While the big, flashy, noisy “AAA games” still demand the most attention, there’s no shortage of unique indie games to freshen your day. The one I’m looking at today is Takara Cards: on the surface a lot my typical keywords (deckbuilder, roguelite, turn based strategy, etc.) but with its own twists and a quirky style. I enjoyed a lot of it, was frustrated by some, and while it doesn’t have the staying power of the best of them (like recently reviewed Shogun Showdown), I’m glad it’s out there.

Style Points

Before getting to the gameplay, let me start with the real highlights for me: the style. From the varied and very cute selection of avatars for your character (skinny, chubby, rainbows, overalls, beards, …) to the starting premise that you are hunting space dragons which stole from your Federation, it is whimsical and fun.

The overall interface has a softer almost cartoon feel to it, a pleasant change from most sci-fi ships. While the enemy ships are nothing special, the general art and design are light and unique. A bit hit or miss on some of the more scatological jokes: a “Fire Fart” card for your ship shooting fire out the back isn’t very clever but might get a chuckle the first time.

The music worked well enough, with a standout being the perfectly peaceful and catching tune when you are not in battle. I could listen to that on repeat. The voice acting I quite liked, but it is more like a “homebrew” and not perfectly professional. Yet it seems self-aware, leaning into the main narrator voice doing different voices for messages from other groups. I also love hearing a non-American non-British accent, feeling more refreshingly personal. It may be a bit kitsch or corny, but I found it fit with the overall feel of the game.

The Game

But let’s back up to what kind of game Takara Cards is, beyond the keywords. You play as a captain of a Federation ship going after some dragons which stole from your organization. There is a small map with some options of where to go, the usual mix of different traders and encounters.

The battles play out on a 3x3 grid where you can play cards to move and attack with your ship. Enemies then go, from top left to bottom right. Their moves are telegraphed though there is a row just off the grid of next enemies that can be a little difficult to read. If enemies (or your own projectiles) collide with each other they add together to make a stronger version.

Eventually you will need to fight the dragon’s ship, a two-staged battle where you need to fight to get inside the ship first. Then you can try to battle the dragon or just the ship itself. You can do two maps of encounters and the boss and then finish the run or continue to endless mode (if you win).

So, the strategy and tactics? Your cards do things like let you move, sort of throwing your ship to do damage at an enemy, absorbing damage to any shields you have first. There are also straight attacks, position exchanges, and buffs to your shields. One key element is to manage the energy you have to play cards, trying to link through them all to get a fresh set and keep up the pressure. You finish a battle by clearing all enemies (or nearly and leaving early) with a grade at the end for how well you did. You can also repeat if you’d like to do better, for more credits and experience.

Each of the 4 species (Dwarf, Human, Elf, Ork) add their own special cards as well as key differences in their ship and how they play. These are all unlocked quickly by winning a run. So the Dwarves are stronger when they don’t leave remaining energy at the end of a turn, meanwhile the Orks have mana, a resource they can use for their specific cards. The Elf species gets access to all the other species specific cards, playing a bit like a hybrid of whatever you want.

The variety is good for how these species play, though most of the cards you see are common across all of them: move and shield, fire and move, swap positions, things like that. Enemies and how they are arranged lead to each battle feeling different in terms of managing their attacks, where they move, and balancing aggressiveness and your defense (waiting too long means everything gets crowded and more powerful).

Still, the enemies themselves aren’t that different: some move, some shoot in different patterns, but nothing that really forces you to adapt very much. For instance, in Slay the Spire, you’ll fight enemies or elites that force you to deal with different elements like lots of smaller attacks, enemies that get stronger as you attack but force you to stay on the offensive or get killed trying to play too patiently. I didn’t find that here, at least on the base difficulty. The adaption comes from learning new species or cards more.

This is particularly true with the boss: there’s just one and it mostly forces you to have certain tools in your disposal (forward attacks). You fight the same boss fight in the second map, where you can do as few as two or three encounters first or more than twice as much to do them all. The third time the boss fight ends a bit differently, but I won’t spoil that. And only partially because I’m not sure I have any clue what happened really.

It can be a bit confusing navigating the cards and board, as there is no way to just see all your cards at once and the info overlay of the board (what enemies are doing, their attributes) is rather busy to take in. The tutorial was also not the most helpful, walking through the basics of battle but leaving me with lots of questions. There is a pretty extensive Codex with lots of info, though just sort of a book to flip through than more integrated and streamlined. Still, some things stumped me, like when/how much damage a bomb does or sometimes how equipment actually works. I didn’t realize you can go into the Reputations on the right side and activate some during battle. Whoops!

Space Battles for Fun and Profit

While there is a New Game+ and Endless modes after you win a run, the real bulk of the gameplay strategy is in the battles. Although I liked what seemed like some variety in approaches and the different species, it didn’t quite click in place. I kind of guessed my way through a build and battles, learning as I went on, yes, but never felt like I had a very cohesive build or strategy.

Still, the moment-to-moment planning on the fly in a battle was pretty rewarding. Maybe it was because I didn’t have a finely tuned build or kept more basic cards, but I felt like I was always flying by the seat of my pants and working out how to make my collection of attacks and maneuvers work for me. And that was satisfying in a tactical sense!

I could make a mistake or misread what an attack was and it would snowball into me taking damage, getting moved around, taking more damage, and left with a board of stronger enemies. And yet I could battle back with my health at 0 (then your equipment takes damage, limiting your cards and making it sometimes a slog to continue). You can even eject at the end to get a new ship and pick it back up, though without your full build. I ejected twice fighting a boss again and still managed to eke out a nice win in the end.

Do I Takara For More?

(Yes, that’s terrible. I’m not sorry.)

In one sense I don’t mind that it feels like there isn’t a need to go all in on the depth and builds, optimizing and struggling against a harsh enemy power curve. I certainly enjoy games like that in this genre. Perhaps Takara Cards could do to pare down a bit to more essentials rather than trying to stretch into depth and variety that I didn’t feel was there enough to put dozens of hours in. It did take me a few runs to figure out how things work and what I needed to do to succeed, but after that, even with new species and their cards, it didn’t have the variety or base challenge to fully grab me.

In a way it feels still a bit Early Access-ish, though it was in that stage from 2023 and is still getting good updates streamlining things like the boss fight steps and battle end conditions (you need to clear all enemies but an update made things like meteors and scrap you collect not count).

That’s not to say it isn’t polished as technically everything was great. Takara Cards is a Linux native title, made with Godot and ran flawlessly on both the Steam Deck and on my desktop.

I did like it for what it is: the art style, some interesting mechanics, and overall feel of the game is pretty good. However, it doesn’t compare to the depth and “one more run” of the best. Just maybe concentrating it a bit more around what’s there or fully fleshing out some more depth would make it a more complete package. Still, extra points for something different for sure; we need more of these games!

Takara Cards is from Brazil-based developer Post Mortem Pixels and published by GrabTheGames. It is available on Steam and a key was provided for review. There’s also a demo/prologue available for free, Takara Cards: Academy.