I’m a little ashamed to admit this, but I’d intended for this review to be finished well in advance of StarVaders’ April 30th release date. Instead, I’m writing, and editing this just days before the game releases. The reason being is quite simple: StarVaders is so much fun that I kept getting distracted by it while I was supposed to be writing this review. Every time I booted it up to double check something, I’d get sucked into it for several more runs. And, if I’m being honest, I don’t know that I could come up with a better endorsement for StarVaders than that.
Developer(s): Pengonauts
Publisher(s): Joystick Ventures, Playworks
Release Date: Apr 30th, 2025
Released on: Windows, macOS
Reviewed on: PC (Win)
Review Copy Provided by Developer/Publisher
Before we delve into all of the reasons why I enjoyed StarVaders so much, let’s first answer the question: what is it?
StarVaders is a new Deckbuilding Roguelike hybrid, which features elements of Turn-Based Tactics games. What this means in practice is that the whole game takes place on a grid where you pilot a mech by playing cards that allow you to move, and attack. Your goal is to prevent an oncoming alien invasion by keeping enemies out of the bottom 3 rows of the board. Successfully clearing everything out provides players with the opportunity to augment their deck, which should help to navigate future, increasingly aggressive enemy encounters.
All of that is info you could read on the game’s store page, which won’t help to explain why I’ve sunk so much time into StarVaders over the past 3 weeks. To answer that we need to discuss movement.
Movement is Key
Movement is the single biggest thing StarVaders has over its contemporaries. It also sits at the heart of what makes StarVaders so damn compelling to play. I know that might sound like a stretch, but allow me to elaborate on why I’ve arrived at this conclusion with an example:
For context, the cards with a giant explosion of fire makes your mech shoot a bullet straight ahead, and the yellow cards with the blue sliding mech lets you move up to 2 spaces in any direction. It’s also worth noting that I can play 3 cards before ending my turn.
Given this setup, I’m able to do a couple of different things during my turn:
- Move and then shoot twice
- Shoot twice, and reposition for next turn
- Shoot an enemy and then move before shooting another
- Move twice, so I can get that 1 goofball on the far side of the grid
Notice how movement plays a factor in all 4 of those options. Keep in mind, this is one of the first combat encounter with (arguably) StarVaders’ most straightforward character. Though, I think it helps to illustrate my point about why movement changes everything: players need to account for their position on the grid, and what cards are in their hand before taking any combative actions. This results in decision making that feels a lot less linear when compared to other Deckbuilders since it gives the player a wider net of potential actions every turn.
Though, I think it’d be remiss to not also credit StarVaders’ card design as playing a key role in how compelling movement feels. Aside from the starting cards, almost all of the cards with movement effects have some kind of additional effect that makes them worth drafting. My personal favourite is Slice, which moves your mech up to 4 tiles while attacking any enemies that you pass over in the process. Additional effects like those featured on Slice help to make movement cards an exciting part of your overarching strategy, instead simply being the cards you keep around so you’re able to reposition.
Tons of Gameplay Variety
Speaking of card effects, now seems like a good time to mention the sheer variety of different mechanics on offer in StarVaders. The game features 3 classes, and each has their own distinct set of cards that differentiate them from the rest of the cast.
The Gunner relies primarily on ranged attacks, and a variety of explosives. They also have a mechanic called Overheat wherein players are still able to play cards even when they don’t have the necessary energy to do so. This burns the card, rendering it unplayable for the remainder of combat, but can allow players to aggressively shift momentum in their favour during key turns.
The second class is the Stinger, which focuses more heavily on movement, and combos. Several of its attacking cards force players to move, so the Stinger requires a little more forethought when compared to the Gunner. However, mechanics like Shock, which rewards players with additional energy, and Flow, which makes cards free when they enter the player’s hand, help to keep the Stinger actively jumping all over the battlefield.
The third, and final class is the Keeper. Unfortunately, I’ve been asked to keep information about the Keeper light as part of the review embargo. What I will say is that I had a lot of fun during every run where I was playing the Keeper. Their mechanics are completely different from the other 2 classes, and I found them far more intuitive to play than either the Gunner or Stinger.
While we’re on the subject of classes, I think it’s also worth mentioning that there are 10 different pilots (3 Gunner, 3 Stinger, 4 Keeper), and they each have character specific mechanics. For example, Roxy, the starting Gunner pilot, leans into Overheat far more than the other Gunner pilots. Her starting relic actively rewards her for burning cards, and she has a character specific card which lets her play otherwise unplayable burnt cards.
This all means that there is a ton of depth to each of StarVaders’ different classes, and plenty of variety to boot. I played over 40 hours of StarVaders across the review period, and I’m certain I’ve only scratched the surface of what some of the characters are capable of. That’s probably the other major reason why I’ve been pulled away from writing this review, repeatedly, to continue playing more StarVaders. It’s just one of those games that feels like there’s always some new overpowered combo hidden in plain sight, waiting to be discovered.
