While I’m a big fan of card games, the roguelike sub-section of the genre hasn’t captured my interest as much as CCGs and auto-battlers. I’ve tried Slay The Spire and some of it’s adjacent clones, but they always fell short of the gameplay experience that I enjoy. The Simulacrum, however, has crushed what I thought a roguelike card game is and could be.
The Trinity
The Simulacrum is a deckbuilding roguelike in which all cards are procedurally generated. The actual gameplay itself is pretty much a mtg-like, sacrifice cards in hands to generate a mana pool to play cards onto a board with 7 spaces. Units automatically attack left from right, as well as start and end of turn abilities. There’s three gameplay modes, Battle AI, Bosses, and Delve. These three modes creates a simple, but challenging gameplay loop. In Delve, you pick a leader to face off against a prototypical roguelike track, starting with a deck of new procedurally generated cards. When you defeat a track’s boss your current deck is added to your collection. This ties into Battle AI and Bosses in a major way. The Battle AI has 25 levels of difficulty, you’ll need the cards you’ve accumulated from Delves to build decks, to take down the AI. By playing the game you’ll unlock bosses, which when beaten will allow you to pick them as a leader in the Delve mode and play in constructed. Bosses also is a constructed mode in which you’ll need to a build deck to defeat them. If you can’t seem to unlock a boss that you want to play, there’s a hint section in the store that you can sink money into.
The Brilliancy
The dynamic of building your own personal one of a kind collection is something that keeps me playing. The prompts of the generated cards can make some wacky and fun stuff, it never gets old finding or upgrading cards(in delve there’s events that upgrades cards). It’s a wonderful experience for anyone that enjoys deck building in CCGs. My favorite thus far has been playing a resurrect deck where you can cheat out any unit from the deck by turn 2. Against the highest Battle AI, that’s still not strong enough win the game more often than not. It’s a challenge that I love taking part in, constantly figuring out the right ratio and play patterns to win. Of the currently 17 leaders the game has, each brings an unique and fun gameplay style. Anyone that has previously played card games will quickly find that their preferred play style is well represented in The Simulacrum.
Flaws
There’s not too much of anything that impairs my enjoyment for the game. The relics in delve mode from what I’ve experienced are very unbalanced. They turn many builds that would be decent/good to broken and unlosable. For some people the procedural generated cards may just not be enjoyable and may just want to stick to handcrafted card pools.
Future
The Simulacrum is in early access and is steadily adding content. There’s still color alignments that don’t have leaders at the moment. I still haven’t played against a friend yet and don’t plan to, the PVE aspect has my full attention. I’d be interested in a sort of draft mode that could be played with friends though.
steadyCuration 