Right here off the top I feel I need to give a short and lazy explanation of what this game is.
For those with a small working knowledge of indie titles, Cobalt Core = FTL X Slay the Spire.
For those not jamming with that equation, Cobalt Core is a roguelike deck builder where you control a spaceship and have three crew members (at a time) each with their own specialities as you try to head to an end point through branching paths, repairing, upgrading and obtaining new things as you go.
Roguelike deck builders are something I have always enjoyed, with a background in tabletop games, spending years of my life rolling dice, moving miniatures, shuffling cards and more. This genre was laser targeted at my interests.
However the genre is not particularly niche and there are many games under that banner.
It will be a turn off for some, a barrier that you may not be able to get past but I would like to explain why this one in particular is special to me.
To speak more to the fans of the genre, Cobalt Core is neither the deepest or most balanced of these games.
It has a wonderful story but nothing that gets close to being as intriguing as Inscryption.
What it does have over virtually all of the games in this genre I’ve played is that it feels better than all of them.
To explain how a card game could feel better, I will briefly describe the average game of Cobalt Core.
Your ship, which as you progress more unlock but I will get to that later, is at the bottom of the screen. To the left side are the portraits of your three chosen crew mates who have added their cards to a basic deck which will represent their speciality, be it a pilot, an engineer, or a weapons officer.
At the top is the enemy, typically a ship. You draw cards, have energy which is an equivalent to action points, mana or whatever resource is easiest for you to imagine.
Like virtually all card games, the cards cost these resources each turn and it’s your decision how to play these out.
The target isn’t simply just a ship though, you and the enemy both have segments.
Your cannons fire directly in front, ships can also fire missiles or release drones.
Some parts may be weak whilst others are armoured and all these things mean that there isn’t just a strategy to what you’re playing but also about positioning because in Cobalt Core it’s just as much about being in the right place as it is having the right cards.
How this works is you get a heads up of what your enemy will be doing, where they’re firing, if it will cause a negative effect and importantly how much damage you will take if you are right in front of their cannons.
Here is where Cobalt Core differentiates itself from many card games and that movement is a strategic and exciting factor. It isn’t just attack and defend, those are represented but positioning is key and this is how the game feels more involved, even if perhaps simpler, than many others in the genre.
Swaying between cannon fire, positioning the part of your ship which is armoured to take the hit or, further into the game, using and even controlling a mid-row of objects such as meteors or missiles to deal the most, take the least and have the best turn is a lot of fun in each and every battle.
I’m sure there’s an argument that having all these different tools to your disposal can make things too easy, but your enemies get similar things and further into runs and especially on higher difficulties you are managing so much that the wide variety of tools may be great but the wild variety of bad situations you are facing can be greater.
The variety is here. There are eight different characters to unlock and five different ships; that's two-hundred and eighty different combinations before we even start to look at different cards and artifacts picked up along the way.
I’m sure there is much more in others but this is more than enough.
Building a crew that feels powerful is like any great card game, it’s not just the combinations you come up with but how your mind works with them, what sort of play-style you prefer.
As you unlock more ships, completely new strategies appear and you’ll be cursing out a ship for being crap with little understanding before wondering if actually it’s OP and not balanced later and that journey is fun.
Each card you pick up after a fight can later be upgraded, this breeds new strategies. While also collecting artifacts (permanent changes to your ship) will create even more.
I’ve explained the average battle but I should briefly explain the average campaign or run, and what the objective is.
As previously mentioned, the campaign map is much like FTL or even Inscryption (although left to right rather than foreground to background).
You can plan ahead looking down at the locations on each branch, and there are seven different icons (including the exit) you will see.
Three are similar, these are the enemies, elite enemies and all the way to the right is the boss.
This is simple to understand, the elites are harder but give you more rewards and the bosses are less random as you will learn what comes at the end of each sector as it is the same each time - how you plan to prepare for them is up to you.
Between these can be; events, artifacts and repair yards.
Events range from meeting NPCs which may give you new cards, ships in distress or even pirates wanting to steal from you.
Artifacts are simply a choice of a permanent upgrade that can dramatically change your strategies as you move on. Without wanting to spoil all that there is, some of these are as simple as extra energy each turn, better engines meaning you start with more movement or possibly interesting effects such as starting with less cards in hand but getting free draws for taking specific types of actions.
These artifacts come from a pool that are available on all runs, but also one's specific to the crew you have picked and even the ship itself.
Lastly is the repair yard, this is where you can, as you would imagine, get your ship repaired of some damage. However here you also get the opportunity to upgrade cards or remove them.
