Negative Space

I'm about halfway through my first run and I can say that this game has a lot more strategy and depth than I expected! Aside from the bright, oozy visuals and *stanky*, groovy music, there's a lot of novel mechanics and synergies going on. It's pretty weird playing a card battler where the enemy doesn't fight back, but at the same time you get the feeling of playing against an opponent. I especially like the mechanics around card placement and resolving missions. Seems like there's a lot of overlap in the systems, and I'm looking forward to seeing more!

The demo sold me. If you like Slay the Spire, and I do (played 100+ hours), you'll get a few hours out of this cute inspired deck-builder. Trinkets and cards are interesting. Some quality synergies that I'm discovering slowly but surely. I probably won't play it for 100 hours, but for the price, if you like deckbuilders, it's worth it. I'm definitely coming back to beat it with each of the different types of captains (it would be best for replayability if the 'next levels' only showed up once you've beaten the easier version for each one) and it would be nice to get some achievements for things too.

Just me and the boys exploring space. Best feature of the game is exploring the different captain decks. Not the kind of game you min max and overthink every decision - fun and enjoyable little deckbuilder

I've played a bit of the full version now after having played the demo earlier, and I'll re-iterate that I think this is a nice fresh take on the roguelite deckbuilder genre. It feels familiar enough to play easily-- you've got cards of various strengths and abilities, but the enemies aren't monsters attacking you, they're missions to deploy crew on. They don't attack you directly, but instead present various hazards while requiring certain amounts of effort to complete. Do you go for a highly rewarding mission that isn't threatening you? Do you close out a hazardous mission now, even if it wastes some of a card's potential? The strategic layers feel deep enough to be satisfying, but not confusing. From what I've seen there's a nice mix of in-round and overall strategies, and it's felt an appropriate mix of challenging and possible to go for a specific build that I want.

It feels different than other deck builders. On the surface of it, it could be a slay-like game. The difference is that you spend each 'fight' balancing finishing objectives with building up your power for the fight. So, your engine needs to be built not just to protect and damage, but to build up power to a level where you can finish the challenge.

really fun deckbuilder, plus the visuals and the music are really good, highly recommend!

good feedback loop with enough new to keep my trying one more time. keep up the good work

Stylish little deckbuilder that feels satisfyingly snowbally. Every hand feels like a puzzle to get more than the last and the trinket variety and card synergies are fun! The goals are different enough to keep gameplay interesting, and the easy difficulty lets you more easily experiment with builds.

This is a very competent roguelike deckbuilder! I had a great time in the window where I was still unlocking new cards and character, and a somewhat less great but still fun time winning on the hardest difficulty with a few of the characters on offer. The music and graphics are totally rad. I find myself humming some variant of the main encounter theme as I go about my day. At first I though it was a bold choice to go with an art style where there would necessarily be so little differentiation between card arts, but I think it mostly works. I never really had difficulty identifying a card at a glance. The version I played (1.0) is really brought down by bugs. Incorrect reminder text, specific relics that don't apply there effects, and an entire difficulty level that is misapplied. These are little things that I imagine (hope?) will be polished out, and I didn't really start to feel their presence til 5 or so hours in. The other big issue here is the limited design space. Crew cards are differentiated by their exploration value, cost, and rules text. Sadly that text usually zeroes in on increasing exploration value or decreasing cost based on the number of another thing in your deck, or a game action that's happened, or a game action that happened this turn. It all feels a little rote. Overall, I'm giving this a recommend. Play it if you like this genre, but I doubt you'll stick around for long.

Let's see how many more hours I pour into this, but it's already in the good tier, it may become excellent. Very well polished, clean decks and great characters to make the most out of the decks. I'm yet to find a deck that demolishes, I fell like my strategies just get me by, but so far the depth is great, I haven't yet found mastery, and I feel that I'm improving, I just hope the well just keeps getting deeper and that there is more space to build an incredible deck.