When Balatro creator LocalThunk is quoted as saying “Keep your eyes on this one!” in a game’s trailer, there’s no doubt that the attention of Card Gamer will be well and truly grabbed. That’s the case with upcoming roguelike deckbuilder StarVaders, which is due to launch on Steam in the second quarter of 2025.
That said, how exactly has our attention been retained so successfully this far out from the game’s release? It’s one thing to have a quote from LocalThunk in an admittedly spectacular trailer, but another to actually get your eager hands on the game itself, right?
Well, the latter is exactly what’s happened, and you can also get your card gaming mitts on StarVaders too, as a new demo is now available on Steam. Having been made available ahead of Steam’s October Next Fest, which begins on Monday, October 14th, the demo will be available until the end of the event, on the 21st of October. Celebrating the best upcoming titles on Steam, it’s a fitting way to have a close encounter with StarVaders.
What is StarVaders?
Roguelike deckbuilders have been increasing in both popularity and sheer number since Slay the Spire was released to huge critical and commercial success back in 2019 (having been in Early Access as far back as 2017!), and StarVaders, at first glance, may seem like just another to add to the glut of titles that are crowding out the genre these days.
Not all roguelike deckbuilders are built the same, nor are they all of the quality of the aforementioned Slay the Spire, Balatro or even (a personal favorite of mine) Monster Train. However, StarVaders is already an incredibly addictive and compelling experience that feels polished and ready to launch, even this far away from its release date.
StarVaders is a title that blends turn-based strategy on a grid (think Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, or the more recent homage to those games, Wargroove) with moves and attacks handled by the cards in your deck. Players take a mech and pilot it into battle, with a large variety of combinations of cards and abilities provided by the choice of character and robot suit.
After choosing a mission from the few on offer on the world menu, which shows you the type of enemy you’ll be facing off against as well as the reward for successfully surviving the mission, you’ll be dropped into battle, with enemies typically advancing towards you one square at a time after each of your turns.
If an enemy reaches your section of the grid at the bottom and stays there until their next move, they each add at least one Doom to your total, and if enough Doom points are accrued, it’s Game Over. Being a roguelike, of course, this means that your run is over and you must begin again.
Of course, you’ll unlock new mechs, pilots, cards, and more as you gain experience, and you’ll get a little further each time, perhaps encountering and defeating bosses, and buying cards from the in-game store if you can reach it too.
StarVaders has a charmingly cartoony, anime-esque pixel art visual style and a superbly upbeat chiptune soundtrack too. Plus, it’s worth noting that there are special features to unlock and try out in the current demo build, which we also found was a perfect fit for the Steam Deck. There’s also the opportunity to be entered into a raffle to win a game key if you can finish three runs (spoiler: we won’t be in with a chance of winning that key ourselves just yet, though it’s not as if we’re going to stop trying!).
Is StarVaders Fun To Play?
Despite the fact that there’s just a demo available at the moment, it feels remarkably fully featured and is, in fact, very generous in terms of allowing you to explore different options and tackle runs over and over again. Certainly in our time with the demo so far, we found it to be an incredibly addictive experience, and it was especially difficult to extricate ourselves from the game to write this article! You know the urge to have just one more go that’s so potent among the very best roguelike (and deckbuilding) games? StarVaders has that in spades.
Which should definitely answer the question in the above heading. In short: yes, StarVaders is a very potent mixture of grid-based strategy and deckbuilding elements, which also evokes the feeling of arcade classic Space Invaders, in the way that the deadly alien adversaries descend vertically towards your lone defender. Racking up combos as you take out enemies with increasingly powerful cards is thrilling, and discovering new ways to play through the surprisingly varied abilities and loadouts on offer via the different mechs and their pilots is also a compelling element of the game. There are glimpses of the story that you’ll progress through as you fail each run, and you’ll find tantalizing details dropped as to what could really be going on behind the scenes, as you pick yourself up and begin again (and again, and again).
Here at Card Gamer, we’re always on the lookout for the next digital card game that’ll drag us away from Balatro, and even in its demo form, StarVaders has been doing that very successfully so far. We’re eagerly awaiting its full release, but for now, why not see what the fuss is all about and try it out for yourself? You can find the demo and add it to your wishlist via the game’s Steam store page here.
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