Flaregate Network

Time to write a Steam Review (I don't normally do these.) Flaregate Network is a rare breed, a card based game in an SF Setting, where the cards you play represent fighters/ships, fighting another fleet of ships. Most card games of this style are fantasy themed, or based around people fighting people, so this was a welcome change. The gameplay itself is pretty straightforward. On your turn, you draw a card, pick a resource to add to your income, and may then play as many cards as your resources allow. These cards (mostly) add units to the battlefield, which run off and autobattle. Some cards might mess with your income, draw cards, have special effects, or mess with other cards in your deck. The goal is normally, (But not always) to blow up your opponents stuff before they blow up your flagship. The difficulty curve is pretty steep. It's not a mountain, but those who are unused to this style of game might struggle. Fortunately the story missions allow infinite replays, and give you a way to get used to all the games content before moving onto the meat and potatoes of the experience - The roguelike mode. In this you're given a random selection of simplified missions from the story mode. Starting with a tiny deck, you win a new card, and a little bit of resources every game, which can be used to give you unique perks (not found in the main game.) Successful competition of a run gives you access to a new, harder difficulty level. The two real downsides to the experience are 1) A lack of multiplayer. As this was the Dev's first project, they opted for something buildable without the complexities of multiplayer. This is a great choice to ensure the project was actually delivered (look here it is!) but the game has such obvious multiplayer potential, you'll find yourself wishing for an opponent. And that's because... 2) No fully customisable decks. The way this experience works is you start with a (small) predefined pool of cards, win games, and add to your deck - But the cards you add are random. There's no option to build a fully formed deck, taking advantage of all the cards and synergies to meet a challenge on your own terms. You're always improvising on the fly, which always leaves you wondering what more you could do with actual choice. The game is also clearly 'unfinished'. Starting the story and the roguelike mode gives you the unavailable option to play as one of the games other two alien factions. (Content TBC?) The story mode ends on a rather abrupt cliffhanger and doesn't resolve the main narrative points, and the third alien faction features for a blink-and-you'll-miss-it length of time. If this means DLC, or lovingly created free extra content patches is, at this moment, unclear. All in all, in an hours of content vs price, I found this an excellent and enjoyable buy, with the potential to offer another few rounds of gameplay with further patches. If you like cardgames or autobattlers, there are much worse places to spend your money.

An interesting mashup of genres. Rough around the edges, but worth playing.

I wish I could recommend it, but there's a particular bug in the story mode (or at least, it feels like a bug, otherwise very poorly communicated). These large ships with very short-range missiles spawn in, and for some reason they're able to shoot at my ships from across the map for a millisecond as they spawn. They then spend the next 10 seconds invincible as they are spawning in. Other related criticism is it just feels counter-intuitive that my ships have to path back and forward waiting for the enemies to come off of cooldown; if I've taken over the entire screen, why can't I shoot them while they're defenseless? The player can't utilise the same strategy because the mothership is always in front of your own units.

I love the design, great game overall

Wow! What a fun card game. I really appreciate the structure based strategies, they are a lot of fun!

It's quite fun, and seven hours had gone by in the blink of an eye as of writing this. The largest battles caused my machine to lag a bit, but nothing too bad.

非常好游戏，像是回到了十五年前的夏天，打开小游戏网站，那种纯粹而枯燥的快乐 什么时候加入更多语言！拜托这个游戏真的超棒的！

Got to the second act and the drone swarm or whatever its called is just a complete joke in terms of balancing. Like, I had 0% chance of winning that fight even if I could play all my cards at once. Game needs work.

Fun, casual and simple. good game guys!

