Cobalt Core (2023)

It's very rare that I find a game that inspires me enough to write a review. What with work and tinkering nowadays building computers and arcade machines, I usually just keep on trucking when it comes to enjoying a game.

But this one.... Should really be more popular!

It's got a lot of replay value. Anyone who enjoyed Slay the Spire, Roguebook, Monster Slayer, Inscryption, or any other deck building roguelikes will find a charming new world to enjoy.

It's a very different kind of deckbuilding, since every character has their own style emphasis, whose cards give you different actions to control the ship. And since you can choose 3 shipmates per run, you can really modify how you play the game. Want to go high defense? Bring Dizzy along. You want a highly maneuverable ship? Bring Riggs. Want to focus on attack? Bring Peri. The rest of the characters center around different mechanics such as drone deployment, shard and heat systems, and hacking.

You also get an opportunity to upgrade your cards and find relics that will modify your ship and how it functions. I think these are doled out the right amount, could be a little more generous, but you really feel like you earn it when you do get them. And they always feel AWESOME. When you get to use an upgraded card's mechanics you're always like HELLYEAH.

Ok all of that mechanically sounds good on paper but how does it FEEL? What makes this game FUN? Well, its a combination of things. The characters are all adorable animals with their own agendas. Each run unlocks a memory from one of the chosen characters that lets you piece together what's happening, why they are stuck in a time loop, how they got there and how to get out. The little avatar portraits for their dialogue is adorable, and I wish there was MORE~!

The main game loop has you picking 3 buddies to go fight the time crystal entity. You can probably win a run half the time with good planning and 1/4 the time if you're bad at turn based card games. The cards let you do things like shoot, dodge enemy fire (you physically see where the bullets are going and move out of the way using your 'dodge' skill that lets you move a tile left or right) and a lot of other things. Personally, I think this is a lot more fun than just a blanket "dodge" mechanic with no need to plan maneuvers. But it did take some getting used to.

I think its both a good start at the deckbuilding roguelike genre and a fun challenge for veterans. Players who arent very good can still have a lot of fun and vets can totally exploit the game's mechanics given the right RNG opportunities.

I removed the exhaust (card essentially goes to the "graveyard") on a 0 cost card that lets me redraw my hand. I also got my deck down to 12 cards. When I would redraw, instead of exhausting it would go in my discard pile but if there werent enough cards in my draw pile to redraw my hand it would recycle to my discard pile, essentially creating an neverending loop of hand discards. Couple that with a few other 0 cost cards like a free attack, or a card that increases damage based on how many times you draw it, and congratulations, you've broken the game! :D You can cycle your hand forever and do unlimited damage until the enemy is dead or cycle it 20 times or so and do 50 damage on a charge beam shot! (Most elite enemies have ~25 health including shields)

There are also 5 ships to unlock and 5 characters to unlock, as well as about 25-40 different relics. A lot of them are character specific.

9/10. Totally worth the purchase. Havent really found anything as charming and fun in quite a long while. Will probably take ~20 hours to beat. 7 characters have 3 memories to unlock each before you can get the true ending. Each run takes about 20 minutes.

I think the only thing that its really lacking is an "endless" mode. If anything. I'm... rereading this now and realizing just how kinda standard it all sounds, I'm not accurately portraying the magic that is Cobalt Core. It's charming, fun, and has that RNG magic that you just love in what makes roguelikes great.

Let me know if you are already enjoying it and tell me what you think it needs! Do you agree that it should have an endless mode? Too hard? Too easy?

Don't send me furry art of the characters.

Roll Credits?: N/A

Surprised/Let Down/As Expected: As Expected

Favorite Mechanic or Narrative Moment: Cobalt Core is a great spin on the ever-expanding deckbuilding roguelike genre. The concept of your deck being a set of commands for an object as opposed to direct actions is a fun new set of rules to work through and play around with. I really enjoy selecting 3 pilots as your "colors" for the deck, and most of the fun comes in seeing how they can interact with each other.

The game was great fun to explore and experiment for finishing enough runs to get all of the endings, and that's a win in my book. Not every roguelike needs to be endleslly replayable to be good.

Least Favorite Thing(s): I wasn't the biggest fan of the varying levels of complexity present. Some of the ships felt simple and rewarding to use while others felt complicated and difficult for little benefit (could be just personal problem solving methods bias here). There was also no real pull to use a ship you didn't enjoy much, so I found myself gravitating to the same ones.

It also rarely felt like I needed to be branching out into a deck that was flexible as opposed to one which was very powerful in one or two ways. Some specific fights would try to punish you for these builds, but it never felt worth the effort of trying to build a jack of all trades deck especially after considering how much time would go into a run when you had to plan out each turn instead of basically outscaling the enemy and turning your brain off or going completely infinite pretty often.