I’m playing it in bed. I’m accidentally missing meetings. I’m squeezing a round before social occasions, in the bathroom, and God help me, right after I wake up. My girlfriend has informed me that she’s starting to hate the sound of the same music constantly blasting from my Steam Deck. But instead of playing it less, I’m just sitting down at my computer more. My new Steam obsession is StarVaders, a shockingly excellent reinvention of the retro game, Space Invaders.
I’m guessing comparing StarVaders to a game that’s nearly 50 years old is doing little to persuade you to play it. Here’s a more modern equivalence: StarVaders and its bite-sized tactics are like playing Into the Breach for the first time. StarVaders is easy to pick up, yet its tightly-wound mechanics make it as compulsively playable as Balatro. StarVaders has immediately become one of the best roguelikes I’ve ever played.
StarVaders unfolds on a small grid full of aliens who are dead-set on taking over the world. Your job is to stop them from reaching the bottom of the grid. To do that, you’re given a deck of cards with varying abilities, like movements, attacks, and general tactics. Each turn, you can play a handful of cards. Unlike most tactics games, however, “losing” does not involve destroyed units or depleted HP.
When your enemies attack you, you’ll get a junk card shuffled into your deck that will dwindle your options at some point in the nebulous future. Some of these cards have pesky additional conditions, like granting an invader a shield should you abstain from playing it. Taking damage, then, isn’t about managing your resources: it’s an evaluation of how much friction you’re willing to tolerate in order to pull a tricky maneuver. Losing altogether functions similarly, in that you’re often wholly in control of when and why things start getting out of hand. When an invader reaches the end of the grid, they start channeling something called Doom. If you don’t kill that invader by the next turn, you’ll be stuck with that Doom. Get enough Doom, and it’s game over.
You could play recklessly, allowing invaders to hit your mech at every turn, gambling on the chance it won’t ruin your next hand. Maybe you’re high up on the grid and decide to let an invader down below proc that Doom: it’s not like it’ll kill you. Plus, if it’s really looking like you made a knuckle-headed choice, you also have a number of replenishable rewinds that restart your turn with a new sequence of cards. If you really want to play with fire, you can take an extra turn by burning a card. The action will be performed, regardless of how many moves you have left, but that card will then become unplayable for the rest of the round.
Already, we’re coming up against a rich system of decisions that add a refreshing sense of complexity unique to StarVaders, and I’ve barely described any of the mechanics in the game. Most rounds are quick, often five minutes or less, and a full run typically takes around an hour. It’s easy to get caught in a loop of just one more turn, only to look up and see your entire evening gone. It’s like when you devour a snack-sized bag of chips: no matter how good they are, you’re going to wish you had more.
StarVaders features a cast of cool anime mech pilots that you’ll steadily unlock, each one with a unique playstyle. Some characters can shoot enemies from far away, while others need to be up close to do damage. One of my favorite pilots is an ace with booby traps that ambush enemies. All of these pilots have a unique set of cards, but you aren’t relegated to playing in any prescribed way. That’s because each round has a prize at the end, and these rewards can totally alter your next skirmish. Cards can have components added to them that allow them to do more than one thing, like moving before attacking or drawing up one more card. Play your cards right, and soon you’ll find yourself chaining long strings of actions together, despite technically only having four moves. The best thing about StarVaders is that the core loop constantly makes you feel like you’ve gotten away with something.
Occasionally, you’ll also gain Artifacts that grant you overarching powers, like banking unused moves for your next turn or preventing attack cards from ending your turn regardless of how many moves you have left. 40 hours in, I still have some pilots to unlock, and I’ve yet to see all the card options.
I’m also constantly astounded at all the ways StarVaders can change the flow of the experience. Depending on the difficulty, rounds can have modifiers that will alter how enemies behave. Perhaps in one round, every killed enemy drops a bomb that detonates at the end of your turn. In another, some enemies will move every time you do, even if it’s not their turn. The more hardships these modifications impose, the better the rewards. Even here, StarVaders gives you more things to think about. Some modifiers will give you legendary rewards, but the conditions will become permanent across runs. How badly do you want that Artifact?
Soon you’ll find that Past You was a dick who thought it would be fine if, from now on, every enemy had an extra shield. Now, multiple runs later, you’re suffering … except not really. You did this to yourself. It also means that, every time you think you’re in a tight spot, it becomes all that much more thrilling to figure out how to win. No matter how good you get at StarVaders, it’s always upping the ante. There’s nothing like having a couple of cards left and multiple enemies channeling Doom at once, on the brink of defeat with no rewinds left, only to find the exact combination of moves that clears the whole field. I’ve also found that the more I play, the more confident I feel, and the more risks I’ll take — thereby preventing me from ever becoming too powerful. I might be able to murder the entire field in one go with a certain collection of cards and artifacts, but there’s no killing my hubris.
I cannot emphasize enough how good StarVaders is. If you don’t take my word for it, know this: StarVaders has an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam. The game also just got a big 2.0 update that expands the story, introduces more cards, adds new trophies and challenges, and also gives the game a true ending. There’s some stuff in the 2.0 trailer I’ve never seen before, like a bifurcated board that appears to have two pilots going at once. I cannot believe I’ve gotten this much out of a $24.99 game, and I still have so much left to see.
Now’s a great time to jump in, too. Developers Pengonauts just launched a playtest for their next game, DiceVaders, which takes place in the same universe as StarVaders. Get this: in DiceVaders, you’ll be playing as the aliens that you kill in StarVaders.
Pull out your Steam Deck and play StarVaders. And if you’re abstaining, it better be because you’re waiting for the Switch version.
