 5 worth assaults and protect playing cards, a selection of a beginning merchandise that grants a passive bonus, and really acquainted buffs (power provides to my injury, you say?), it might probably really feel like Slay the Spire in a robotic costume.
However as I solid on, I began to see increasingly distinctive persona in the best way a Mechborn run performs out.
For one, it turns the path to the boss into its own strategic challenge. Rather than simply progressing along a track and meeting the occasional fork in the road, Mechborn sets me loose across an entire country map. I can move freely into any region adjacent to a region I’ve already visited, allowing me to roam around in search of shops, healing, lucrative fights, and other perks.
Getting the most out of my journey to the boss is all about clever resource management. Visiting new regions chips away at my store of fuel, while harder battles deplete my HP, and most of the goodies I can go after have a cost in credits.
Is it worth fighting my way to that refueling station to extend my journey as long as possible, or should I make a beeline for that upgrade station to improve my deck? Do I need to seek out more battles for their card rewards, or is my deck already where it needs to be? They’re really interesting choices, where in most roguelikes I’m simply sleepwalking between map nodes.
The more I explore, the harder monsters I’m able to go up against, and the more I start to appreciate the nuances of Mechborn’s combat system too. For one, my hand of cards isn’t really a hand at all—it’s a conveyer belt.
As cards are played, new ones are slotted in from the left, shunting all the others along to the right. I only get four energy per turn to play them, but unusually for the genre I’m never limited by card draw—and I always have a wide range of choices in front of me.
Certain cards play with this format in interesting ways. There’s one in my deck, for example, that has no effect when played, but boosts the damage of attack cards positioned adjacent to it on the belt. Getting the most out of it means playing cards as much just to rearrange the order as for their effects—but commit too hard to the combo-building, and I’m liable to take a few too many hits along the way. A tricky balance.
Things get really interesting when I pick up the Drifter card. This one certainly plays up the conveyer belt feel, because its effect is all about its journey down the row. Every time I play one of the cards on its right and it’s shunted along, it flips my stance—that is, whether I’m standing or flying.
Some cards have different effects depending on whether I’m on the ground or in the air—such as a laser blast that’s more powerful from above, or a powerful shield that forces me to land. But the really fun part is that every time I crash down to earth, I cause a shockwave, dealing damage to every enemy.
Soon I’m contriving ways to move Drifter as often as possible, and then use other effects to swap it back to the start of the belt, so that I can be constantly leaping up and down and crushing my foes beneath my feet like a 200 ton Mario. Now that’s a deck archetype I’ve never built in a game before.
By the end of this demo, I’m left really keen to see what other strategies there are to discover with more tinkering in the mech bay. In some ways this is a very familiar implementation of a classic formula, but the twists it does deploy are cleverly chosen to shake up how that formula feels in play. And I’m not going to lie, it simply never gets old watching giant robots blast mutated behemoths.
You can try Mechborn for yourself now, though currently not in the form of a convenient Steam demo—instead you’ll need to download the pre-alpha build on the game’s itch.io page. The total launch is presently deliberate for winter this yr.
