Over the years I’ve played dozens of different deck building games, and while they’re all unique in some way they generally have one thing in common. There’s some sort of cost to play cards. Once you’re dealt your hand for a turn, the first decision you have to make is how to spend that energy, mana, or other relevant resource. This’ll depend on if you need to defend, attack, or work towards some other objectives of course, but it’s a standard limitation to get your brain pumping that I’ve seen dozens of times. Moonsigil Atlas decided to change things up, and it’s much more interesting for it.
You see instead of worrying about your mana, you just need the physical space to play your cards. On a hexagonal grid made up of triangles, you’ll need to place your cards which feature different shapes comprised of the same triangles. It’s a clever way to add a tile puzzling component to a traditional card combat setup, and has a lot of different twists to consider as you progress in your run.
Before you get started on deck building though, there’s a bit of narrative fluff to get through. It’s about astral entities and titans, and thankfully it doesn’t get in the way for long. This is very much a mechanics and strategy first sort of game, which is absolutely for the best.
Once the run begins you’ll be thrown into your first fight, and can experiment with all your cards. The first starting deck is pretty simple, and is mainly loaded up with basic attack and defend cards. Attack cards function exactly how you’d expect, but defend cards need to have certain symbols placed in areas near enemies to block them effectively. There are also cards which stay on your field for more than a turn, and activate different effects as they do so. Early encounters were made much easier by piling on lots of “damage all foes” cards down and watching the pain rain down, but that’s only the pointy tip of the sigil.
There are so many different effects and strategies to take advantage of in Moonsigil Atlas, and even in my first run I had to make big decisions when choosing and modifying my cards. Did I want to revolve my deck around granting focus to cards, boosting their attack further and taking advantage of that in interesting ways? Did I want to gather lots of smaller sized cards alongside cards that deal massive damage if played at the end of a busy turn? As the game progresses you unlock more and more options that you can use to break the game when combined with the right passive artifacts, and exploring this is a blast.
Alongside just getting new cards, there are also other ways to upgrade your power on a Roguelike run. On the traditional branching paths you’ll be given options to upgrade cards, with each card able to upgrade twice. You could make a powerful card smaller so it was easier to play, add extra defence to a card to ensure you stay safe, or even make an important card always start in your hand on the first turn. These bits of tinkering have a huge effect on your cards, and when you get the chance to clone a particularly well crafted one it feels like such a power boost.
Alongside managing your own deck of mystical shapes, you’ll also need to use your noggin to defeat tough enemies in the most effective way. Boss fights especially expect you to discover the right strategy to beat them, with multiple forms, sidekicks and powerful effects to take on. It’s satisfying when you manage to overcome these obstacles, but it’s not always easily done.
I really enjoyed my time with Moonsigil Atlas, but it started to feel like I’d seen everything a little too quickly. There are some different classes and cards to unlock which shake things up for a few runs, but ultimately you’ll still be facing the same bosses and it starts to feel a bit familiar. Runs are pretty damn long too, and committing two hours to them can feel a bit much. It’s very close to being a very easy recommendation though, and for fans of the genre looking for something new it’s likely going to scratch that itch.
Moonsigil Atlas has a fantastic concept and some really clever ideas, and those alone make it worth playing. A bit of a lack of variety does mean it can’t quite stand up to those deck building titans, but it’s unique enough in its own right that it doesn’t really have to. Especially with some updates and added bosses this would be one of the best the genre has to offer, and without that it’ll still provide plenty of entertainment.
