Having loved SteamWorld Heist for its charming characters, steampunk setting, art, great soundtrack and surprisingly engaging turn-based tactical combat, I went into Hand of Gilgamech pretty much blind, trusting the developers/series, and was not disappointed.

However, I found most of its elements to be a step down from Heist: the characters are less interesting and perhaps more archetypal, the writing and plot was rather mundane and forgettable; the setting, and maybe this is just a preference, seems overall more generic and unfortunately leans much more towards the medieval fantasy side of things rather than the steampunk side; the soundtrack is nowhere near as fun and unique as Steam Powered Giraffe's pieces in Heist and it's just ok here.

On the other hand, HoG offers a nice card-based turn-based RPG in which you can experiment pretty freely with all the characters that join your party, customising them with specific card combinations and accessories, completely changing playstyles with just a few cards here and there, to the point where it shocks me that there isn't a feature in the game to save loadouts to quickly swap characters and builds on the fly, as different encounters often favour certain builds and characters. Finding strong synergies between characters is a lot of fun, and the combat was always interesting to me, with a decent balance of luck and skill (even if most of the outcomes had more to do with how you built the decks and which characters you used than actual actions).

All in all, a surprisingly engaging light RPG that I happily completed in about 20 hours on the Steam Deck, and will be revisiting in NG+ with the new "Legend Remix" difficulty, which promises to change up the gameplay by giving enemies more and stronger options.

SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech is the latest entry in the SteamWorld franchise. The game is a mix of turn based RPG and card battling. The card battling mechanic, while initially promising, is never fully realized due to the mixed decks and limited card slots. And the RPG part of the game suffers from the classic RPG issue where it is better to stick with the same roster for the entire game rather than diversify to maximize experience allocation. Outside of those elements, there is a light hearted fantasy story with some minor puzzle solving sequences. SteamWorld Quest can best be summed up as an okay game with good ideas.

You start the adventure following Armilly, a knight who wants to become a hero like in the books she reads by joining the town’s local guild and Copernica, a mage who dropped out from a prestigious university, looking for a way to have her university be more inclusive to outsiders. Eventually the duo return to town witnessing it under attack by the mysterious Void Army. The pair, with the help of their childhood friend Galleo, repel the invaders only to learn that the rest of the guild members have been captured. It is up to Armilly and her friends to rescue the guild members and figure out what is going on.

Before I talk about gameplay, I want to briefly mention the dialogue. It does not take itself very seriously and has a lot of referential humor. For example, the first two soldiers that you encounter are named “Wiggs” and “Budge” a nod to how there is always a “Biggs” and “Wedge” in every Final Fantasy game. There is also a long elevator sequence that pokes fun at the long elevator loading times in the original Mass Effect. Just wanted to put that out there because I understand this kind of writing is not to everyone’s taste

The turn based card combat is at the core of the game and it initially does not disappoint. Each character in your three person party holds 8 cards that are either basic cards that build steam or skill cards that consume steam. When in battle, your deck consists of the combined set of the cards or 24 cards in total. Any used or discarded card eventually gets shuffled back in once all 24 cards have been used. The primary strategy is to use the basic cards to build steam that don’t do that much damage and then eventually unleash the skill cards to finish your foes. The game adds a few interesting quirks to the mix. You can only play three cards each turn and if you play all cards from the same character an extra bonus move tied to that character’s weapon is unleashed. As an example, if you play 3 Armilly cards, she uses the Lionheart ability that gives her an extra attack and partially heals her. Another interesting feature is the combo mechanic. Some cards will grant an additional effect if a card from another character is played. Such as if you play a Galleo card followed by Copernica’s Element Ward card, the team will get a free heal.

I mentioned that the card based system was promising initially, because the longer I played the more I noticed flaws within the system. Even with a well made deck, having the decks all mixed together sometimes forms hands that are partially or even completely unplayable. The game does grant 2 mulligans each turn, but I feel like that is a band-aid solution and doesn’t address the underlying issue that you are playing with three mixed decks. In addition, when one of your characters are KO’ed, stunned or disabled, their cards are unplayable, making a third of the deck entirely useless. I encountered a handful of boss fights where I was in control and then the boss got a lucky draw, disabled two of my characters and proceeded to completely wreck my crew. Which brings me into another issue with this game which is the deck building itself. Around Act 2 of the game, it starts to become impossible to build the ultimate deck that can beat everything. The game encourages you to optimize and tailor your decks for specific encounters such as one that might be good against a lot of enemies that are weak to lightning. I’m okay with this concept except that the game does not offer the option to save decks. It becomes a micromanaging nightmare to shift from a deck geared towards lightning magic to one that requires all physical attacks. Another way that I guess you can surpass this obstacle is to relentlessly grind, stockpile recovery items and upgrade your cards until it completely breaks the game, but that was not how I played the game.

