If you put Space Invaders and Slay The Spire in a blender, the aftermath would look a whole lot like StarVaders. The thing is, I love deckbuilding games, but so many Slay the Spire clones land in my inbox every week that they have to really put a unique spin on the formula to impress me.
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StarVaders does that, but not necessarily in the way you might expect. On paper, it’s already different from your standard deck-building game. There is a grid, a physical character you control, and movement and positioning are crucial. However, it’s the way StarVaders blends those core tenets with its array of pilots and mechs that really wows me.
The 3 playable mechs play very differently, and not in the same manner that the Ironclad and Silent play differently in Slay the Spire. These mechs have such different core mechanics that each one feels like a different deck-building game altogether. Furthermore, each mech has a choice of pilots that add further variety to their playstyles, making StarVaders one of the most varied deckbuilding games I’ve ever played.
| Gideon’s Bias | StarVaders Information |
|---|---|
| Review Copy Used: Yes | Publisher: Joystick Ventures |
| Hours Played: 14+ | Type: Full Game |
| Reviewed on: PC | Platforms: PC |
| Fan of Genre: Yes | Genre: Rogue-Lite Deck-Builder |
| Mode Played: All | Price: $24.99 |
Turn-Based Space Invaders
Just like the old classic game of Space Invaders, the enemies in StarVaders spawn at the top of the play area and creep ever downward. Once they land in one of the bottom three rows of the board, they begin channeling doom, and that’s how you lose the game. Unlike Space Invaders, StarVaders is turn-based and played with cards.
Cards move your little mech around the game board and allow you to do a variety of actions, such as simply firing at an enemy, laying a bomb, and so much more. The enemies themselves have their own quirks; some move fast, and others have shields or try to attack you. Taking damage adds a variety of junk cards to your deck, but you can’t actually lose just by taking damage.
This alone gives StarVaders a vastly different flavor from most deckbuilding games. Maneuvering yourself and enemies around the board gives the game a very tactile feel that ends up being both strategic and fast-paced.
Furthermore, runs feel much shorter than most deck-building games. You have a short time to augment your deck into a coherent strategy, and your runs usually end with a smaller deck than other titles in the genre. However, this is to StarVaders’ advantage; the way it plays lends well to molding a smaller, condensed, and cohesive strategy than a wide-sweeping one. The limited nature of deck additions makes every decision you make an important one, and I really enjoyed that.
Multiple Games in One
StarVaders features 3 different mechs, and each one alters the very core of the game, right down to how your resource system works. The Gunner mech uses heat to play cards. You can exceed your heat limit, but doing so burns that card, ending your turn and making that card unplayable for the rest of the battle. The Gunner mech is all about shooting and bombs, its playstyle very much nails the feel of a turn-based Space Invaders, as you move yourself around the lower parts of the grid and fire upwards at the Invaders.
The Stinger mech, on the other hand, has an energy level to play cards and gains more energy by attacking electrified enemies. The Stinger also has flow cards that are free if drawn during your turn. This mech zips around the battlefield in melee, cutting down enemies to link combos, and quite literally throws its own cards only to pick them up again and keep the combos going. It’s an entirely different experience from the Gunner.
Both mechs use the same foundations to protect the lower grid from approaching enemies. But the stark contrast between how they play makes them feel like they are from different games, yet playing with either of them feels like a cohesive experience.
Then you have the Keeper mech. The Keeper doesn’t even have a physical presence on the battlefield, instead, it summons entities that it possesses and controls while slinging spells via a regenerating mana system. Each of the three mechs plays so wildly different that I’m impressed that the game’s entire foundation doesn’t fall apart. On the contrary, each mech feels great to play and is full of depth to dive into.
The way StarVaders pulls this off reminds me a bit of the board game, Spirit Island. It takes a consistent base-level idea of how the board and enemies work, but drastically switches up how you interact with it via the characters you play. It’s executed brilliantly.
Each mech also has several pilots to choose from that alter the card pool and the mech’s playstyle further. While not as drastic a difference as the mechs themselves, they do matter. For example, one of the Stingers’ Pilots makes any cards thrown or placed on the map function as traps, and is all about manipulating enemies into those traps. That is a very different feel from the standard slide-and-slash playstyle of the Stinger.
I was certainly better at playing some mechs and pilots than others, however, I found them all to be interesting and fun to play.
Verdict
StarVaders is an impressive game, not just because it’s a unique spin on the deckbuilding genre, but how it pulls it off so well. When you play something like Slay the Spire, the different characters have differing playstyles, but you ultimately know you’re playing the same game.
Each of the mechs in StarVaders feels like it could have a whole game dedicated to it. At the same time, nothing feels unfinished or incomplete for any of them.
One of my favorite moments was the first time I played the Stinger after unlocking it. I thought after playing several runs with the Gunner that I had the game pegged. Playing the Stinger forced me to completely relearn how to play the game as if I had just booted it up for the first time. Much later, after I finally unlocked the Keeper, it happened again. There are not many games that have ever managed to give me that fresh game feeling twice, and StarVaders did it 3 times. That’s pretty incredible.
StarVaders is a challenging game too, with plenty of replay value. You could spend a long time trying to master a single mech and then do it two more times. It’s a game I see myself returning to for a long time, even after reviewing it.
