Ready to play like a lovely Slime? Yes, that’s right, although it sounds hard to believe, in this adventure you will go out into battle to fight some rather adorable enemies as well. I bet no one saw it coming, your hero being a brave Slime, that’s pretty original.
Rise of the Slime is a game developed Bunkovsky Games, is a blend between deckbuilder, roguelike, tactics. Well, the genres that are quite fashionable thanks to other quite successful ones that allowed them to break through, especially in gamers who love deckbuilder games but were already tired of spending enough money and time on classic games.
It could be considered a highly recommended game if you want to start playing games of this genre, but with a fairly considerable difficulty level. It is worth mentioning that my 4-year-old daughter was delighted with this game, of course at all times under my supervision. So I don’t have the slightest doubt that will make you devote a few good hours to it.
Slime’s Journey
You will play as a lone and heroic Slime, through horizontal scrolling battlefields, with some visually pleasing graphics. A style of characters type lollipop popsicle sticks in a cardboard theater that will hook you from the first scene. Something quite special is that you will be forced to learn while playing, instead of having to read endless tutorial texts; I consider that a special point for the designer of the game: Maris Bunkovskis.
At the beginning, you have very few options of decks to choose from: the classic; with swords and shields, which take you to a melee and defensive playing style being too exposed to receive damage from the enemy, and the other is a deck based on a mixture of different decks. I mean, you’ll have a bit of everything. You can easily get the deck with acid attacks and the deck with fire attacks, magic that will hurt the enemy per second. Acid stacks will deal damage at the beginning of turn and fire stacks at the end of turn.
You will have the opportunity to choose between three types of run (Challenge, Short Run and Old Path) from this will basically depend on the difficulty and how long you would like to play each. It will take about 30 minutes or more to complete or die in the attempt, I went through a couple of times, or rather, many times. As you progress, you will get gold which will later use since there are many rooms in which you can run into power-ups (which work as passive abilities during the run), shops, card enhancement, Pets, portals, and of course we can not forget the different enemies, who will not make you anything easy and are ready to smash you.
I think something that is very noticeable in the game and certainly is the most special part; from my point of view, are the grounds on which you will fight and the pets, as the former could use them to your advantage or against, depending a lot on the deck you have chosen when starting each run or to move around and make your enemies accumulate stacks that could cause them more damage.
As for pets, each of them has a special skill that is used every time you finish your turn, I found it more useful tactically to Acid Blob and Fire Spirit, at least as far as my style of play is concerned. Fortunately, you can increase the number of pets you can have; spending a reasonable amount of gold, as long as you find the corresponding statue. Besides, it feels good that after all you are not alone in this adventure and be sure that they will steal your eyes while you play… or to the heart.
As we have already mentioned the game focuses a lot on movement. Therefore, moving behind the backs of an enemy and attacking him, would cause him to deal twice as much damage. However, enemies can also do the same to you. There is also a card that can make you teleport to the square of the map you choose, in exchange for doing a little damage to yourself; it is certainly worth using it wisely as it could be the action needed to end up winning a battle. Sometimes you will run into enemies that have many more life points than you do, which could complicate you if you decide to play with the deck focused on melee attacks.
It is important to mention that the pace of play seemed to me too slow between the many interactions within it. But not everything can be so bad, the developer has added an option in which you can speed up these interactions. This saved my gaming experience; because, without this, I would have wanted to leave the game as soon as possible and it is no joke.
The soundtrack is quite simple but very relaxing and in line with the style of play. The effects of the abilities are very well detailed although they are just cardboard characters.
CONCLUSION
The game is quite easy to learn, so much so that it can become too predictable what enemies will do. Something that certainly did not like me, is that after you manage to finish the run, the biggest reward you could have is simply trying again, raising the difficulty on your own. I think the game could have had a lot more impact if they had just given it enough time to add a little history.
Would i recommend it? Well, there are definitely better games for this subgenre such as Slay the Spire, Griftlands, etc. But, if you want to relax and get out of the traditional; this game is definitely for you as it has many interesting things. The bad thing is that it is not a game that will hook you and you could not stop playing. So meh!
I am a faithful believer that all games have good and bad things, so it only remains to enjoy them.
