It’s an unusually slow news week this week, so instead of discussing whatever shenanigans are going on in the AAA sector of gaming, I instead come to you with a bit of indie news. I just learned of a new roguelike deckbuilder, one that’s got a pretty intriguing hook. The game is Night Machine and it tasks you with fighting the Moon. Yeah, really.
Okay, okay. It’s not literally the Moon you’re fighting. It’s the automated alien factory inside it that you’re working against. As for the hook, there’s actually two components to it. The first is that everything happens in real time. This means there are no deckbuilding or shop breaks in between mission segments. You’re building your deck and upgrading your ship while in the middle of the action. It sounds potentially overwhelming, but I imagine that there are some ways to buffer things and give yourself a chance to breathe here and there.
The other component to this is that everything about your ship is controlled through the cards in your deck. This is to say that you use the cards to send instructions to the ship’s computer, and then the computer executes them in sequence. It’s very much like how very remote spacecraft are controlled today. They’re too far away to control by normal means, so engineers queue up series of commands for the craft to do in specific sequences.
It’s apparently in these command sequences that the Night Machine’s card synergies and combos come to light, meaning that not only do you need to to get the right cards into your deck, but you also have to learn how and when to properly use them. It sounds like some combos even upgrade certain cards as they’re being carried out, so the systems governing this could very well be deeper than they first appear.
I haven’t played it yet myself, so I can’t tell you how well this all actually works. I’m just a fan of roguelike deckbuilders and thought I’d pass the info along to you all since Night Machine sounds like something genuinely new and different. If you wind up giving it a try, let me know how it is, yeah?
Are you into deckbuilders or roguelikes/roguelites? What’s one of your favorites?
Image from the Steam page
VIRTUAL BASTION 