Achievements That Are Actually Fun
Speaking of overpowered combos, I feel like StarVaders’ achievements do a fairly good job of encouraging players to discover those aforementioned combos. For example, there is one for firing 30 bullets in a single turn, and another for winning combat with 7 (or more) burnt cards in your deck. These aren’t things that you can do by accident: they require players to leverage specific synergies between cards that play into a stronger overarching strategy. In this way, achievements help to teach the player, and highlight some of the more interesting consequences of StarVaders’ various mechanics.
Achievements are also tied to meta-progression in StarVaders. Every 5 achievements earned adds an additional group of neutral cards – cards that aren’t associated with any class – to the pool of available cards. Every run of StarVaders employs 3 of these neutral card groups, so unlocking new groups helps to increase the amount of variety players will see from run to run. This makes StarVaders a rare instance where achievement hunting actually feels rewarding.
A Fresh Perspective on Managing Risk
Though if I had to pinpoint 1 aspect of StarVaders as being my favourite, it’d be Chronos Tokens. They’re a limited resource that allow players to reverse time, and escape checkmate scenarios. By spending 1 of your 3 Tokens, you’re able to reshuffle your deck with all the cards from your discard pile, and draw a fresh hand of cards. This will (hopefully) give you the cards necessary to prevent your otherwise untimely demise.
The thing is, Chronos Tokens aren’t just useful for digging yourself out of a hole mid-combat: they can also be used to change which rewards you’re offered after combat encounters, and restock the items within shops. This transforms an otherwise 1 note mechanic, into a form of player expression with a ton of depth. You could hold onto your Tokens as a Get Out of Jail Free card for emergencies, or you could gamble with them trying to find the perfect card for your current strategy.
Personally, I’ve had mixed results while using Chronos Tokens, but I think that’s part of the appeal to them. There’s a few runs where I’ve spent a Token and immediately found exactly the card I needed to make my deck come together. My favourite example of this happening was when I pulled Meteorfall, which does 15 consecutive attacks, while playing Iris after using all of my Tokens back-to-back. This transformed an okay deck, into an absolute wrecking ball that cleaved through the remainder of my run with ease.
Though, I think the thing I like best about Chronos Tokens is how the player has full control over how they use them. You get to decide how much risk you’re willing to take based on when, and where you decide to spend your Tokens. That makes the act of using Tokens a skill unto itself, which players can hone over the course of several runs as they slowly learn all of the ins and outs of StarVaders. And I think it’s really cool that what starts as a tool to bail players out of sticky situations, eventually becomes a method for calculated risk taking.
A Focus on Characters
The final thing that I wanted to touch on before I close things out here is the art direction. Generally speaking, I think it’s great. The whole game has the look, and feel of a 90s, or early 2000s era Saturday-morning cartoon. Sharp edges, vibrant colour palettes, and strong silhouettes make each character come alive. Heck, even before you read a single line of dialogue, you get a sense of what each character is about just from how they’re presented.
StarVaders also does something that I’ve never seen a card game do before: it tells you about the characters through their mechanics. The easiest parallel that I can make for comparison is to fighting games, so stick with me for a second here while I explain exactly what I mean, and why I was pleasantly surprised to see StarVaders do the same thing.
Fighting games are very character driven games, but tend to be light on story. As a direct result of this, the game designers try to communicate who a character is through their moveset, and mechanics. For example, May from Guilty Gear is a little silly, and has an upbeat personality. That’s communicated through the numerous silly poses that she strikes while attacking, and her use of an aquarium’s worth of creatures for her special moves.
For another example, we can look at another character I played in another fighting game: Marisa from Street Fighter 6. This woman loves to fight people. She’s the kind of person who’ll take a hit if it means that she gets to hit you even harder. Non-coincidentally, almost all of Marisa’s special moves are armored, so she can, in fact, take a hit before laying into her opponent.
I bring all of this up because StarVaders does exactly the same thing: it speaks about its cast through mechanics. The easiest example that I can point to is Roxy, who’s a brash, hot-headed individual that dives into danger without thinking. She’s exactly the kind of person who wouldn’t think about the long-term consequences of her actions, which is clearly reflected by her character-specific cards, and relics that reward the player for repeatedly burning their cards.
I genuinely can’t remember the last time I played a card game where the different playable characters actually felt like characters. Usually, everyone on offer is just an archetype – a vessel for a couple of commonly grouped mechanics that you’d expect to find grouped together.
By comparison, the focus on actual characters feels really refreshing, and made the different pilots feel a lot more fun to learn about as I continued to play more, and more of StarVaders.
As I said at the top of the review, I’ve been compulsively playing StarVaders for the past several weeks. I hope the almost 2000 words that followed helped to clearly communicate why that is. I think this is a very special game that a lot of people are going to have a ton of fun with.
If you’re either a Deckbuilder, or Turn-Based Tactics sicko, and have even a passing interest in the other of the aforementioned genres, do yourself a favour, and check out StarVaders. I’m fairly confident you’ll have a good time.
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Frostilyte Writes 