The cutscenes can be skipped. Holding Enter IIRC. There is a white prompt in the bottom right after you press any key.
In the beginning the game indeed seems much more open than it is, but somewhere in the middle it also seems more restricted than it actually is. There are five or six different solutions to the “boss key” so you can freely chose most of the maps for paths and events. You sacrifice half of one act for a solution and have the other 2.5 acts free to explore.
I am talking about the ending cut scenes before the enter one. It’s where there are books and then the talking and the final final fight in game game chatter.
I don’t think I agree with you. For example, if you’re Percival and want to do the Mite Ichor. You have to pick half of the first map to fight the left boss. And if you want a shop to remove cards then you’re pretty much left with 1 path since it’s not distributed evenly.
Then you only have 1 path in the second map.
The third map is a wash since all but 1 leads to the guard and off all of them that leads to the guard only 1 upgrades all your cards which is a huge power boost. You should take this on the last difficulty,
Or if you want the acid armor, then you have to take the right part of the first map. Left most in the second. Again, the third is a wash. But even if it wasn’t I, don’t think that’s 2.5 considering the third map is very short.
All of this and the maps itself doesn’t change. The challenge mode have changing maps but it has no true end boss. Sig is much too easy .
Ugh. This alone may well take the game off my wishlist. If I want to watch a poor cartoon I will . . . well okay, I do not know where to find those, but I would rather it were not within a game I am trying to play.
In better news, Ruff Ghanor, another deckbuilder with a strong story, is currently 60% off. Its reviews are mixed, some praising it as a story and theme rich deckbuilder, others pointing out bugs and mechanics issues. I will take a risk on it and report back!
I’ve not played the game at all so I’m not disagreeing in any way but WOW that seems insane game design that’s pretty incredible.
I’m only nearing the end of the first character’s arc, but this jives with my experience. I rarely feel like any given card offers better setups or payoffs than my starting deck. The equipment I run across usually provides more than enough scaling to beat everything (on Normal difficulty.)
I was really enthusiastic about the potential of the static-map-based story progression, but like @Hereafter mentioned, it has ended up being mostly tedious. It would be rad if this game’s progression was more akin to Outer Wilds, where you could beat a character’s story in a single run with map and build knowledge gained over many exploratory runs. But it’s very much “do this specific run to get a key” and then “do this specific run to reach a lock and get the next key.”
Hearing about the end boss and story bugs makes me not really inclined to continue.
Please do!
Same experience with Cobalt Core and Mahokenshi. I liked them. Playing through each character was enjoyable, but I didn’t find anything more to stick around for. So, I guess that means I would enjoy a once-through of Looper Tactics someday. Noted!
Reporting back on Ruff Ghanor, regret with not much to say. I bought it and refunded it, so my actual experience is limited. Within the first 30 minutes I just did not like what I could see and experience. I encountered some of the persistent bugs that are described within Steam reviews, including some tooltip / pop-up issues (playing on desktop) and I noticed some incomplete, not mis-spelled, just fully incomplete words within the descriptions of things. The production quality also appears low, with minimal animation to match card action.
It may get good, it may have a compelling narrative, I cannot comment on that.
New find for me, and gosh, this looks like a Slay-a-like that is staying close to the Slay style and format, perhaps with improved production quality but very likely inferior balancing. Will probably be my next try-out.
One key feature they list gives me pause:
Not sure how I feel about that. Not a fan of any sort of durability mechanic in games, generally, BUT it does mean a super thin deck isn’t going to be optimal and the cards appear to have dozens of used, looking at the Steam page (notice the number bottom center of each card).
The different characters with their own starting locations and persistent map is certainly intriguing!
Have you ever played Blood Card or Blood Card II? Excellent deckbuilding roguelikes IMO. They have the feature that your cards are also your health pool, so when you take damage, you lose those cards, although only temporarily. It is a mechanic I expected to hate since it interferes with curating a most excellent deck and then deploying it elegantly, but gosh, it worked well.
Also wary of this though. I like to keep things. My spirit animal is “Magpie” in this sense.
Yup, after you suggested them, I think.
This looks interesting. Not a deckbuilder per se, but each character has a few slots to equip powers that are available each turn (and passive abilities just work without being put into play). Heavy Saturday morning cartoon vibes. Not always a fan of teams in games like this, but the approach is interesting here. You aren’t really managing the complete decks
@Lykurgos Did you get a chance to go in on Demon’s Mirror yet?
For anyone who don’t know, it’s a chain match 3 mixed with a deck builder.
It’s a chain 3 mixed with a deckbuilder. Apologies, but this is a hill I’m willing to die on. To the developer’s credit, they call it a chain-3. Is just so depressing to see something labeled a match-3 that isn’t what I’m expecting
Yes! Day 1 purchase for me after being wowed by the demo.
I am still on my first full run, so cannot comment at all on run variety, meta-progression, difficulty and other important things.