Removing them is for the classic case of “deck thinning” an important strategy and common knowledge to most card-gamers as having less cards means you’ll see your best cards more often.
Although sometimes you’ll be using the bin to rid yourself of a bad card you may have picked up along the way.
Upgrading is as you imagine, making a card better. Each card has two choices of upgrade, most typically these are the choice of cheaper cost or more powerful effect but as you progress it may be to add more effects or be rid of negative ones such as letting a card that is usually once per battle be more permanent.
As you can imagine, this is just another layer to the variety and strategy the game offers.
A single successful run will take around an hour, typically less as you play more of the game and get quicker at making decisions and fighting bosses.
If you manage to make a successful run you are rewarded with the chance to see a cutscene for one of your crew. I will not dive into the story to deeply but your characters are caught in a time loop, something happened to the titular Cobalt Core and getting to the end of these runs and confronting it allows you start piecing memories together to understand what is really at stake and how the crew ended up here in the first place.
Also if it wasn’t clear before, doing X amount of runs or things at higher difficulties may unlock more and the game politely points you in the direction of what to do if furthering the story isn’t enough.
The story itself I will say is good, heartwarming and funny thanks to the cast. A simple enough tale that is fun to unravel due to how it’s presented.
I feel that maybe they could have dug a deeper hole, but I respect the fun almost Star Fox like animal pals with the silly comedic panels, enemy designs and more along with some quality writing would maybe be at odds with anything too complex.
Really the lightness of it all helps the game feel so moreish. Runs aren’t long, dialogue isn’t too deep. You can pause when you like, come back when you want and it will always be fun.
If I had played it closer to release Cobalt Core would have been in my top five games of 2023 and that is extremely high praise.
There are small elements of the game that are not perfect, even ignoring that is may not be the deepest or most balanced of these games, simple things like the end of sector bosses never changing isn’t the best and maybe the toughest part is although everything an enemy is going to do seems heads up, how they are going to move is not and can really make or break some battles.
Outside of those two minor complaints there was never a moment while I was playing the game I thought the game needed changing. There are small dials that could use twisting and the balance and story not being the peak of what they can be is what keeps this “down”, to “only” being top five of one of the best years in gaming and not the very top.
Essentially what I am saying is as long as you enjoy deck builders you should be going out of your way to get this game and play it.
For those with a small working knowledge of indie titles, Cobalt Core = FTL X Slay the Spire.
For those not jamming with that equation, Cobalt Core is a roguelike deck builder where you control a spaceship and have three crew members (at a time) each with their own specialities as you try to head to an end point through branching paths, repairing, upgrading and obtaining new things as you go.
Roguelike deck builders are something I have always enjoyed, with a background in tabletop games, spending years of my life rolling dice, moving miniatures, shuffling cards and more. This genre was laser targeted at my interests.
However the genre is not particularly niche and there are many games under that banner.
It will be a turn off for some, a barrier that you may not be able to get past but I would like to explain why this one in particular is special to me.
To speak more to the fans of the genre, Cobalt Core is neither the deepest or most balanced of these games.
It has a wonderful story but nothing that gets close to being as intriguing as Inscryption.
What it does have over virtually all of the games in this genre I’ve played is that it feels better than all of them.
To explain how a card game could feel better, I will briefly describe the average game of Cobalt Core.
Your ship, which as you progress more unlock but I will get to that later, is at the bottom of the screen. To the left side are the portraits of your three chosen crew mates who have added their cards to a basic deck which will represent their speciality, be it a pilot, an engineer, or a weapons officer.
At the top is the enemy, typically a ship. You draw cards, have energy which is an equivalent to action points, mana or whatever resource is easiest for you to imagine.
Like virtually all card games, the cards cost these resources each turn and it’s your decision how to play these out.
The target isn’t simply just a ship though, you and the enemy both have segments.
Your cannons fire directly in front, ships can also fire missiles or release drones.
Some parts may be weak whilst others are armoured and all these things mean that there isn’t just a strategy to what you’re playing but also about positioning because in Cobalt Core it’s just as much about being in the right place as it is having the right cards.
How this works is you get a heads up of what your enemy will be doing, where they’re firing, if it will cause a negative effect and importantly how much damage you will take if you are right in front of their cannons.
Here is where Cobalt Core differentiates itself from many card games and that movement is a strategic and exciting factor. It isn’t just attack and defend, those are represented but positioning is key and this is how the game feels more involved, even if perhaps simpler, than many others in the genre.
