Incredibly fun and satisfying deck-building roguelike with some (to my knowledge) genuinely innovative ideas. After about 180 hours I'm at 98% unlocks, just for context.
This game solves, to me, one of the biggest flaws/frustrations with deck-builds/card games, and that is how often you get stuck in a situation where you can’t do anything useful. Drew a hand of cards with too-high mana cost? Tough ♥♥♥♥. Drew a hand with only ‘defend’ when the enemies aren’t even attacking? Tough ♥♥♥♥.
With Hyperspace Deck Command’s dual status system, it’s extremely rare that you find yourself in a situation where you just can’t do anything useful, even if there are no enemies, you can buff your allies, and if all your ships are dead or retreated, then you can debuff the enemy, or hell, you can even use one tech card to buff another tech card in your hand.
Combine this with the orbit/unit positioning system, which creates lots of interesting choices regarding which of your units you let take damage and which enemies you target, creating situations where you can play risky, letting a unit die so another can hit a high-threat enemy, or spread out damage to keep everything alive or use constructs for bait.
The upgrade system (which a recent update made even deeper) is also really fun and lets you make some really really busted stuff, while generally being quite grounded (you don’t need to make some game-breaking thing to win a run, far from it).
These choices, be it which cards i play where, how i place my units, or where i put what upgrade, are crucially not ‘A or B’ choices, but way more nuanced/multi-faceted. Do i buff the damage of my AoE ship, or my quick-acting multi-attack ship, or do i instead use it as a debuff on the enemy boss, or this weak enemy that is just barely going to survive and attack next round without the added damage-taken?
So yes, if you like loads of crunchy and interesting choices in your deckbuilders, pick up HDC today!
To me the main ‘cons’ for this game are two-fold:
- The difficulty/learning curve.
When I started playing, I lost a good number of runs in situations where I couldn't see how I was supposed to have been able to win, like the amount of enemy health, damage and actions left me no chance of victory. Since the game’s meta-progression is purely unlock-based, this sometimes left me feeling like the game was quite RNG-heavy and that if you didn’t get a good build going, you were just screwed.
However, this is very much not the case. I can pretty reliably win runs now, both because the cumulative updates have made the game (slightly) easier, but also because i have way more knowledge and ‘feel’ for the game’s mechanics and encounters.
I still count this as a flaw, as i imagine new players will still have that “I didn’t stand a chance” feeling, and i absolutely understand if some people bounce off the game after losing a string of runs with that feeling lingering. I wish the game could better communicate why you failed, but i also don’t see how it could go about doing that.
- buff/debuff/faction balancing.
This may get alliviated, and it is far from egregious (which itself should indicate the quality of the game) but there are some factions and their status effects which generally feel a step or two stronger or weaker than the others. Some of this could be ‘fixed’ just by adjusting some unit/card stats, but some of it is also just that the way certain buffs/debuffs work, mechanically, feels very weak/powerful, and there there might not be any clean way to bring them in-line with the others without changing something fundamental about that status effect’s mechanics.
It’s nothing that breaks the game or faction, and even the weakest status effects have potent combos and strategies, but i leaves me feeling a little like i’m gimping myself by using faction A rather than B, at least if i’m going for maximum-difficulty unlocks.
