That Time I Found A Box

While I don't think it's my cup of tea, I can still respect what it does. There's a lot going on in this game, and yet, it's all very manageable. It may seem overwhelming, but once you play a few rounds you understand it; you also only need to go halfway through the tutorial before you know everything as well (just need to get to Tier Up rewards) - the rest is just "how to play better" (which I'm sure is useful but I stumbled my way through my first run without it). ----- The goal of the game is to get enough Fight and/or Influence to make 2 out of 3 of the kings your friends, and then beat the third king. The way you do this is through combining, upgrading, crafting cards, curating your pool of cards, and ultimately playing them [you satisfy a king's request and his favor goes up (the other two kings take a small hit), and then he gives you a reward but comes back later with a harder request to fulfill]. In the beginning you have a basic deck of a few cards, along with a basic Pool of a few basic cards. Each turn, 1 random card in your pool will be copied to your deck. During your turn, you can do a few things: (0) | Vault: The vault can hold up to 4 cards, and cards can be recalled freely from the vault to be placed into your hand. An additional important part of the vault is that when a card has been in there for CardLevel+1 amount of turns, the vaulted card gets returned to your deck with a random new effect and +1 level. (1) | Play a card to a king for it's effects, after which it's top-most effect (out of 4 possible) will get sealed. (2) | Combine two cards together (the new card gets puts it back into your deck, the fused ones are removed); combined cards will have all the effects of both cards, up to 4 total. The priority is [Negative/Fight-Influence/Resources/Special], in terms of which effects will carry over to your new card when you combine them - but the cool part is that it always shows what the outcome will be before you commit to it. This has two bonus effects as well; one, this causes the new card to be completely unsealed (two fully/partially sealed cards = new entirely unsealed card), and causes the new card's level to go up by +1 (cards start at 0). (3.1) | Mirror - Copy a card. You sacrifice the card, but an identical copy of it (all effects+level) is placed into your Pool, which means the randomly added card each turn can begin to include copies of the one you just sacrificed. Here's the thing though, there can only be one copy of a card with the same name in the pool at a time - so you need to carefully add/remove/curate your Pool, as well as cards for maximal usage. (3.2) | Mirror - Random a card : Once per turn, you can play a card here to change it from its current existence into a copy of a random card in your pool. Risk, and reward; but also a way to weed out your worse cards later on, or change basic ones to strong ones. (4.1) | Ascend, split : You can sacrifice a level10 card here to cause it to split into up to 4 cards and add them to your deck, where each split card has a different one of initial card's 4 effects. This allows you to get more cards for combining, as well as focus your combination effects and end results. Additionally, the new cards are level0. (4.2) | Ascend, empower : You can place a level10 card here to cause all of its Fight and Influence values to go up by 30%, as well as resets the card back to level0 (important for combining, pool, tier-up rewards, etc) and unsealing it entirely. Every time a card is upgraded to level5 or level10, a "Tier-Up" rewards screen is unlocked. On this screen, get an array of options (some random, some not) that you can purchase with your resources to upgrade or alter your card - adding/removing effects, changing it entirely, etc. You can even create imperfect or perfect copies of the card, depending on how much you want to spend. You can also spend valuable gold to remove cards from your pool, but the cost to do so scales with the level of the card you're removing - another reason what level your card is is important. Do you add a weaker card now to help with the short-term, or do you hold out to try and make it as good as possible before adding it to your Pool, to keep the Pool small and lean? There's draw effects which seem to be quite common, but here's the catch - unless you use a shuffle effect, any played (discarded) cards won't get returned to your deck until the end of your turn, so going infinite is a lot harder. Shuffle effects are rarer from what I've seen, and then there are negative effects that blocking you from shuffling the entire rest of the turn. Don't get me wrong, draw effects still have a good place - since any combining/randoming/etc causes those cards to go back to the deck; so while I haven't done it, I see the potential for long strings of carefully crafted plays in a turn. ----- In short, there's a lot of unique things going on in this deckbuilder, in terms of what you're doing each round and how you're building your deck - even basic/blank cards quickly become a resource, since they're used to levelup cards and craft into new ones. And yet, even I could play it - so you'll be able to as well. It's a game that I know I'd be atrocious at, but the fact it's so unique makes me wonder if I should keep it just for that reason alone. Personally I'm leaning towards yes, because it's a cool deckbuilder that isn't just a SlayTheSpire clone - it's a whole unique game entirely.

