Azoove

Azoove reminds me a lot of playing Oregon Trail, in the best ways. The learning curve is a bit brutal at first, but the challenge is fun. The roguelite aspects grant additional starting resources, so initial losses still help new players progress. These resources make subsequent runs easier. When they feel like more of a challenge, the players can choose increasingly higher difficulty levels to unlock new trinkets and add variety to their adventures. The multiplayer element also adds a lot of depth. The players must rely on each other to succeed, setting each other up for success and hoping their companions pick up on the strategy they want to employ. This adds compelling tension to the game. Gameplay aside, the music, art, and writing tie everything together very nicely to set an elegant tone for your harrowing struggles to survive in this fantastical land. Highly recommend!

literally the best possible combination of coop cardgame resource management. its so peak

Fantastic co-op game with strong core gameplay mechanics. Utilises non-traditional co-op comms in an effective way to create additional challenge. This is not for everyone, but it doesn't have to be. Fans of tabletop and deck-based and/or resource games should definitely take a look. Gameplay will be improved with increased variability and updates in the future. At the current price, I feel the game is well worth its value. An active developer gives this game great potential to be even better than it already is. Would recommend!

It's fun but there's not much there. Running it with a friend or 2 is where it's at, but running it with bots/AI who will sometimes choose to starve and end the run rather than picking the food option is sometimes unpreventable. 15 bucks seems kinda steep for the quality and content, I suggest you wait for a sale.

The game is fun, but lacking in content. Once you beat the game, you can choose to make it harder, but it's hard to argue for the games favor. The price would be fair for a fully flushed out game, but this is early access. Had fun, but it was limited.

Immediately became a favorite for playing together and maintaining shared activities while far away from each other. You will absolutely want good communication lines (get on a voice call). A strategic card game that relies on cooperative mind reading in much the same way as some traditional card games (think Whist or Bridge). The silence during the Opportunity phase will quickly drive you to discuss strategy and split tasks beforehand: "here are our priorities, here are our must-haves. Unless you can solve this with an opportunity, you should save you energy to fix this, I will focus on fixing our other problem (and if you draw a card for that, pass it to me)" all of which is perfectly within the rules because most of the game you are allowed to talk. This also drove us naturally to actually speak as if splitting up physically: "ok, let's do it. Good luck!" I will confess to having violated the no-speech rule, to say "hey, I want you to count your energy carefully and think about why I'm giving you this specific card." I probably will not do so again, because it did give a lot of extra information, but this was while we were still learning to work together. It did evoke a very old memory of when I was playing with mum and siblings as a child, and our mum would say "hey, think why I would play this card". (As a general rule, I've so far seen these reasons: - I'm discarding trash. Either neither of us can afford the cost, or it's a clearly useless card and neither of us should play it, but I must share something. - I'm giving you a card that I can't play but you can, and probably should unless you have something clearly better. I will now expect you to solve the problem that that card solves. - I'm giving you a decent card either of us could play, but it's up to you whether it's your best choice, we don't have pressing problems so do what you want. - I'm giving you a good card either of us could play but I want you to know the card is getting played (so you should be the one to play it) because otherwise you might have to play a worse card to solve the same problem since we agreed you'd prioritize that one. - I have two good cards, that solve both our problems. I'm giving the card that is the solution to one problem to you, please trust that I have the solution to the other problem. Which applies where is a matter of context clues, knowing your partner, and trusting them to know you) All in all, very enjoyable game, already earned its price within the first five hours of play and I expect to play it for many more. Ps. I did find a bug, but it was easily worked around, and the devs have been really active in tracking it down so I expect it to be gone soon after this review. If you find a bug yourself and want it fixed, report it! I can't make promises for them but they seem really good about actually fixing reported bugs.

This is a really interesting game. It feels like the love child of Euchre (the physical card game) and Oregon Trail. At its core, you are trying to work with your team mates to make sure 5 different resources stay in the green for as long as possible. The interesting part is that the game encourages you to play the card trading phase of it without any communication, forcing you to try and hint at what you want the others to do through the cards you send them. It makes for some very tense moments where you're hoping they're picking up what you're putting down. I've never played a co-op roguelike before, and it's pretty fun. There are some light progression elements, and difficulty modes which unlock after you win your first run (which is fairly challenging!) You unlock new perks through winning the game in various ways, which I thought was a cool way to unlock things and encourages you to experiment with what the game has to offer. Visually the game is quite lovely, too. The UI in particular really stood out to me as very attractive and took me back to the days when game UIs were a lot more flavorful than the minimalist stuff that's so common these days. Overall, this is a fun little game that anyone who likes strategic tabletop-style games will enjoy. Grab a friend or two and you can definitely get some solid gaming in from this one.

An excellent survival card game with beautiful art, great music, and a clever twist on the cooperative element: limited communication. The challenge level is just right and scales with your amount of experience, making it very satisfying to beat as you progress; it's never too easy, but never wholly impossible either. If you like cooperative games, strategy games, interesting mechanics, reverse-psychology-ing your friends, or any of the above, do yourself the favor of adding Azoove to your library!

I found the game at PAX west and enjoyed it there. It is a nice game to play with a friend for a little bit. There are some QoL things that could probably be improved as well as some UI improvements especially for a newer player but overall it is decent.

The gameplay is very flat. In this style of game you'd really like to see a degree of progression or improvement of the things you're playing with (e.g. add/remove/improve your cards), but nothing really ever changes. The result is that you're just playing whatever cards add the type of resource you're currently missing the most, coupled with with some basic discussion ahead of time about what your teammate(s) should prioritize. The "don't talk to your teammate when picking cards" thing is just kinda meh. It's not the worst thing ever, but it's also not engaging. I'd rather they dump that and come up with something else. There's not a lot of strategy. There's very little depth. There's just not much going on in general. It's a shame, because the game could be a lot more appealing if there was actually deckbuilding or similar progression that was interesting. It doesn't seem like any mechanics like that are part of the future, so I'd say this is a game to skip.