Swaying between cannon fire, positioning the part of your ship which is armoured to take the hit or, further into the game, using and even controlling a mid-row of objects such as meteors or missiles to deal the most, take the least and have the best turn is a lot of fun in each and every battle.
I’m sure there’s an argument that having all these different tools to your disposal can make things too easy, but your enemies get similar things and further into runs and especially on higher difficulties you are managing so much that the wide variety of tools may be great but the wild variety of bad situations you are facing can be greater.
The variety is here. There are eight different characters to unlock and five different ships; that's two-hundred and eighty different combinations before we even start to look at different cards and artifacts picked up along the way.
I’m sure there is much more in others but this is more than enough.
Building a crew that feels powerful is like any great card game, it’s not just the combinations you come up with but how your mind works with them, what sort of play-style you prefer.
As you unlock more ships, completely new strategies appear and you’ll be cursing out a ship for being crap with little understanding before wondering if actually it’s OP and not balanced later and that journey is fun.
Each card you pick up after a fight can later be upgraded, this breeds new strategies. While also collecting artifacts (permanent changes to your ship) will create even more.
I’ve explained the average battle but I should briefly explain the average campaign or run, and what the objective is.
As previously mentioned, the campaign map is much like FTL or even Inscryption (although left to right rather than foreground to background).
You can plan ahead looking down at the locations on each branch, and there are seven different icons (including the exit) you will see.
Three are similar, these are the enemies, elite enemies and all the way to the right is the boss.
This is simple to understand, the elites are harder but give you more rewards and the bosses are less random as you will learn what comes at the end of each sector as it is the same each time - how you plan to prepare for them is up to you.
Between these can be; events, artifacts and repair yards.
Events range from meeting NPCs which may give you new cards, ships in distress or even pirates wanting to steal from you.
Artifacts are simply a choice of a permanent upgrade that can dramatically change your strategies as you move on. Without wanting to spoil all that there is, some of these are as simple as extra energy each turn, better engines meaning you start with more movement or possibly interesting effects such as starting with less cards in hand but getting free draws for taking specific types of actions.
These artifacts come from a pool that are available on all runs, but also one's specific to the crew you have picked and even the ship itself.
Lastly is the repair yard, this is where you can, as you would imagine, get your ship repaired of some damage. However here you also get the opportunity to upgrade cards or remove them.
Removing them is for the classic case of “deck thinning” an important strategy and common knowledge to most card-gamers as having less cards means you’ll see your best cards more often.
Although sometimes you’ll be using the bin to rid yourself of a bad card you may have picked up along the way.
Upgrading is as you imagine, making a card better. Each card has two choices of upgrade, most typically these are the choice of cheaper cost or more powerful effect but as you progress it may be to add more effects or be rid of negative ones such as letting a card that is usually once per battle be more permanent.
As you can imagine, this is just another layer to the variety and strategy the game offers.
A single successful run will take around an hour, typically less as you play more of the game and get quicker at making decisions and fighting bosses.
If you manage to make a successful run you are rewarded with the chance to see a cutscene for one of your crew. I will not dive into the story to deeply but your characters are caught in a time loop, something happened to the titular Cobalt Core and getting to the end of these runs and confronting it allows you start piecing memories together to understand what is really at stake and how the crew ended up here in the first place.
Also if it wasn’t clear before, doing X amount of runs or things at higher difficulties may unlock more and the game politely points you in the direction of what to do if furthering the story isn’t enough.
The story itself I will say is good, heartwarming and funny thanks to the cast. A simple enough tale that is fun to unravel due to how it’s presented.
I feel that maybe they could have dug a deeper hole, but I respect the fun almost Star Fox like animal pals with the silly comedic panels, enemy designs and more along with some quality writing would maybe be at odds with anything too complex.
Really the lightness of it all helps the game feel so moreish. Runs aren’t long, dialogue isn’t too deep. You can pause when you like, come back when you want and it will always be fun.
If I had played it closer to release Cobalt Core would have been in my top five games of 2023 and that is extremely high praise.
There are small elements of the game that are not perfect, even ignoring that is may not be the deepest or most balanced of these games, simple things like the end of sector bosses never changing isn’t the best and maybe the toughest part is although everything an enemy is going to do seems heads up, how they are going to move is not and can really make or break some battles.
Outside of those two minor complaints there was never a moment while I was playing the game I thought the game needed changing. There are small dials that could use twisting and the balance and story not being the peak of what they can be is what keeps this “down”, to “only” being top five of one of the best years in gaming and not the very top.
Essentially what I am saying is as long as you enjoy deck builders you should be going out of your way to get this game and play it.