PHENOMENAL, from Emergence and Replayability, but most of all the FUNDAMENTALS.
Taking out so much of the chore moment to moment that deckbuilders seem to just keep. This game will be the ones they look for to take mechanics and UI from! Even your big sequels coming up will learn from this game. Proud to say I got to coach and help support on this game, one of my most proudest projects yet!

Hope yall love it!

-Esty, The Game Doctor

Just won my first run with an insane combo of bomb cards which blew up the whole level (including me, myself counting as a bomb and blowing up more) every turn. A lot of fun

Four-Minute Video Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABP9EM6Bgrk

Judging by its paltry number of pre-launch Steam followers, turn-based deckbuilder StarVaders seems poised to go down as one of the best games that nobody will play in 2025. But for the lucky few that give it a shot, you’re in for a real treat. Fans of roguelite deckbuilders a la Slay the Spire and grid-based strategy titles like Into the Breach will feel right at home here, as StarVaders smartly wraps these two genres into a stylish sci-fi arcadey adventure that feels consistently fresh and heavily encourages experimentation.

THE STORY

Play as three mechs and one of ten unlockable pilots—each of whom has their own starting deck, playstyle altering artifacts, and brief little nuggets of text-based lore. Honestly, I don’t have a whole heck of a lot to say about StarVaders’ cryptic story. Earth has been invaded by three alien species—flying robots, swampy bug fungus things, and... uh, rock robots, I guess? Pretty sure I saw a little ghost at one point. At the end of each run, win or lose, a three-eyed dark cosmic goddess chick will pop up and spit some existential nonsense at you before eventually explaining that you need to win multiple times on the hardest difficulty in order to return the invaders to their void realm for good.

Hey, I suppose it’s better than nothing. Still, StarVaders’ story definitely feels like it was cobbled together in an attempt to incentivize repeat playthroughs, but I’m happily here to say that the gameplay alone more than justifies that.

GAMEPLAY & CONTENT

After picking your mech/pilot combo, you’ll get to tweak your starting deck a bit and then launch into the first of three stages. There are three levels, a store, and a boss fight per stage, which makes StarVaders pretty short as far as roguelites go. However, the game mostly makes up for this through intense, cognitively demanding turn-based combat. Each level, a variety of enemy types and environmental hazards (that you’ll get a little preview of during level selection) will appear on a grid and begin advancing toward you. On reaching the bottom few rows of tiles, enemies will begin channeling DOOM, and if you fail to kill them, they’ll disappear from the board and count toward your DOOM meter—hit five DOOM and you’re DOOMed.

But you're not gonna let that happen, are ya? No heckin’ way, because each turn you’ll get a figurative handful of attack, move, and tactic cards you can spend using a set amount of action points in the form of a mech-specific resource like “Heat” or "Energy.” I loved the energy hungry ninja mech you unlock second, as he takes what you thought was a dynamic grid with long range attacks and turns it into a fluid melee hack ‘n’ slasher. Choosing how to best spend your action points per turn will constitute the bulk of your playtime and brain aneurisms, as the enemy’s turns never take more than five seconds.

Cards (of which there are hundreds) can be upgraded and/or linked together in fantastic ways with your accrued artifacts, resulting in some delicious arcade style combos that turn an otherwise static grid into a pinball machine of chaos. Really, the game often makes you feel like an accidental genius for stumbling upon what feels like an absurdly overpowered build, only to humble you a few levels later when a new enemy type exposes a flaw in your once perfect strategy.

If and when you get hit by an enemy projectile (or your own!) you’ll accrue a “Junk” card that will clog up your deck and result in a debuff if you fail to play it. And should you ever get into what feels like an unwinnable position, (A) don’t give up, but (B) if you do, you get three Chrono tokens per stage that allow you to replay the turn with a brand new hand of cards.

While I didn’t die once on easy mode, which was a little underwhelming because it meant I won my first ever run, the game is structured such that winning runs and completing arbitrary objectives along the way unlocks new mechs, pilots, cards, enemy types, and (best of all) bosses.

I gotta say, the bosses in StarVaders blew me away. There aren’t a ton of them, but what’s here will push you to your absolute limit, plus you'll unlock new ones each difficulty. My personal favorite was an armored swamp snake named Nessie that accrues DOOM each time you let him/her/it/not sure slither down the board and gobble up poison apples. And no, StarVaders does not take itself too seriously.

STYLE

Finally, a few words on the game’s style. StarVaders ain’t the prettiest roguelite in the world, but its bright and colorful visuals combine with an exceptionally intuitive User Interface to create a clear, playable experience. Meanwhile, crisp sound design really elevates those crazy combos, and the game's occasional musical flourishes (I'm looking at you, Stage 3 piano solo) are delightful.

CONCLUSION

In the end, StarVaders is one of my favorite games of 2025. As noted, it’s not particularly long and could probably benefit from a new stage or two. But fans of the format will still find plenty of fun, plus there are endgame challenge modes if you really hate yourself.

I’m giving StarVaders a strong aggregate MEGA score of 3.64/5 and am happy to answer any questions you have about the game or my review. Thanks for reading!

STEAM CURATOR: https://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/steamstore/curator/42044015/