Maybe I didn't stick with the game for long enough, but I just don't enjoy it at all. The game seems tailored for me, I love roguelite deck builders (even with their current oversaturation) and I'm easily intrigued by mystery and odd aesthetics. When I saw the name and some of the UI in screenshots and such, I assumed the game would be deeper and subtler, but I was immediately thrown off when actually playing it by the half-baked goofy pixel art and dialogue, grating music and repetitive gameplay. Again, maybe it gets better later, but it made a terrible first impression. As soon as you get to the main menu you'll immediately see "tutorials" and (if you're anything like me) sprint to it so you don't misunderstand/miss anything. This is a terrible mistake: 1. Starting a normal run already gives a better implemented and more easily digested tutorial for the first few runs 2. Almost everything has a tool-tip so you can always check what effect something has or action a thing does 3. Tutorials are split into many different numbered pieces that overexplain basic concepts and underexplain more complicated ones, while forcing you to linearly complete all of them (from 1 onwards) if you want to access all of them and 4. The tutorials have strict instructions you can easily mess up a little, which can fully break them in such a way that you're forced to restart the tutorial if you want to continue ("Oh? You played all cards except one when I said to play all? Now nothing will happen unless you start again." This awkwardness continues into main gameplay. When moving cards into or out of the card slots for different actions, they're extremely liable to get stuck in strange ways- refusing to move at all while still technically filling a space you need to use "combine" or staying in the vault despite also having been removed back into your deck. I can admire the originalish idea of having blank cards that you manage the effects and strength of to keep yourself alive, but it has the side effect of making most cards look horribly boring and indistinct (for some reason, many cards have names that are just too long to be displayed at all and, strangely, don't show up in tooltips either?). I just really don't like it. Maybe steer clear if you've already been spoiled by more polished and fun deckbuilders.

I enjoyed it. It's a card game that focuses on pure numbers, I never really used the card abilities other then draw +x cards, It was just easier to stack tons of attack or influence. There's some interesting things you can do with it though and there's a lot of modifiers you can unlock. Very satisfying 7/10

The dev gave me a key for this game like 7 months ago, and I only found it recently. While initially looking overwhelmingly complex, none of the mechanics seem that obtuse once you find the groove of the whole thing. What follows it my attempt to break it down. If this sounds cool to you, it's worth checking it out. The goal of the game is to appease 3 kings who ask for your assistance. Initially, you can either use Fight or Influence, but there are situations that require only Influence or only Fighting. Your cards start at level 0 and are garbage stat-wise. Each time you use a card, the top ability on it becomes locked. To unlock it, you either need an effect that unlocks, which is rare, or place the card in the Vault or Combine it. Cards placed in the vault will be upgraded in a number of turns (1 + their level), and will return to your deck completely unlocked, sometimes with better effects, sometimes with new effects, and its level is increased by 1. You can return cards stored in the Vault to your hand at any time, so if you need to store cards between turns, you can do so. When two cards are placed in the Combiner, their effects are combined together, with a limit of 4 effects on any one card. The new card is entirely unlocked, returned to the deck, and increases its level by 1. Every time a card hits level 5 or 10 (the max), you'll get a menu with a 12 possible effects, some might sacrifice the card, others might buff it, and so on. In addition, a level 10 is the max level, meaning you cannot place it in the Vault or Combiner. However, you can Ascend a card, either splitting each of it's effects into a level 0 card, or increasing the Fight/Influence on the card by 30% and returning it to the deck as a level 1 card. Okay, got that? We're almost done. Since combining cards reduces the number of cards you have, each turn will add a new card to your deck. There's a pool of 4 garbage cards at first, but it's better than nothing. At any time, you sacrifice a card to add it to the pool, meaning you might get a copy of it at the start of each future turn. The pool has a minimum of 6 cards, so if you add enough, you can start paying to remove bad cards from the pool... but be careful, as the cost is one plus the card's level, meaning you'll want try to only put in cards that are freshly Ascended. In addition to that random card from the pool each turn, you can reroll a card once per turn, turning it into a random card from the pool... but also returning it to the deck. So, with the base rules covered, I've found the most of my gameplay boils down to getting to a long combo turn. It's easy to get a massive deck, a ton of card draw effects, fight/influence, and cards with the Accelerate effect. What this means is that I'm playing cards, drawing through the entire deck, reshuffling, and, when too many effects are locked, placing those cards in the Vault and using Accelerate effects to upgrade them instantly, putting them back into the deck. It's fun and I enjoy it, but it's certainly a very out there game. It's certainly not a recommend for everyone, but if this description was enjoyable, try it out.

This is exactly my type of roguelite. If you're also sick of slay the spire clones and just want a very unique deckbuilding experience, and enjoy the complexity of things such as Noita and self-crafting your playstyle, this game should be right up your alley. While the tutorial is very long, and the matches are longer, it has a lot to explain and you need to interact with nearly all of the mechanics in order to do well. I'm on Purgatory 5, and still feeling very strong at the end of each build. Usually around mid-phase 2 I start to gain control of my build and really rein it into what I want to do that round. After winning the first time, I thought, 'Well why don't I just use that build every time? It seemed overpowered'. Now, I don't even remember what that build was. You need to take what you get and MAKE it overpowered, every single run. That uniqueness and feeling of cleverness where you generate your own infinite combo because you got -just- the right unique passives feels absolutely amazing, and each hour-and-a-half run flies by.