Speaking of upgrading, at certain parts of each level there is a shopkeeper that Armilly and her friends can interact with. The shopkeeper offers the standard RPG fare of weapons, accessories and items, but she also grants the option to craft new cards or upgrade existing ones. On a regular playthrough with minimal grinding, it is impossible to craft or upgrade all the cards. This led me to focus on three core party members for most of the game because I could only allocate so many resources. The game also tends to introduce new cards every level but I would rarely add them to my decks because they were either for characters I didn’t bother leveling up or weaker than the cards that I have already spent my time upgrading. It is a shame that I had to stick with the same party members and same core cards because I really had fun trying out all of the characters’ decks, especially Orik’s deck and how his cards combo together with other characters.

SteamWorld Quest would have been a completely serviceable turn based RPG without the card battling mechanics. While I appreciate the inclusion of the card battling system and how it is a unique selling point, the card mechanics never feel completely realized, at least on a main playthrough. At its best, SteamWorld Quest features some creative deck building opportunities and fun encounters to challenge hardcore players. Unfortunately there isn’t much opportunity to truly experiment unless you are willing to find the time to grind, craft and upgrade every card.

Made me interested in the genre for the first time! Masterful card mechanics, immaculate presentation, and heartfelt story. Given its unique strengths, Steamworld Quest might really be Steam's best.Page-turners they were not.

Image & Form Games have the extra-extraordinary ability to make you fall in love with genres you thought you didn't care for. Like roaming heroes, they pivot from genre to genre, slaying the issues with ease and leaving everything in their wake nigh-on perfect. It's enough to make you sick!

'So it's another card battle-deckbuilder game - who cares!', you say. One, watch your tone with me, and two, it's a flipping good one! One that over thirty hours gradually chipped away at me until I'm now an unrecognisable convert. I could never even get interested in a Slay The Spire or Battle Chasers; now they're all calling for me!

The name of the game is party-based, fantasy punch-card (clever double entendre) battling. Your assessment of the mechanics here will probably hinge on your contact with other games, but I found the depth present sufficiently, and sometimes wildly, satisfying. It pulls off the trick of injecting most of its depth outside of battles in the deckbuilding - setting up character synergies and card combinations to exploit and swapping out your party/deck for different situations. For a veteran Spire player, the more 'automatic' nature of battles might be disappointing. There's slightly less to think about... less that can go wrong - it's simpler for sure. For me, it was the perfect compromise and effectively charmed me into the genre when Spire couldn't. Twenty to thirty hours of highly story-contextual content over hundreds of hours poured into your gullet was always going to win out for me, at least for now!

This isn't to say the battles don't have anything to consider. Far from it! Deckbuilding is merely setting up dominoes for the perfect deployment opportunities later, so you still have to know how to use them effectively! There is nothing more satisfying than using three of a single character's cards in a single turn (the default limit of cards that can be activated) to access their bonus card (achieving a combo), using character/card synergies for extra damage, exploiting enemy elemental weaknesses, etc. The emphasis is perhaps more on achieving these combos than any interplay between characters. It almost always seems more useful to use only one character's cards in a turn. Perhaps this was done so you had sufficient freedom to choose your favourite party members rather than be forced into taking advantage of specific synergies. I would have still been interested in more examples, however, since it might have helped combat any feelings of going through the motions in battle.

I never needed to be fist-faced to hate mushrooms.

The biggest factor to consider is the gear system. Every card that doesn't cost you gears affords you one gear, other cards cost gears proportional to their usefulness, and some are neutral. Battles encourage a tactical consideration of deploying smaller cards to build up gears for current/future opportunities. Manage your deckbuilding poorly or lack restraint in using your cards at hand and you might find you're often without any zero-cost cards in your hand to perform an action at all. You get a small reprieve in the ability to make two exchanges of cards per turn. This has a satisfying gambling quality to it if you wish to use it to optimise your turn (and not out of necessity), whilst also limiting the effect lady luck has on your initial shuffle.

Battles often became a psychological fight of resisting the high damage solutions to instead play more conservatively. Instead of achieving a combo you should use a healing card/potion or generate shields. Instead of deploying gear-costing cards you should build up your gear number for better opportunities down the line by using zero-cost cards and perhaps decrease your enemies' defence/boost yours whilst you're at it. In the truest move of investing in the future, you can use a card that allows you an extra card to play in the next turn. Some battles are an absolute war of attrition, for which preserving your party members whilst dealing out only occasional damage is just necessary. Enemy types are varied with some truly excellent mechanically. My favourite is the ticking time bomb which passively gains its own gears over turns until spending them on exploding for extraordinary damage - unless you destroy it first, of course. It's this kind of wrench in the works - like the bombs, heavy damage dealers, or healing enemies - that forces you to have to constantly adjust strategy and make priorities. There's an ever-present risk-reward dynamic at play. Save points fully restore your health when you discover them in level exploration. In this way, the handfuls of fights between checkpoints become a survival gauntlet wherein health maintenance is key. So you don't completely have to rely on the luck of the draw or compromise your attack combos, you can also buy potions and revives at the merchant who tirelessly follows you to the ends of the earth. This comes at the heavy cost of gold - eating into your ability to upgrade and purchase cards. Always something to consider!

Never be someone's best customer if you don't want to be stalked.

