There’s something incredibly enticing about the words roguelike, deckbuilding, and tactical when I come across a new game. What I hadn’t really expected, would be to see all of those words together followed by RPG. Yet, that is exactly what Shuffle Tactics by the developers over at Club Sandwich is.
The Kingdom of Asteria is suffering from the Glimmer Curse and it’s corruption and now it is up to you, whichever hero you choose, to overthrow evil King Ogma. Of course, it won’t be as easy as running up to the castle to fight him so you’ll have to go on a journey to defeat him. Choose your hero, your sidekick(s), and your path to be the hero that Asteria deserves.
Game Play
When you first boot up the game you’ll be introduced to a very quick tutorial. Shuffle Tactics will teach you how to navigate around the battle board and to use your cards. You’ll get an introduction to your movement and energy as well as a basic movement card. Once you get your basic combat stage of the way, you’ll be free to play.
The game itself is a bit difficult. If you’re looking to just enjoy the mechanics of the game, you may want to look through the settings first and choose some unlocks. If you know you prefer to play as different starting heroes, you may want to unlock all heroes. As with many roguelikes, any run you finish, even with death, grants you unlocks. Unfortunately those unlocks are not quick to the other two playable heroes. That’s not to say this is a terrible mechanic, however, when there are so many things to unlock, playing with a hero you don’t really connect with, can ruin some of the fun.
After you’ve chosen your hero, you’ll enter the usual mechanics you’d expect to see in a deckbuilding roguelike such as Slay the Spire. As with just about every roguelike game, you’ll be introduced to the paths you can take. You’ll need to hover over your options to see what the icons mean. Even so they may not quite make sense at first. Get used to much of this game being learned by hovering over cards, areas, and reading. Not too different than most roguelike deckbuilders so if you’re a fan of these, you should be familiar with this style.
Once you pick your first location, you’ll be introduced to the tactical aspect that looks similar to games such as Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics. Every box is a movement square, you get a certain number of movement each round. As with any other deckbuilder, you’ll also have energy to manage that corresponds to the cards in your hand. Your base cards aren’t the strongest but as you go through the map, you’ll unlock more cards. However, it feels that early on, and in many of your runs, you are not meant to win with the base cards. In fact, there were enemies that seemed overly difficult just to ensure you couldn’t win. Should spiders truly be able to attack me from 10 blocks away while the farthest my arrow goes is 5?
Early on there are also enemies that will be able to call in reinforcements. This isn’t just in boss battles but can be in any battle. Shuffle Tactics sometimes seems to want the gameplay range from challenging to punishing. While those looking for a challenge may be excited by this, this led me to want to click those unlocks much quicker instead of working towards unlocking new cards, relics, and charms. While I’m not complaining about the difficulty overall, it just sometimes seemed very inconsistent. In other games you know you finish the first level and anticipate a difficulty spike. In Shuffle Tactics, there were times that regular fights felt more difficult than boss battles. Not due to the cards, but just due to the ability of certain enemies.
On your journey you also meet a variety of merchants. Some of these merchants will sell you cards, relics, or charms and all it costs is gold. Other merchants want some of your life energy. That’s right, you could trade in permanent HP for a new shiny relic, card, or charm. This is an interesting concept but I noticed on the run where I came across this merchant, all of the relics were questionable and my hero was a bit of a glass cannon. Losing HP was not ideal. So players will definitely have to weigh out the good and the bad.
You’ll also run into merchants that are a bit different than you’d expect. You may end up in the library to manage your deck which is great. Or speaking to a fortune teller who may provide you a new card. What I did enjoy from the merchants was more of the banter and lore of the world. Some of them will talk to you about the glimmer curse, some about the corrupt King, and others just have personality you may want to dive further into. This was one area that felt very refreshing. Each merchant has their own commentary and make the world feel more enriched. Those who don’t like spiders be warned as there is a spider merchant.
At the end of the run, win or lose, you’ll get your summary of your run, good and bad. This is also where you’ll see how many unlocks you still have left to go, as well as any good items you may receive on your future runs. Then before you know it you’re back to the beginning to try and a new run and see if you can get any further with your new goodies.
Variety – Spice of life or too much of a good thing?
The game offers many combinations for game play. In fact, one area that Shuffle Tactics boast it’s variety is indicating that it comes with lots of content. This comes by way of 3 heroes, 10 sidekicks, 27 enemies, 10 bosses, 6 regions, 300 hero cards, 150 sidekick cards and hundreds of relics. Having this much variety means that you can easily create many different combinations and a variety of play styles. However, as there are 164 unlocks that you’ll need to complete, this also means you’ll be playing for quite a bit before possibly finding a strategy that works for you.
