Neurodeck is a psychological roguelike deckbuilder. Gameplay-wise it’s best compared to Slay the Spire.
You probably already know, but Neurodeck is about phobias. As in your enemies are different phobias, like spiders, clowns, or different feelings mixed into a shadow (a group of people laughing at you, etc.). The story is built around that, making it a pretty dark game overall.
Your run starts with Lei who’s one of two playable characters. She has three emotions, each of them has different cards in their deck and a different starting trait. The first one, for example, is Joy and gives you +20 on sanity and stamina. You need to unlock the other emotions and the other playable character (who also has three emotions) through winning a run. You’ll also unlock a new difficulty level after doing so.
Let me explain about sanity and stamina. Sanity is your health. If your sanity reaches zero, your run ends. Stamina is the currency you need to pay for playing cards. Playing a card also costs action points (AP). Each turn you have three AP. There are several cards to gain more AP or recover stamina or sanity.
Now about cards, there are different types. There are action cards that mostly reduce the HP of phobias, however, items need to be played before you can equip them. After they’re equipped, you can then activate them and they can have several uses before they get discarded and you can draw them again. Some cards also have buffs or debuffs such as giving you three angst (losing 10HP/sanity each turn for 2 turns) or can’t be played more than one time during a battle.
Aside from cards, there are traits you can get which give you bonuses like “When you regain Sanity, you regain 5 Stamina” and many more. You can get these traits by taking a survey, one of several events within a run. It’s probably the best event because it’s very well built into the world thanks to its questions.
Every event gives you new little details story-wise, but you can also just skip them and get to the point if you’re not into that.
There are other events like going to the gym to improve your stats (sanity or stamina), cooking to get bonuses for your next battle, sleeping, and many more, which are basically ways to get, swap, or remove cards. Each node gives you the possibility to choose between one of two or three events or phobias.
Strategically, the game is demanding. There is no way you’ll beat enemies without putting thought into your tactics every turn. Each phobia has a different strategy to get on your nerves. You need to find out how to counter them or beat them before they can use all of their methods to make you crazy.
Every emotion has several strategies to use thanks to their own deck. You can get cards tied to another emotion within a run by completing an event and then you can use it to try crazy new strategies.
It’s very appealing graphically thanks to the wonderful art design, character designs, and lively shadows moving around. It’s very aesthetically pleasing.
The very dark and intense atmosphere is perfectly rounded off by the sound effects that are thought through to the smallest detail (the sound of a shark breathing matches his animations exactly) and the beautiful but bleak music, giving you a feeling of hopelessness.
Neurodeck has a lot to offer, but if you played Slay the Spire and other games in the genre, you’ll notice that it’s a bit light content-wise. Yeah, every run is different, there are different characters, phobias, events, cards, traits, and decks but there could be a bit more of everything (especially phobias and characters). Although, they have already announced that they’ll be adding new features after release (like nightmare phobias, new emotions, and more).
Conclusion
Neurodeck is one of those very addictive roguelike deckbuilders that isn’t just a copy of StP. If the deckbuilder-genre is akin to a map with nodes, Neurodeck is the one new node making your run different from all the ones before.
This is a game that keeps luring you into trying “just one more run”. It’s challenging and the atmosphere is unbeatable. You should try it out if you’re into deckbuilders. It’s definitely worth every cent!
| Author | Curtis Pyke |
| YouTuber | GideonsGaming |
| Program | Freedom! Scholarship |
| Publisher | MGN |
| Game | Neurodeck |