So, simpler than other games in the genre I might call it, maybe, but it's true that these battle considerations aren't just optional optimisation - a tincture of bonus damage here and there - for on the hardest difficulty your survival in the chapter will absolutely be contingent on your understanding of the minutiae of the cards. The bosses, in particular, are brutal so-and-sos and bring out the absolute best in the game's systems. The war of attrition as you suffer horrendous damage, the risk-reward of healing compromising high damage plays which could finish them off sooner - the gears, combos, synergies, weaknesses, etc. My only complaint is that the final two bosses seem a few rungs higher in difficulty than the rest of the game. I'm not too ashamed to say that I had to resort to turning down the difficulty just to see the end and get this written (I still struggled). Admittedly, more and more as the game progressed, I found myself reliant on potions and revives just to get by. On my part, I think perhaps that my deck wasn't optimal with too many high-cost cards and not enough defensive ones. Never in the game did I have to grind, but the final bosses do suggest that I might have needed to. Overall, I'm glad the game has these high-level challenges and I look forward to revisiting them one day to complete the game to my true satisfaction!

Speaking of levelling, levelling up does feel slightly out of place to me. Purely because it's just so uninteresting in how it merely adds to damage and health stats. Focus on three of your gang for too long and you'll suddenly find a slight level disparity in your party if you reintroduce a long-abandoned one. It doesn't feel necessary. Cards, not attached to this levelling, thankfully, are introduced in three ways. Included throughout are very clever scripted character moments that will generate apposite cards that reflect the said events. This very nicely takes advantage of the story element that most of Quest's contemporaries don't boast, and so too is the story boosted by having such character moments necessitated mechanically. There's also the slow trickle of card options at the merchant as the game progresses, which whilst not as standout, makes visiting the merchant constantly a treat since you never know what interesting cards will arrive to flip everything on its head. One of my favourites is still one the very high-cost card that saps an enemy of all of their health - bar one. It's the kind of card you can know will be coming and plan around. You're able to buy Stat-boosting or ability granting equipment and weapons.

Why use a sword when you can get value for money?

The weapons like the levelling are close to being entirely uninteresting unequivocal stat increases for each character, but are saved by allowing you to pick the bonus card you're granted upon achieving a combo. So too are there some interesting pieces of equipment - allowing you to get an act of revenge upon damage, for instance. Cards and equipment can actually also be found in the environment with some deft use of foreground to obscure hidden areas. This makes exploration frequently quite exciting. Level maps are brimming with bonus areas and you're never too sure of the direction you need to perforce go or what you'll find.

Compared to say Slay The Spire, Quest's sheer hand-drawn pulchritude is where it veritably has the edge. You need only look at the screenshots to see for yourself how it excels in this department. Colours pop, lighting impresses, and character and monster designs really shine. The soundtrack can be repetitive - mostly so with its battle music - but it's still fundamentally great stuff. It's later used to really great effect with familiar motifs being reintroduced into new moody environment or exciting story tracks.

The story, split into many more chapters than I ever expected to encounter, is stuffed full of the light humour you might expect of a Steamworld game but gives every character moments of drama and doubt. It explores what it means to be a true hero in its sweet, heartfelt way and actually brings the story to some interesting places. It's a relief since I found I wasn't connecting with the characters at all for a good few hours, but when it finally clicked I was consuming everything they had to say with glee. By making the story really revolve around the characters rather than them being merely incidental, you feel like you're bonding with them on multiple levels - through your understanding of how they play, their interactions, and the revelations they have. It's great that this isn't in any way just a placeholder plot.

Everything is fine...

Quest was a surprise game for me. Getting me interested in a genre I had previously dismissed was no small feat. It did so with its masterful card mechanics - finely balancing accessibility with depth; its immaculate presentation, and the humour-filled, heartfelt story, which acts as an antidote to the usual roguelike trappings of the genre. Given its unique strengths, Steamworld Quest might really be Steam's best.

• Year played: 2019
• Playtime: 5-10 hours
• Completion level: not sure, seemed like it's quite long

Steamworld Quest is a spin-off of the Steamworld Dig games (which I haven't played) that takes the same aesthetic and turns it into a card game RPG. You build your own deck and gain additional cards to swap in and out as you quest through the world and collect coins and resources. There are a number of different characters to use, of which three can be in your party at a time, each with their own set of cards and unique playstyle. There's a unique mechanic where if you play a certain number of the same color (each character's cards are a different color) cards in a turn, you get a special effect. These combo effects, combined with the fact that you don't discard your hand at the end of your turn and just draw new cards, gives some interesting choices and tradeoffs for whether to play a card now, or wait til next turn when you can pull of a same-color combo.

Overall the gameplay was fun and I liked the different feel of each of the characters' playstyles, but something about it just didn't hook me enough to keep playing past the first couple hours. It got pretty repetitive, and the fights were sometimes overly punishing if RNG wasn't in your favor. Definitely satisfying when you got a good combo off though - might be a good pickup for someone looking for a casual game to play in bite-size chunks on the bus, but it starts to wear thin on long play sessions.