For The Warp Reviews

its okay but clearly thing are not balanced out

I love this game and want to see an expansion to it! Whether it's a DLC, or a sequel, I would love to see more. The content has lots of available synergies that feel fun to discover and build. I think the least fun part of the game is the fuel management. It's not terrible, there are a number of ways to deal with it, and it may be part of the appeal to some players. If the worst part of the game is a solid mechanic that doesn't ruin the game, it's a pretty good indicator that the game was well thought up and developed. If you're someone who wants a deal and looks for at least one hour of fun per dollar spent, then this game easily makes that recommendation for anybody who is a deck-building card game enthusiast. If you happen to find it on sale, it's a super easy purchase.

The core game is solid and I like the art a lot. Seeing your build come together in spaceship form is cool, BUT everything is much slower than it should in the game: movement, cards, menus, ... Everything feels unresponsive. Also, you get a good idea of what your possible build will be in a run, and most of the cards you win won't help you at all. I ended up skipping 90% of the cards in my latest runs, which I find is a bit extreme (in other words, there are probably a bit too many cards that are trash in every run). This combined with the speed issue makes end runs feel like a slog. The latter point is not a huge issue (there are quite a few diverse builds that can still work, like mass draw+boost + capacitor cannon, shield + shield discharge or damage to all enemies when shields are overloaded. Even drones can work), but the slow menu/animation speed turns this into a mild recommendation from me.

TL;DR: The art and music can't redeem a card game with only 120 cards. The game gives an illusion of a deeper game at first, but every system in the game is mechanically flat. + Music and graphics are top notch IMO. Probably some of the best in the genre if you ask me. - UI is *fine*, but takes some getting used to and never really feels good. Almost every bit of player feedback feels sluggish and lerpy. - Map travel is pretty weak. A lot like FTL except on a grid, but it doesn't do much to make that worthwhile. Limited movement choices in FTL forced each choice to matter. In FTW it is trivial to avoid almost all enemies, but you generally need to fight for fuel to get around. Effectively you are able to build your deck at your own speed, which sounds nice but makes the game a little pressureless. Yeah I know, it's space. But the only things you really do are move around, buy stuff and kill enemies. You don't ever seem to rescue or defend anyone, seize an objective while fighting off an overwhelming fleet, make enemies rout to avoid heavy losses, hide, or flee. You just find fights, and win or die. You can explore temples but they are even flatter than the combat, just a simple gambling of fuel for credits and damage. Oh yeah, you can find crates, which might... give you credits or fuel or deplete your HP. Ok. There are special encounters but they are generally just shops. So what gameplay experience is the grid map really serving here? Maybe just a way to differentiate from FTL, but it falls flat. - The actual mechanics of combat are simplistic. There are a few "synergies" but they all boil down to a very basic HP/damage calculus in different ways. Few strategies feel particularly slick, since the cards are designed to work hand in hand with each other in the ship builds. FTL's combat was great because there were many ways to go about it. Each strategy felt different, but in FTW everything seems to have one degree of separation from HP/damage. Maybe I'm holding this game to too high of a standard, especially since card games can be a much more limiting medium. FTL made you feel clever for using fire/radiation/asphyxiation/ion-stunning/evasion because ships were systems of systems. In FTW they're just kinda... Spaceship-type Pokemon. + To put the last point a bit more optimistically: If you are currently learning how to add and subtract, this game can be a great learning aid. We're all rooting for ya, buddy! - The first-turn issue bears mentioning. A lot of people mention this and I tend to agree. The first turn of a combat, you draw three cards instead of five, and this generally means being unable to defend yourself on the first turn or two if you don't draw the right cards. Since healing is scarce, this means combat is categorically penalized and therefore so is exploration. - Deckbuilding has its ups and downs. The ships and the card list are a bit too tightly designed along a few different mechanical synergies to allow for much creativity in approach. I think this could be solved if there were more interacting sub-systems in the game (sub-ship systems, or deeper drone/missile/ship interactions). Most have two or three cards that interlink so synergistically that most of the time adding a new card is a bad idea because it just waters down a good deck. It feels optimal to refuse about 80-90% of card draw rewards. Still, this card draw scarcity often forces you to try to juggle a couple of tactics at the same time, so I do appreciate the "tension of strategies" which I think is a hallmark of good design. - The card list is way too small. There are a few "builds" implied by the design: Antimatter, Plasma, Drone, Ignite, Boost/Redraw, Discard, and Shield. And here's the major gamebreaking flaw: None of these systems interact with each other whatsoever, with rare exception. They are isolated and self-contained, and there are only about 6 cards that relate to each synergy. So while exploration and discovery feels good at first, you soon learn that all the cards have been unlocked from the beginning and there will be no new depth to this game. - Balance is subtly dogshit. Feels fine before you branch out. Then you realize Antimatter, Plasma, Ignite and Discard builds are utterly pointless because they don't have any powerful cards or interactions. Then you realize no deck can survive without a lot of Boost and card cycling, which points you at the Capacitor Cannon, a weapon so utterly broken that it disrupts any deck you add it to. + Yeah, it's still fun. I know I'm complaining a lot but it's not a bad game. It's well-balanced, and that HP/damage thing I keep ragging on is still pretty high quality. I ended up changing this from a positive to negative review. I really do feel somewhat deceived by the early experiences of this game, maybe just through genre expectations. Everything about the game seems to imply there's more to unlock and learn, but there really isn't.