Breach Wanderers is a roguelike deckbuilder. While it looks a bit like a copy of Slay The Spire it certainly isn’t one.
You start with one of five heroes and a standard deck of cards. If your HP gets reduced to 0, you’ll lose the run. If you beat the end boss, you will win. Winning the map will unlock depth 2. Depth 2 gives you stronger enemies and adds a new map to the run, etc.
Battles
Mana is the currency to play cards. Unlike in other card games, it’s not rare to have 10 or more mana in one turn but aside from that, you’ll feel right at home if you’ve played a deckbuilder before. There are attack, defend, spell, and skill cards. Each turn, you recover some mana (depending on your stats and bonuses).
Depending on your character and items, block won’t be completely reduced after your turn. Without modifies, the first character has 10 shields. This means he will start the battle with 10 block. If you add another 6 and have 16 in total but enemies don’t attack you, 6 block will be lost and you’ll have 10 left.
There are dozens of different buffs and debuffs, such as shock, frost, burn, evade, and a lot more. You can see the enemies’ intention each turn (attack, defend, buff or debuff). This allows you to strategically plan ahead
Rewards
After every battle, you get gold, aether, energy, experience, and a new card (Boss fights also allow you to upgrade and remove one card from your deck). Every time your energy fills completely in a run, you will get one random item you can equip (Like artifacts in Slay The Spire).
You have to choose one of three cards as a reward. Yes, you HAVE TO. This means you can’t skip. Your deck will get bigger and bigger eventually. Even if you can remove a card after a boss battle, you need to take a new one. This will force you to rethink the strategies you were familiar with thanks to other deckbuilders.
Decks
Another key difference compared to other deckbuilders. You can build your starting deck (exactly 12 common cards!) and your deck pool. The deck pool consists of 25 cards. These are the cards you will get as a reward after winning a battle (2 of them, the third you can choose from will be a card an enemy played).
Map
The map is procedurally generated and works just like in similar games of the genre. You have different routes with different nodes and can decide which way to go. Besides battles there are events. Most events give you different options to choose between, at least if you meet the requirements for it (For example, you need 5 skill cards in your deck to unlock a certain option).
There aren’t more options on the map as of now. You can rest one time per map (without bonuses) to heal 25% of your HP but that’s it.
Heroes
As I said, there are five different heroes. They don’t just differ in appearance but also in stats (Max. Health, Shield, and Mana) and the bonuses they unlock. As you play the game, your character gains experience per run. At levels 2, 4, 7, and 10 they will unlock a bonus (gain +2 every turn, etc.). But before doing that, you need to unlock four of the five heroes with gold.
Overall progression
Speaking about gold. Gold is one of two currencies in the game. The other one is Aether. You will gain both after every run. With aether, you can unlock new cards (It’s random. You spend 500 aether for three new cards) and with gold, you can buy everything else like Heroes, new Quest slots, bonuses for future runs in the forge and the market, which allows you to buy items for your next run.
The game offers a lot in that regard. If you want to unlock everything, you’ll need to spend dozens of hours in the game.
After around 5 hours I’ve unlocked one slot for an item in the market, two upgrades in the forge, and around 35 cards. For some, this is what makes it fun, for others the progression will be too slow and grindy.
The Good And The Bad
The Bad
Breach Wanderers is in early access and you’ll notice. The UI looks cheap and it needs more content when it comes to enemies, maps, and events. Especially events are pretty generic and often end up in a fight. Balance-wise it is fine mostly but the rate of getting gold needs to be improved. The good thing is, everything I just mentioned is listed in their roadmap, and thus, just a matter of time.
The Good
Do you remember the first time you played a roguelike deckbuilder and the joy of unlocking new cards, trying out different builds, or trying to make a build perfect? This is how you will feel playing Breach Wanderers. You don’t want to quit as long as you did not beat it.
There’s already a lot of content when it comes to heroes, cards, and items which allows for many different strategies.
Customizing decks is something other games have tried already but building your deck pool for the next run is completely new as far as I know and adds a lot to the tactical depth of the game.
Unlike in Monster Train, for example, unlocking a new difficulty not just makes enemies stronger but also unlocks new enemies and maps which is more engaging.
Conclusion
Breach Wanderers is a fantastic and addictive roguelike deckbuilder that scratches the right itch. It’s not just a new copy of classics like Slay The Spire. There are significant changes if you compare these two. Building your own deck, deciding which cards you will get after battles (to some degree), and getting forced to take a new card after every battle adds a new layer of strategy to the genre. Unlocking new things after every run is so engaging, that you will want to play “one more time” without looking at the clock.
If you’re into roguelike deckbuilders, you should definitely get it!