With so many Roguelikes and so little time, it can be hard to commit to a new one. A humble little review lad like me can recommend Roguelikes until I’m blue in the face, but if you’re still playing The Binding of Isaac or Hades you likely don’t really need more permadeath randomness. Well I’m here to try and convince you to try something new, because it’s a hell of a lot of fun. Star Vaders features cards, grid based combat, and loads of build diversity, and maybe it’ll overwrite your current Roguelike habits.
With the Earth under attack from a whole bunch of alien invaders, it’s up to one of a selection of hotshot pilots with mech suits to save the day. Whichever of the varied potential saviours you pick, the goal is simple – fight wave after wave of UFO with lasers and cards. There is a nice bit of story to take in between runs, but really the narrative is just there to push you into the action.
The way you’ll fight the varied aliens of Star Vaders is by using cards of course, which you can use to guide your mech around the battlefield or unleash attacks. Each turn you start with three heat (which is basically your energy, or mana style resource) that you can use to play cards in your hand, and you need to use these to take down as many enemies as possible. At the end of each turn the enemy forces move down from the top of the screen towards you, Space Invaders style, and once they reach the bottom few rows they’ll deal damage to you. This sounds more complex than it is though, and it won’t take more than a few battles for you to feel at home in these mech space battles.
Your action cards have all sorts of abilities on them, which you’ll be able to use to save the Earth from the interstellar menace. The basic ones you’ll start with in early runs will let you move a few spaces or fire a shot upwards at the enemy, which are simple but effective. These starting cards will only help with basic enemies though, and if you want to succeed you’ll need to use bombs which blow up adjacent enemies, ricocheting bullets, and screen clearing flamethrowers effectively to dispatch the invading ships.
Your offensive abilities are also bolstered by powerful artefacts, which needs to be utilised effectively if you want to beat a run. These come in all shapes and sizes, from artefacts that grant you extra heat and cards next turn when you push your heat limits, to artefacts that grant bombs a much larger blast radius. By finding the synergy between your artefacts and your cards you’ll be able to find some seriously overpowered combinations, and these are what you’ll need to survive on anything more than the lowest difficulty level.
The only way you’ll be able to create the ultimate arsenal to deal with aliens is with a bit of good old fashioned deck building. After each battle you’ll be offered a selection of three rewards (generally either cards, card upgrades, or artefacts) to choose from, which will shape the overall strategy you use. There are also shops you’ll visit before boss fights where you can buy new stuff, or spend your money to remove cards from the deck for a bit of streamlining. If you’ve played Slay the Spire or any number of other deck building games this will be immediately familiar to you, and it’s as satisfying as ever to cultivate a devastating selection of cardboard that’ll save humanity from certain alien death.
The otherworldly foes of Star Vaders come in all shapes and sizes, and each of these require a different approach. Some enemies shoot back as they approach the bottom of the screen, which will add useless junk cards to your deck. Some will block attacks with shields and require extra hits, and others will swarm towards you in huge numbers but will immediately perish if left separate from their allies. Even after dozens of hours I was encountering new foes constantly that made me change my strategy, and alongside these there are also bosses that’ll really test your skills in a variety of ways.
With so many enemy types to deal with, sometimes the luck of the draw will not be in your favour and you’ll get overwhelmed. Thankfully you have one more tool at your disposal to deal with this issue, the ability to rewind time. You can only use your time travelling resource a few times before running out, but when you do you’ll be able to redraw your entire hand and will hopefully have more useful attacks to blow up the baddies. You can also use your time powers to reroll rewards or restock shops, which can be incredibly useful in creating a wonderfully synergistic deck. It’s such a clever mechanic that you can use to manipulate every aspect of the game, and when it’s used effectively it will make a run.
There’s so much to love about Star Vaders, but it has one big issue that really detracted from the enjoyment for me. There are loads and loads of unlockable pilots to play as, but so many of these are locked behind succeeding on higher difficulties. You can level up existing classes and unlock new cards by playing on lower difficulties (or even failing on the harder ones) but it doesn’t take long to max these out. There were significant chunks of time where I’d be unlocking nothing between runs because the barriers to the next unlockable were just too high, and I just wanted to be able to try something new. It’d be so easy to trickle down new stuff for those who are struggling, but Star Vaders instead demands success and leaves the rest of us to rot.
Star Vaders is a seriously satisfying Roguelike deck builder, with incredibly unique combat and a whole lot of build diversity. Using your cards to effectively take down varied alien invaders always feels great, and the time rewinding mechanic is seriously clever. It’s a little stingy with its unlocks if you’re not on your A-game, but as long as you can handle that you’ll have a wonderful time saving the galaxy.