Disclaimer: I have played the previous Creator's Work on "Starcraft 2" called "Keystone Card Game" which was the inspiration for this game. Great things I enjoy: - Love the overall gameplay of combo things together. - Campaign is very straight forward on how to teach you things and progression. - It is fairly clear what is going on. - Great to add Fast-Forward feature. When combat is absent, this speeds up the game progression. [Comparison] I prefer the increased 10-hard hand-size versus 8. This also includes utility cards such as card-draw being better. Good Things: - For Campaign/Roguelike Card Removal via Reserve is nice. It makes it significantly less punishing to recruit/add a card early that has high-synergy with a playstyle but no immediate benefit for a deck. Later on, you can swap out other cards that are no longer needed. - Game works pretty similarly to everything I liked in Keystones. - I like that you can choose where you want to build a structure. It also enables you to manipulate the enemy forces this way to (placing it on them or away for delaying tactics). Things that I'd like to see: [Note: I have a lot of expectations, but that just goes to show how much I enjoyed the Starcraft 2 Keystone] - General Mode: Deckbuilding - Just standard game versus an AI where you can craft a deck of cards you currently have collected/received. - Cooperative Mode: Keystones is most known for its 3v3 mode. This game actually already has cooperative instances in the Campaign on a few select missions. - More sets of cards. Obviously this would be an expansion. (This includes the other races TBD). Things I'd like changed: - [Structure capacity / change] I've run into multiple issues where I've reached the capacity of structures. IMO, 7 isn't a lot when you have a large variety and you cannot replace them. I've had instances where I had to place early defensive turrets or resource generator structures, but then I wanted them removed so I can place down Production Structures. This is especially true if there is every a cooperative mode. The cooperative Campaign Missions show how this really hurts when your ally also puts down structures. - Starting Ship is insanely OP: Your starting ship honestly does an absurd amount of damage that rushing seems dumb. You always want to fight under your ship since it is the last priority. - Early Deck Size. The early deck-size feels WAY to small. The starting ship just attacks after 4 - 5 rounds at the start of the Campaign/Rogue-Like much to my dislike. It feels like I just need to "Hold off rushes" simulator. I think the ships attack-move can also be slowed down. - Unit-stack. All units have no collision with each other and can cause immense stacking and snowballing. AoE is designed to deal with this but the action cards just don't feel like they do enough. - Proactive Actions [Comparison]. They don't feel good enough. There aren't enough units, stats, or buffs to make them do enough. In Starcraft 2 Keystone, the diversity is significantly higher and there are many cases where your "Kill a Strong Unit" costing 2/1 in resources goes and kills something worth 5/3 or even 8/3 resources. The strongest unit your hitting in this case is worth 3/1 (And its damage is low? Even if its piercing, this damage needs to be increased as new "keywords" that effect unit stats are added. Similar to "Heroic" in Starcraft). I am also often surprised when Missile attacks just don't feel like they are accomplishing a ton. Similar effects in Keystone do significantly more damage, in cases where its 3v3 so there are significantly more units (less likely to stack, but units in this game stack only upon reaching a fight). Dislike/Please Fix: - Dusk Wings...? (Cloaked Human Fighter) feels absolutely broken. Cloak is extremely annoying to deal with. And this is especially true on the Human Faction cloaker unit as it deals High AoE Damage. A few of these units will deal with every single attack from the opponent as long as they are cloaked. - Map-Length and Insane Starts: The AI often has ludicrous starts. Since you can see your own card equivalent, the cards they send at what your resource count would be is often 50 - 100% more than what you would. Furthermore, the AI sometimes just starts with a large army that attacks you. If it wasn't for the fact that your Primary Ship isn't broken, it would feel impossible. I had multiple cases where turn 1 ramping to maximum resources (Tax card) somehow wasn't fast enough. It makes me think if you didn't get specific cards, how you would even possibly win. I've completed the Campaign, and completed 1 Roguelike adventure (few attempts too that didn't make it, some due to greed). The Roguelike feels weird in the sense that you don't upgrade your cards and all the cards feel kinda... vanilla? In a lot of Roguelikes, your starting deck/resource is absolutely terrible and you get additional cards/effects that are strictly better. Card Rewards feel way less important and sometimes feel outright like downgrades if they aren't good cards. Upgrade system is interesting but it doesn't feel like its massive powerspiking (I've only played a couple though). The starting bonus by far feels the strongest. I think the other options of taking "Repair" to your Primary Ship could be improved since skipping "increase maximum resource" feels like a losing cause. - Let me know if multiple runs of the Roguelike is very different as it did mention there are changes depending on how many wins you get. Overall: 7/10 I think Keystone is better but this is an indie game and its start. Most indie games with this start (from a previous game) usually have a rough start and get significantly better as they are further developed. I have high hopes for this game in the future. If a cooperative mode is added with any DLC, I will be purchasing them too. P.S. - I imagine that could make a cooperative Roguelike mode OR versus mode by copying decks from other players and giving them to the enemy AI similar to "The Bazaar" if there is a multiplayer-low player count issue.