I randomly found the demo for this game during NextFest in 2025, and immediately got hooked. I played for days, and when not playing I would think about it and strategize for my next attempt. This is a very unique and creative deckbuilder (cardbuilder?) that is unlike anything else I've seen in the genre. Initially there's a lot of mystery to it and a lot of strange functions that don't make much sense and take time to figure out. But that's what I love about it - it intrigued me and got me hooked as I tried to figure out how to use the various tools and options. The full version has added a lot. There's great variety between runs; the ascension system keeps adding challenges; unlockable perks let you try different strategies; and elements in the game like the box's temperaments help mix things up between runs. You can definitely learn from your mistakes, and do some theorycrafting and try different things to solve the problems your running into (or figure out how to deal with them next time). I'd say it's probably not for everyone - it's a bit intense, takes some time to figure out and some focus to play - but I think it will really click for some people like it did for me. I had a comment in my original review asking for a save and quit feature, but that's been added now!

The Developer reached out to me and sent me a game key asking me to play the game and If I would make content on it. 4 Hours later it was way past my bed time and I knew that I was hooked on the game. So yes this is a free game that I received but the game was so much fun I said yes to making content on it and 9.2 hours in I am frustrated with how challenging the game can be however I enjoy the game so much that I want to try and overcome those challenges. If you like deck builders and card games this will satisfy you. See my live stream below:) https://www.youtube.com/live/9I9tkyy-M2E?si=mLuE2MOHVk4U_aTx

[quote] Please consider following my [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41005226/]Curation page[/url]. I cover a wide range of genres both paid and unpaid, providing unbiased opinions as well as regular giveaway events. [/quote] [b]Video Review TBD[/b] https://youtu.be/YVBKeyTwFkI [h2]Very Confusing, But Worth Learning[/h2] The demo had me completely lost. The tutorial is not intuitive and does not feel like it fully understands how to explain itself. The full release still struggles with this, but despite those issues, this ends up being one of the most rewarding games once it finally clicks. There is a steep learning curve, and the game does very little to guide you through it. However, when the systems start to make sense, it becomes genuinely engaging and satisfying to play, because there is no definitive ending, just infinite scaling. The closest comparison is Balatro, but this feels like a self aware parody of that style. The constant hushed, almost sarcastic whispers of "this is the best game I have played since Balatro" add to its strange charm. It is confusing, messy, and oddly compelling once you push past the initial frustration, then it becomes a highly engaging and hard to put down experience. [h2]Issue[/h2] As someone with QA testing experience who enjoys breaking games, I quickly found a major exploit that makes farming PP extremely easy. By rapidly spamming the End Turn button, you can push into higher turn tiers and effectively break the game. The kings and queens become stuck in an infinite loop of "I’m gonna getcha!" dialogue when they are suppose to kill you, which leaves the game in a soft locked state. During this time, you are free to roam, collect modifiers, and unlock achievements that grant upgrades and unlocks for future runs. Once finished, simply quit to the main menu. The game will execute you at that point, but you still receive the PP rewards. Instead of spending countless hours grinding for 10 to 20 PP, this method easily pushes you well past 50 PP within an hour, while also unlocking several of the 3% to 6% achievement which are quite difficult to acquire. This exploit trivializes progression and is very easy to reproduce. [h2]Gameplay[/h2] Survive as long as possible. Create cards, level them up, merge them, and build a setup that snowballs faster than the kings and queens can respond. Every run is about pushing your luck, stacking modifiers, and seeing how far you can break the system before it breaks you. You will lose runs. A lot. The game does a poor job of teaching itself, so experimentation is mandatory. Once the rules finally click, the chaos starts to make sense and the core loop becomes genuinely fun. [h2]How To Play[/h2] Let me make it simple. [b]Step 1:[/b] The Vault is a passive upgrade system. It does not consume cards to upgrade others. Use it to empower your cards passively over time with accell cards to speed up the process, carry them into the next turn for your future hands and also apply Vault effects consistently. [b]Step 2:[/b] Merging cards becomes essential once you have enough power to challenge a king or queen. Cards that reach Tier 5 or Tier 10 gain extremely strong effects. Combine them for massive upgrades and passives that let your build scale rapidly. [b]Step 3:[/b] Repeat this process while dealing with the kings’ and queens’ scaling Fight and Influence modifiers. This is not a deckbuilder built around a single strategy. Adapting your build each run is mandatory. My video review, once it is out, will go into far deeper explanation than the game itself does. [h2]Conclusion[/h2] This is a game that is absolutely worth checking out, despite claims that it doesn't click with some players, it's because they couldn't get past to basic understanding of it. As the game itself comments with the hushed tone whispers "It's a little hard for most people." (Also known as a skill and learning issue, not entirely on the part of the player mind you.) It is niche, surprisingly difficult, and minimalistically simple once you get past that initial hurdle. The atmosphere is strong, the strategy holds up, and the core systems are more engaging than they first appear, seriously, just give it a chance and see what it's worth. Expect to spend around 30 to 40 minutes experimenting with the mechanics before everything clicks and even then it still takes an hour or two to understand everything. Once it does, the game becomes far more enjoyable than its rough first impression suggests.