Creative, compelling, and tightly constructed, it’d be a real shame to let the likes of Monster Train 2 drown out this dark horse indie deckbuilder.

I’ve made a point to sift through the offerings of Steam Next Fest whenever they occur. Developers get to be featured in just one of these per game, so it pays to put forward a good showing, even with early builds. They aren’t all winners, but you do find gems fossicking through the titles on offer, and it’s during one such trawling session I stumbled upon StarVaders. It consumed me for the remainder of the Next Fest, demanding my attention and devouring the time that might have gone elsewhere. Rarely has a game been added to my wishlist so quickly, but I was confident StarVaders was a winner.

Now released in full, StarVaders has proven just as much of a time vampire as I anticipated.

What If Space Invaders Was A Deck Builder?

StarVaders is a turn-based roguelike deckbuilder that sees you piloting a mech against an invading swarm of aliens. Anyone who has ever glanced at a round of Slay the Spire will get the idea immediately: spend your per-turn resources on the card combinations you’ve assembled to defeat incoming enemies. The kicker is StarVaders takes place on a 7×9 grid, forcing you to consider movement, positioning, and attack ranges as you deal with the alien swarms. You’re given perfect information with which to plot out your movements a la Into The Breach, and every turn sees (most) enemies descending down the grid one row at a time. If they reach the bottom three rows, you’re given one last opportunity to destroy them before they reach the planet below and increase your Doom gauge. Max out Doom, and your run is over.

It’s a simple premise drawing from other games like the three already mentioned, but this bizarre blend of mechanics and approaches makes for a strangely compelling experience. StarVaders is quick to pick up — almost to a fault for runs on the initial difficulty — but remarkably complex as the unlocked arsenal for both you and your foes ramps up. Once you get a good deck rolling, the combo counter starts to become a call to arms I was determined to answer with the utmost exaltation.

That first run is the most overtly Space Invaders and displays the core concept in a digestible fashion. You’ll play as the Gunner class, and Gunners feature the most straightforward gameplay systems. Your attack cards spawn bullets. These bullets fire into the column above your mech’s position. Move, shoot, and deploy an area-of-effect bomb on occasion as you defeat the invaders that descend one row at a time towards the planet’s Doom. It’s turn-based Space Invaders. Message received loud and clear.

Except even here, StarVaders introduces wrinkles. The Gunner’s resource is Heat, and all cards have a Heat cost to play. You start with 3 Heat, so your options are limited, but you also have the option to overheat by playing an extra card, which immediately ends your turn. That card is then Burnt, making it a dead draw for the rest of the fight.

Each of the three mech classes in the game — Gunner, Stinger, and Keeper — have wholly different resources and a unique array of cards associated with their playstyles. Furthermore, there are a total of ten pilots in the game spread across those classes, each with their own individual starting loadout and mechanics on top of those class specific cards. Each Gunner pilot interacts with Heat differently. Roxy, the starting pilot, will start the first turn after you first Overheat in a battle with two additional max Heat. After your first run, you’ll unlock Noel, who instead freezes burnt cards.

There’s a lot of options on offer here, and the roguelike nature of StarVaders means you’re often forced to work with what shows up rather than ideal deck combinations. Even when things don’t land perfectly in my favour, however, I’ve enjoyed every starting loadout on offer even before they start to get flush with further combos. That’s an impressive accomplishment. I’ve still not utilised every card or artifact, yet the additional levels of complexity and combo potential really do keep things fresh even after dozens of runs.

The Soul of Wit

So far I’ve put 30 hours into StarVaders. Every class and pilot has been unlocked, and a run completed with each on Apocalypse (the highest base difficulty). Numerous challenges and higher difficulty modifiers remain, but that’s still a lot of completed objectives. 30 hours is a decent amount of time, but it pales in comparison to the 100 hours of Slay the Spire I’ve played without accomplishing nearly as much.

StarVaders has something many games of its ilk lack: brevity. This is true on a per-run basis, as well as in the overall meta progression of the game. Each StarVaders run consists of three Acts, broken down into three battles and then a boss fight. Assuming you trigger the conditions to access the true final boss, that’s no more than 13 fights before your run is finished.

There’s plenty on offer in StarVaders, but runs do fly by at a pretty quick pace. This is both a pro and a con. Your time isn’t being wasted, nor does each session drag on endlessly. Runs feel decently sized to satisfy, and I definitely don’t feel as if I’ve been short-changed if RNG doesn’t favour me with good rewards. On the flip side, there are times when I’ll get a good deck combination together, only to feel like the run is over before I really get to play around with that toolkit. Having an endless mode or a longer run could have been fun.

Still, I found myself perfectly satisfied with the amount of content, variety, and challenge I got from my time with StarVaders. I appreciate being able to pick up and play a round of it without feeling like I’ve signed up for a larger time investment; there’s also no penalty for quitting the game and resuming later if that ever does become an issue.

Another potential issue StarVaders neatly sidesteps is shorter runs meaning less time to get the cards and upgrades needed for a deck to work. Each Act gives you three Chrono Tokens. These are functionally rerolls, resetting all the rewards or items in the store. They can also be used to reset a turn mid-battle, drawing you a new hand and potentially saving a doomed run at the last second. You replenish all three Chrono Tokens at the start of each so they’re well worth spending freely. Many an unwinnable situation has been salvaged by these, and it’s a great inclusion.

Furthermore, each of the ten pilots have their own five challenge modes. Three of these are uniform across the entire roster, serving as ramping difficulty options after you’ve completed the base three. The other two are unique challenge modes per character, which have wholly custom deck loadouts to start with in addition to added difficulty modifiers. Even with the shorter runs, StarVaders does not lack for things to do if you really want to sink your teeth into what it offers.

Should’ve Aimed For Where They’re Moving

StarVaders is well-designed software, when you get down to brass tacks. Not only is it fun to play and varied in its options, but plenty of thought was given to less immediate but equally important factors. The UI is informative and clear, easily providing further explanations and clarifications for cards, mechanics, and terminology in the midst of a battle. Its graphics are simple but legible, with vibrant colours and solid artwork. The music is also a bop, and the Act 3 boss theme is an earworm that lives rent-free in my skull. While it’s not much of a story-focused game, StarVaders at least provides a short and functional narrative for its events, as well as sprinkling in brief flavour dialogue for each pilot during battles and after runs.

Ultimately, StarVaders is just solid and compelling deckbuilding fun. It also deserves more attention than it currently has. After all, the developers made a post celebrating when they reached 500 reviews on Steam in the opening days (it’s exceeded 1200 at the time of writing, while still being Overwhelmingly Positive). That’s a lot more low key than so many other titles, and it’s clear this was a passion project by a small team that ended up making a really cool game.

Despite it being right up my alley, there’s an alternate timeline out there that saw me never discover StarVaders during a Steam Next Fest. Frankly, that’s just a less rich timeline to exist in. So consider this my effort to highlight it, and make sure that’s not the timeline you live in, either.

Score: 9

This review is based on a PC copy of the game the writer purchased themselves.