Snack Escort

I wish I had nicer things to say about this game. I think it's got good ideas, potential, and does some interesting things. You get plenty of artifacts, which allows you to get a lot of syngergies quickly, which is cool! But unfortunately, it's just not a very good game. It's both too easy and too hard at the same time - the early game is a desperate struggle to get the right units in the right places in time - and with one card every 60 seconds, if you don't get the tower you need in time, your run is over before it begins. If you make it over that hump, though, and manage to get a combo that lets your deck cycle quickly, then the game stops being about tactics and more about slowing down the map speed so you have enough time to place all your towers without your hand filling up. at that point, it barely batters what your towers are - if you have 100 towers on the field, you're going to win. At that point, it's just tedious, waiting for the map to end while visual effects cover your entire screen and hoping you don't get too many mysteriously invincible (glitched?) enemies that you can't even see. It's just not good, unfortunately.

Pick a deck and artifact, fight through a roguelite map in tower defense battles, earn artifacts, cards, and upgrades after each win, and protect your food from enemy waves to complete the run. Since there’s no story, you begin your run in the classic way by selecting your starting character, or deck in this case. There are 12 decks, each containing six preset cards that generally match the icon representing the deck. For example, a bow icon features archer cards, while a shuriken icon includes ninja units. Every deck consists of four unit cards and two support cards. The final choice is one of seven artifacts, each offering several useful perks, though you will likely start with one that suits your playstyle. Once you are done, you appear on a roguelite map with several nodes and branching paths that lead to the map’s boss. Most nodes are battles, but you will also encounter shrines, elite enemy fights, shops, and resting areas that always appear right before a boss. If you dislike the layout, you can keep clicking to generate a new map, though there are no particularly good or bad layouts, so you might as well play whatever you get. Battles take place in a tower defense style. Before each battle, you draw four random cards from your deck and place them on the map. Spells cannot be placed, of course, and are instead cast as one time effects, but the overall idea remains the same. Units can only be placed on certain spots, and this is where things get interesting. Some spaces provide benefits, others impose curses, and some offer both at once. For instance, a tile might grant a unit longer attack range but reduce its strength, or you might get a free random unit. New tiles are revealed around a placed unit, so you never know what you will uncover next. A card can be played at any time, and you don’t have to place everything, and if you still have cards left in the deck, you draw a new card every minute. A battle continues until the timer reaches zero and you defeat all enemies that arrive in several waves. Your goal is to protect the food at the end of the path, which serves as the enemies’ main target, although they will also attack your units. If all the food is destroyed, the run ends and you return to the main menu. There are no unlockables, so every run depends largely on your luck with artifacts and units. The first few battles are not especially exciting because your choices are limited, but after each victory you can select several rewards. You earn some money, choose a new artifact, and either add a new card to your deck or upgrade one you already have. Upgrading improves all unit stats or increases the effectiveness of a spell. If you choose a new card, you pick one from a random selection of four, or more if you have the right artifact. And that is really all you need to know. Runs and battles move quickly, and it is satisfying to watch the small pixelated units attack anything that comes within range, spells trigger across the paths through artifact effects, and enemies fall one after another. The game does not feature extra content, but in return it shows you everything it has to offer without requiring any grinding for additional features.

I can't recommend it in the current balance. It's not very well balanced, its niether a tower defense nor a card game in its feels. Like you'll pick a deck of 6 cards, an artefact and enter a roguelike map, but each instance of the map is one full wave no turns like you'd think in a tower defense or card game, and you draw a card once every minute and each map is about 4ish minutes plus. So you might draw 4 or more cards, and if you have a lot of cards that can be punishing depending on your choices, since card usage/economy can be a net negative in traditional card games, but if you don't have cards then you hope to recover something useful on your next draw from your other pile. Your heroes are the towers that you use, Your heroes that you place can die, so like hopefully you can draw another hero. Placement of heroes are restricted on predetermined blocks, and you can't place a hero to act as a wall which is a bit silly since there are melee heroes that have short range. Plus your heroes can die, so why not have them tank and delay? It talks about gaining experience and battletotems but I don't see the implementation of that anywhere in the menus, so there isn't a progression system that I'm aware of. Even if your hero levels up in a map, that doesn't carry over to the next map or run, and the next map is an all new map. Also, some maps just throw two lanes early on, not very cool nor am I prepared for defending two lanes against waves of tougher units with 7 or so cards. Especially since you get 4 cards on the first hand, and you're kind of RNG hoping you get blocks for more draws and recover. I'd be a lot more forgiving if it was early access, but this is not a complete game and the loop isn't so fun. It's more get lucky instead of building powerful slow progression with tactical brevity that you'd expect in EITHER a tower defense or a card game. I'd expect more draw phases if this was a card game, and I'd expect turns or waves if it's a towerdefense. It doesn't have mazing that you'd see in other TDs, and it sort of throws you out to the wolves limiting and restricting you to play the way it wants to be played instead of tinkering to make something silly work. It's too RNG focused with the placement of towers and buffs or debuffs that can limit your run, and it feels nihilistic after getting a good setup and having the map be changed and the board be reset. So it's not very progressing feeling, lack of meta progression and lack of meaningful hero/tower placement on a map since the board is RNG the next node you travel to. Maybe I'm being too harsh here, but I didn't really enjoy it so I simply don't recommend it.

Snack Escort is a tower defence game with really nice looking visuals, nice music and some elements that are popular in today's roguelikes. The game does not have meta progression, which is ok ;but this might limit replayability for some people. The systems and builds seem to have some complexity to it but they are easy to ignore. Unfortunately this game has some problems and after finishing a couple runs ,it is needed to say that - Snack Escort provides an extremely unbalanced gameplay experience. As the criticism goes, players can just lose because of RNG ,not enough cards in hand ,bad starting hand ,empty spots on the map with no enhancements ,or just because your warriors (towers) die when the enemy attacks. What puts the player in the condition where you cannot recover from the failure in the run. Another part of the bad stuff is how buggy the game is … I understand making a broken build where everything dies on the screen because of some active effect …(screen shaking everything explodes)... but there are so many small unexpected things that can break the game. Filing a deck with too many cards sometimes breaks ui elements, having too many artifacts breaks the game completely ,because there are limitations of how many artifacts players can have ;but still nothing stops you from picking new ones ,which causes some corruption (i can only assume)that make the game act in weird ways. Overall Snack Escort is a cute, unbalanced ,good looking ,tower defence - for a couple hours, and all of this for a reasonable price. It is 6.8/10 -1 for bugs and lack of balance.

Too much RNG. Please add metaprogression.

Game has some gamebreaking bugs (no longer draw heroes) and some gamebreaking combos (infinite draw) that both just take all the fun out of the game. Fun enough idea, but the balancing and actual player agency doesnt seem to land for me.

From the devs of 2 fairly priced hidden gems, Nebula and Tiny Breakers Camp, Snack Escort is an addictive TD deck building roguelike gem. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/indieretrogamers

z punktu widzenia okazjonalnego gracza wciągająca, dodatkowo z nutą nostalgii dla osób czujących klimat grafiki ze starszych komputerów i konsol.

A very addictive game. I've spent hours playing it, and even then, I've never stopped. Great storyline, lots of options in the cards. There's a lot of characters as well. I had a lot of fun on Sunday evening. I recommend it

Wciągający Tower Defense. Piękny pixel art i bardzo dobrze zaprojektowane połączenie mechanik.