StarVaders offers a compelling spin on a crowded genre
Deck building roguelikes are still coming out at a surprisingly fast rate, ever since Slay the Spire cause the genre to explore in popularity. While some stand out above the rest, many fail to understand how that game managed to capture the “just one more run” spirit that’s key to a successful roguelike.
StarVaders enters this crowded genre with a focus on quicker runs, bringing small scale tactical encounters, an energetic soundtrack, and an overall experience that caters both to beginners and veterans of deckbuilders.
In StarVaders, you pilot one of three mechs, each featuring multiple unlockable pilots that change up your starting loadout. You’re tasked with fighting off alien invaders, taking on waves of enemies and their leaders.
A lot of what surrounds combat is fairly standard for the genre, with most of the story taking a backseat after completing the tutorial. You do get a little more after completing runs (also how you unlock extra content and difficulties), but for the most part you’re left to your own devices. Run structure is also familiar, giving you a few choices to pick from each encounter, with a shop allowing you to buy (or remove) cards and items before a boss.
Combat itself is where things take a turn from Slay the Spire and other games like it. In StarVaders, each battle takes place on a small grid. Enemies spawn in nearer the top, moving down each turn in an attempt to reach the bottom.
You see, your mech doesn’t actually have a traditional HP value. Taking hits just adds junk cards to your deck, giving enemies a shield if you don’t discard them while in your hand. Instead, you’ll accumulate Doom if you allow an enemy to stay in one of the three bottom rows for a turn. Some enemy gimmicks can also add Doom, along with taking too many turns during an encounter.
It’s a fun twist over just using health, tying into your mission of trying to save earth rather than just survive yourself. Some artifacts (items with passive effects) even play into this, letting you trigger effects by hitting yourself with bombs or other AOEs.
This lack of HP values extends to enemies, with almost everything outside of bosses dying in one hit. The focus is less on number crunching and more on making use of card combos and positioning. Cards can have a bunch of effects, but thankfully it’s easy to check what terms actually mean or which cards will be affected by specific artifacts.
Honestly, the only real downside is that StarVaders might take slightly too long to ramp up for veterans of the genre. While you do eventually gain access to a much harder difficulty, you’re still required to go through two lower ones first. As someone who isn’t the best at these, I was still able to blast through my first few runs without issue.
However, consecutive runs unlock lots more tools to play with, eventually leading to the aforementioned harder difficulty option. StarVaders seems designed to offer fewer but larger leaps in complexity, over the more gradual difficulty increases generally seen in the genre. Even the run length is left relatively short, stopping things from dragging on for an hour.
I’d need to put a little more time into StarVaders before giving it a definitive review, but I’ve really enjoyed my time with it. All three mechs offers a different playstyle — you go from bombs and guns in the first mech to the melee-heavy playstyle of the second — with the different pilots offering their own variants of each. It’s a joy to play, and one that I wouldn’t be against seeing expanded over the coming years.
A key for StarVaders was provided by the publisher. It’s currently available on PC via Steam.
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