What I already love though is how slick it is. I think Slay had this magical quality of click, drag, action, outcome, with very little friction getting in the way of the dopamine payoff of whatever you were doing. Nothing to wait for, everything was just so responsive. This has exactly the same cadence.
The gameplay would be very faithfully Slay like. Starter deck, new cards, remove cards, card upgrades, single use items (scrolls), artifacts with passive bonuses, a map of nodes with battles, shops, events, elite battles, rest sites etc.
Of course, the big hook here is the pairing of card based play with the chain matching board and my early delight is at just how wonderfully well integrated they are.
Part of your deck is the usual, attack, defend and buff cards. Another part of it is made of of board manipulation cards that swap, destroy or convert symbols on the board. Your energy is used to both play cards AND create chains, so every turn, you have the tactical choice of which to do. You can do both, even with the starting 3 energy, but you can, for examples, play 3 cards and no chains, or 2 chains and no cards, and which is better is going to shift turn by turn.
Within the sea of okay-ish and sometimes standout Slay-a-likes I feel this one is doing something very different, very well. I will be back to report after a few runs!
Yes, you’re right, I agree 100%. It’s more like Pokemon Shuffle than Puzzle Quest. But don’t worry about being pedantic.
My eyebrows twitch when people compare tableau builders and deck building game to deckbuilders gaming.
This is actually very important to me. Certain games like Beneath Oresa have a terrible time with this.
Thanks for the write up!
I need to watch more footage. I don’t think I’ve given it a fair shot
More on Demons Mirror! Yeah, love it . . .
Short and Lazy Review
Fuse Slay the Spire with a chain-3 game, and you have Demon’s Mirror.
Key note. Chain-3, not Match-3. With Match-3, you swap the position of board symbols to create a 3, 4 or 5 block. With Chain-3, you drag a line through as many symbols of the same kind as you can, so long as they are adjacent, orthogonally or diagonally.
Concise Review
Set aside the chain-3 board temporarily, and Demon’s Mirror follows the Slay-a-like formula closely.
Begin with a starter deck and a starter artefact / trinket unique to a character, which strongly influences what they are better at
Choose your path on a branching map of nodes with battles, Elite battles, rest sites, shops, events and deck manipulation sites
Progress through multiple acts, each act ending in a boss fight
Battles are a turn-based card-playing tightrope of trying to deal damage whilst avoiding taking damage, and wins result in card and coin rewards
During a run, you add, remove and upgrade cards, gain permanent passively run-changing trinkets and single-use scrolls
Then what it does differently, which also changes all the card-based play, is give you a 6x6 board of gems, representing attack, defence, a form of power-up and a form of limit-break currency, 4 total.
You have the 3 energy points, same as Slay, initially, but you split them between playing cards or creating chains.
Each battle turn then presents a tactical dilemma, what is the best combination of cards and chains?
Highlight: Super slick and responsive
Slay has a magical quality of a near frictionless sequence of card-select, drag to target, release, outcome, with immediate feedback and that little dopamine hit that accompanies it.
Demon’s Mirror has that, 100%. Everything executes slickly and feels goldilocks, just right.
Highlight: Simple innovation > great tactical challenge
Many turns give you a wonderful little tactical dilemma. On any given turn, you may have choices like these:
Play 2-3 chains but no cards
Play 3 or more cards, but no chains
Split your energy between chains and cards
Which is the best will also change based on how you can change the board state before chaining, through cards – often 0 cost – that destroy, convert or move gems around.
You have a LOT of scope for setting up over several turns for a huge attack, for example, by removing other types of gems from the board to create a long chain of attack gems, applying a vulnerable debuff to enemies, and a chain buff to yourself.
Highlight: Great synergy between cards and board
Many cards can manipulate the board state, and it appears – initially – viable to really lean in to either a card-heavy or a board-heavy deck. The cards and the board interact with each other – a lot – requiring careful thought both in battle and in the overall deck building.
Caveats? Learning Curve
Take the learning curve of any deckbuilder – it can be tough initially as you try and figure out what the heck makes a viable deck. This has that challenge AND then the added complexity of the chain-3 side. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I could imagine that non-veterans of both genres might find the learning pretty harsh initially.
I am . . . . kinda good at these games. I have lost my first 4 run attempts here on the basic difficulty. I love that. I want to lose at this point. I know not everyone feels the same.
Caveats? Meta Progression
Writing this only 3-4 run attempts in, I can say little just yet. There are things to unlock, including the core characters and buffs and debuffs that can be applied to an entire run to change the challenge level.
Dammit, you’re going to make me cry.
These are the towers of hades I usually love. Lots of little choices
Oh man, that’s fascinating. Surprising that it is sitting at 87% positive and not flooded with negative reviews about it being too hard.
Oh wow, just noticed this was published by Good Shepherd (Monster Train, Dicefolk, etc). It’s Steam deck verified already. Interesting that there is no launch discount, but a bundle with MT. I suppose that might feel the market for this game overlaps heavily with MT ownership.