This much variety actually makes the game feel slightly overwhelming. It isn’t the most approachable as not only are there a lot of cards, but there aren’t really any ways of learning except trial and error. A simpler way of learning some of the cards, be it a pop up explain a mechanic such as “tinker” or “overload” would do wonders, especially for those who may enjoy tactics based games but are just beginning their journey into deckbuilding and/or roguelikes.
The Good
While this is mentioned above, the personality of the merchants is refreshing to see. Each has their own background and adds a bit to the world. Be it bat boy, the spider, or the insect librarian, each holds a bit to the overall lore of the world. Sometimes you’ll learn about the quirky inhabitants and other times you may learn about your ultimate villain.
The art of the cards and the characters is also a bit nostalgic. Shuffle Tactics seems to take the best of classic tactics RPG pixel art and just slightly modernize it for a new audience. It feels retro enough to be attractive without feeling outdated.
The sheer amount of thought that went into the characters and their cards is impressive. While this number is relatively high, it would be a mistake to not mention that a lot of thought went into Shuffle Tactics. Just looking at the amount of content lets you know the developers spent lots of time with this one.
The Bad
There is so much to do and while the mechanics can be fairly repetitive, it doesn’t actually teach you some of what you need to do. When you boot up the game, you get a tutorial on the basics of combat. The combat is the easiest thing to learn. What would have been helpful was going through some of the basic controls. As an example, the number of times I hit the wrong enemy or targeted one of my sidekicks was too often. It took almost four hours of playing before I stumbled on hitting CTRL to have an overhead camera. The only thing I learned about moving the camera was using WASD to move the camera. I hope this is something that gets added in future iterations of the game.
Another interesting aspect was the sidekicks. While I do enjoy having companions to fight with on this journey, it almost felt that these sidekicks should have been their own starting heroes. Perhaps in another iteration they were, or perhaps they just could not find enough different cards to give these characters? Making these sidekicks their own heroes in their own right and perhaps the ability to partner with another hero would have made the game feel less overwhelming. It may have made for interesting combinations of which heroes would team up with the others.
Another aspect that felt off putting was the lack of clarity. The game neglects to tell you is that once you’ve received charms post fight, you need to actually add those to your cards. It also doesn’t feel super intuitive to add charms to cards. Nothing about the game tells you to go into your inventory and adjust your cards to add these charms. The relics will automatically give you the effects so you never have to do anything extra with these thankfully. While not every game needs to hold your hand, an indication of what to do with these would be great. When you see the cards in your rewards, they don’t have any indication of how many charms they can hold. Sometimes a very quick tutorial can go a long way.
The scaling of enemies also sometimes felt uneven. In the first area, it felt like enemies could go from a difficulty scale of 1-25, and then the second area would be 5-50. It felt odd to have battles that were harder in the first setting than in the second. Understandably, it is a roguelike so you won’t always get the same level of difficulty or the same fights. However, some level scaling feels like it could greatly improve the enjoyment. The first area having fights that ranged 1-10 difficulty then the next level having 11-20 feels more cohesive. Instead sometimes battles felt jarring in the progression of the map. Perhaps they want to keep players on their toes but this felt a bit less fun and more difficult just to be difficult.
Final Thoughts
Shuffle Tactics is an incredibly ambitious game that feels like it could be amazing. The problem is that right now, it’s quite rough. It’s blending genres that while there is some overlap in these fan bases, is it enough for such an ambitious game? Some assistance for the learning curve could go a long way. As much as I wanted to love this game, I just can’t. Everything about this game screams that I should want to dedicate all of my time towards it. While the sheer amount of content is overwhelming, the game is a bit underwhelming. It’s a reminder that sometimes things need to be in moderation and too much of a good thing can be bad.
Perhaps with a little bit of tweaking, Shuffle Tactics will begin a new trend or find some great footing. For now, it’s just a bit too much to be enjoyed by many. It will find an audience, but it may be quite niche. A bit more polish and maybe removal of some of the too much content and this might be a great way to bridge these genres together.
Shuffle Tactics was reviewed on PC via Steam. Gamer Social Club would like to thank The Arcade Crew and Club Sandwich for the review code. Shuffle Tactics is releasing June 24, 2025 on Steam.
