It is always a bad idea to judge a book by it's cover... it is a well known adage and a wise one at that. However, the same could be said of games as well... never judge a game by the promotional and PR material that is released. Most often this works in reverse, with hyped games showing off some pretty awesome PR releases whilst the actual game falls flat on it's face.

Steam Store Page: PR material

Enter Neoverse (not to be confused with the ARM chip architecture for servers) with a pretty horrific PR release featuring girls fighting in a post-apocalyptic Earth whilst forgetting to dress appropriately for the task at hand. This sort of game is an instant pass for me, if you are featuring some skin to sell your game... I start to wonder how good the actual mechanics of the game is! So, even when it is on sale... I skip the chance to add this to my library of games.

However, Humble Bundle gives me a monthly gift of 10 games due to my subscription, with games ranging from triple A releases through to some indie gems... and a couple of months ago, Neoverse developed by TinoGamez. So, earlier this week.. I was rummaging around my unclaimed Steam keys and found this game... and I thought it would make for a reviewable game... most likely a review that would complain about the lack of depth in a game that is built around the looks of the female protagonists.

... I was wrong!

The Setup

At it's heart, Neoverse is a endless rogue-like deck building game where you embark on grouped "missions" defeating enemies, leveling up, collecting and evolving your cards until you finally fall to a stronger enemy. However, all the mechanics of the card game are played out in quite beautifully rendered scenes by one of your scantily clad heroines and the on-screen baddies.

The plot is pretty much non-existent... or if there was one, I really missed it. There was the opening cinematic (above) that laid the bare groundwork... but apart from that, I'm just running through the "dungeon" killing stuff, because they are trying to kill me first! Or did I start the fighting?... who cares, I have cards and I need to use them!

The Game

At the beginning of the game, you only have the single heroine unlocked for use, and it is the Asassin type character who balances between a debuffing Overheat mechanic and damage output. The cosmetic and atheistic choices of the game (the waifu sort of style) obscures what is quite an deep and interesting card mechanic with quite a lot of balancing and juggling of card and character effects.

The onboarding of new players could be much better handled... when you select the Tutorial option, you are just bundled off to a series of "tutorial" videos with no hands-on learning. This is a terrible model for introducing game mechanics! So, I quickly skipped into the game to try and learn by failing!

After quite a number of failed runs, I started to get a hang of the deeper mechanics behind the card battler. The basic ideas are pretty simple, you play cards to attack and defend, and the enemy attacks with telegraphed attacks modes. However, as you start to play more and learn more... you start to see that there is quite a careful and intricate juggling and balancing required to get the most out of your cards and character strengths. Each round can play out easily enough and in a simple manner... but if you do that, you will struggle to pass even the first boss!

So, in the screenshot above, you can see in the bottom left hand corner the critical information for playing the cards. You have the BattleTech (haha... that is one of my favourite games...), which if you play the cards in the specified type order you get a huge damage boost to your next attack (worthwhile, but not always ideal as you are locked to the card type order). Speaking of card types, they come in four flavours Attack (of different sorts), Defence (of different sorts), Instant (instant effects with a huge variety of buffs/debuffs) and Constant (cards that impose a lasting battle condition on you or the enemy).

Next down is the mana limit for the battle round. Each card costs mana to play depending on it's power and any evolution it has undergone, and this will determine the limit that you can play for the round.

Lastly is the card draw pile and the discard pile, which are game mechanics that are affected by specific conditions on played cards.

Your deck of cards initially starts off pretty limited, but with loot from battles and purchases from the store (not real money, just the loot from battles!) this starts to get more impressive with evolved cards and some pretty powerful moves! Each character has a principal balancing act that is needs to be managed. The idea is a reward/risk mechanic, for the Asassin it is a balance between damage potential and Overload (a debuff and a hinderance as it starts to eat up space in your playable card hand), meanwhile the Paladin character appears to have a balance between a Faith (healing) mechanic and a Vampiric debuff.

The end of a battle results either in your failure and a restart... or sweet sweet loot! Mostly, gold to spend in the data store and skill points to level up your character, single use items to sway the course of a battle and new cards to boost your repertoire of possible tactical moves.

The data store is where you will spend your hard earned gold in exchange for new cards, skill points, single use items or just recovering health. Gold is acquired through battling and it generally is in short enough supply to make for some pretty tight decisions. However, it is the easiest place to pick up some of the more powerful cards. Supply is pre-rolled and re-rolling the stock of inventory has an ever increasing gold cost for each reroll.

Upgrading your character via skill gems is where you will experience the light RPG mechanic. Mostly, the upgrade provides passive buffs and resistances but there are a few that can affect your card play or provide instant effects (discounts and freebies) in the data store. Skill gems are pretty plentiful in the battles, but to save up for those really awesome skills you will need a bit of willpower to avoid splashing out on the cheaper ones!

All the cards have a base level and some ability to evolve. At the moment, the only way that I have discovered to evolve the cards is through the completion of quests. Every battle that you opt to take part in (each stage of the mission involves selecting from a group of three battles that have different levels of difficulty and loot outcomes) has a quest that triggers. These can vary from winning a certain number of battles, playing a certain number of cards through to triggering special bonuses.

So, speaking of special bonuses.... you are going to hard pressed to progress very far by sticking to the card attributes and basic gameplay. There is a higher level of gameplay which involves quite a bit more strategic thought and planning. As mentioned before, the BattleTech mechanic encourages you to follow a certain card order at the detriment of actual applicability to the tactical situation.

There are also two other mechanics, Precision and Parrying. Precision is when you are able to kill an enemy with EXACTLY the amount required to reduce their HP to zero. This nets you a nice gold bonus, which is critical for getting your character kitted out ahead of the difficulty curve. Meanwhile, the Parrying mechanic is when you are able to correctly use the enemy telegraphing of their attacks to have EXACTLY the correct amount of shield in place to neutralise their attack, and this stuns the enemy for a round! Trust me, having one less attack to manage and juggle is a relief... especially in the boss fights!

My Thoughts

So, at first blush, Neoverse seemed like one of these games that was designed for the hormonal teenage male power fantasy. Waifus with little in the way of functional clothing doing battle in an anime inspired world. Having had the curiosity to try it out, I did find that it was more than this.

Finding a decent card battler with a endless rogue-like dungeon was quite the surprise. That said, it is a nice travel game or casual sort of game which would be quite at home on a mobile platform or the Switch. On the PC, it is up against a whole host of hardcore in-depth games... so, it is going to hard pressed to stay on my machine for too much longer before I lose interest!

Review Specs

DELL XPS15 (9560)

CPU: i7-7700HQ
RAM: 16 GB
Storage: SSD
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050

Splinterlands (aka the best blockchain game out there!)

Humble Bundle

Have you heard of Humble Bundle? It's a place to get some really great deals on Games, e-books and comic bundles. However, if you sign up for a Humble Bundle Subscription (12 USD per month) you get some really nice bonuses!

1. A 100+ USD bundle of games delivered direct to you each month, redeemable on Steam, Uplay or direct download (depending on the game). This includes recent Triple A games!
2. Access to the Humble Bundle "Trove", a list of 60 games (and growing...) which are free to play as long as you remain a subscriber!
3. Additional Discounts on the Humble Bundle store, with the choice of supporting charities, Humble Bundle or developers in whatever percentage that you wish!

Humble Bundle Subscriptions, it's a no brainer for the dedicated gamer!

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