I would understand if you didn’t believe me when I said one of the best games I’ve played this year is a roguelike deckbuilder inspired by Space Invaders, but hear me out. Last year’s smash hit roguelike Balatro boiled the card game genre down to its “make the numbers go up” essence, and we’ve already seen games like Nubby’s Number Factory follow suit. But the deckbuilder that’s been capturing my attention recently pushes in a more maximalist direction, with multiple playable characters, a strong tactical element, and mountains of abilities that form compelling synergies.
StarVaders is the first game from developer Pengonauts, and it’s one hell of a debut. As strange as it sounds, it really does take a lot of inspiration from Space Invaders, with a dash of Into the Breach for good measure. Aliens are invading Earth, but politely, moving down a grid one space per turn, giving you plenty of time to plan a counterattack. From an initially small deck of cards, you draw a hand each turn, with cards letting you either move the mech you control or fire off its attacks.
None of that is too groundbreaking for a deckbuilder, even if the concept of slowly advancing invaders is cool, but it’s remarkable how much strategic depth StarVaders wrings out of its setup. One of its biggest twists is that your mech can’t actually take damage. If you’re hit by an attack, you just add a junk card with negative effects to your deck. Instead of protecting your mech, you’re trying to keep enemies from getting to the bottom three rows of the screen. If they do and you don’t destroy them, you’ll gain one or more Doom the next turn; collect five Doom and it’s game over.
Already, the potential for galaxy-brained strategies is starting to add up. It’s almost always better to let your mech get dinged than to accumulate Doom, but that’s just the beginning. Some cards and modifiers actually take advantage of junk cards, meaning letting them pile up and suffering their negative effects (anything from preventing you from drawing cards to summoning new enemies) can become a viable part of your strategy. Many of StarVaders’ cards let you move enemies around the field, so you can force them to attack each other or simply push them upward to avoid the Doom counter for one more turn.
And those are just the basics. While you start with a single mech and pilot, there are two more mechs to unlock, and each one has three or four pilots. These are more than just reskins or simple variations, too. Each mech has a different pool of cards and ability-modifying relics, plus their own resource systems to manage. The initial artillery mech can be pushed past its limits by overheating, at the cost of burning your cards, leaving them unusable for the rest of the encounter. The second focuses on swift movement and melee attacks while manipulating a rechargeable battery to play cards. The third isn’t a mech at all, instead letting you possess summoned puppets and even enemies, then destroying them to cause damage like a mad sci-fi necromancer. Even after weeks with the game, I’m still unlocking new cards that open up new strategies I’d never considered before.
All that variety wouldn’t mean much if StarVaders weren’t fun at its core, but fortunately it’s an absolute blast from the beginning. Even early in the game, you’ll be vastly outnumbered by enemies, and making the most of your limited cards each turn is a captivating challenge. Your foes are even more varied than your selection of mechs, meaning you’ll need to adapt your strategy each time a new one appears. In all the hours I’ve played StarVaders, I’ve never felt like I hit a stage that was impossible to beat with my current setup. Not every deck is optimal in every situation, so you might take on more Doom than you want, but the sheer number of possibilities presented by any combination of cards and relics means there’s always a way to scrape by. And scraping by is often the best I could hope for against StarVaders’ bosses, which present totally new tactical challenges that demand utter mastery of your build.
The ultimate test of any roguelike is how well it holds up even after repeated successful runs, and StarVaders has so far passed with flying colors. Escalating difficulty levels, a challenge mode, and hidden final bosses make replaying the campaign rewarding, but more than that, its wild diversity of abilities makes it ripe for setting personal challenges to win in esoteric ways or just try as many builds as possible. The past few years have seen a flood of excellent roguelikes, and StarVaders is up there with the very best of them. I can’t remember the last time a deckbuilder offered so many distinctly satisfying ways to play, nor can I imagine putting StarVaders down any time soon.
