Neurodeck : Psychological Deckbuilder is a somewhat simplistic console game, it's a console ported 2D minimalistic cardgame where, instead of the usual, interesting plot of attacking bad guys or defeating an enemy or going on a dungeon crawl, you live your life as someone with mental issues.
Trying to address social issues through the medium of video games is misguided and can be harmful. While it's plausible to suggest the intention was noble, this can do more harm than good. Game developers are not professionals in areas of mental health and social problems, and when they use video games to pretend they are, this can cause far more harm than good. It's my opinion that it's improper to use video games to push political or social agendas. Apart from the harm such hamfisted attempts at addressing social problems can cause, this offers zero benefit to PC gamers. People suffering from health issues or other social problems should seek out professional help rather than going to crap shovelware video games attempting to get sales by exploiting such problems for their own benefit, as is the case here.
Case in point, the developers genuinely send the message that if you are suffering from psychological problems, these can be cured by having a good night's sleep and eating pizza. This is a completely hamfisted and arguably harmful position to take... at the very least it's trying to make light of real human social issues in an utterly disrespectful way, and with only one clear goal: To get your money.
Gameplay itself is tolerable but the theming on the cards, as mentioned, is problematic. The gameplay lacks depth and interest compared to deeper CCGs like Slay the Spire, and is an overall shallower experience, but the primary goal of this game is to be an armchair psychologist for console gamers, so we shouldn't expect too much.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
The game features mostly static, barely animated 2D images, the kind of thing you expect to see in browser/flash games. While the artwork itself, while mediocre, might be considered passable, the visual presentation here is negligible, it might as well be a slideshow or a Youtube video. Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids had more advanced animation and visuals going on than this game does.
The game features no proper level design and only very limited game/story flow/plot, as they opted to try to use samey repetitive procgen algorithms as a substitute for adding such content to the game, to avoid doing the important job of level and encounter design. As a result, the game doesn't actually have any content worth mentioning, just endless, boring, repetitive, soulless algorithmically generated sameyness every run you do. Developers must learn that procedural generation is not an acceptable substitute for content.
This looks and feels like a mobile app, but I wasn't able to find it on the app stores, just on consoles. Maybe it was removed, maybe it was rejected by Apple and Google (they do have more rigorous quality standards than Valve does for Steam, after all).
Regardless, for all intents and purposes Neurodeck : Psychological Deckbuilder might as well be a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones and play games that might as well be mobile apps.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
Neurodeck : Psychological Deckbuilder has the farcical, insulting price of $14 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. This is also competing with over 9,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. Because this is the kind of game you can just play for free on mobile phones, it's impossible to recommend anyone should pay money for the same experience on Steam. This costs more than you can get Slay the Spire for, and you can play serious cardgames like Hearthstone and MTG for free, and they don't pretend to be psychologists.
