Combat involves 3 on 3 fights in each lane. Turn order is determined by speed (green number). If speed is tied, both moves take place even if a creature dies.

If enemy is at 1 health and you have the preferred food, you can tame it. The key to the game is taming creatures to use for later battles.

After completing a battle, you are offered food, items, and a reward. There are 2 choices of creatures and rewards, so player needs to be plan ahead. The player needs to complete 8 battles to reach the boss and your team is healed fully before the boss.

- The taming aspect is interesting with 3 different types of food- meat, fish, and fruit. Most creatures prefer only 1 food and will have decreased taming chance if you use a non-preferred food.
- The hand drawn artwork has nice details with shiny effects. During battle phase, it shows a detailed image of the creature.
- In easy mode, player can use undo feature each battle if you made a mistake or want to change monster lane or moves used.
- For players that want a strategic challenge, this game rewards players that are able to make the best use of their resources- creatures, syringes, and items.

- Progression takes too much effort to unlock 1 new creature making the game feel grindy. Takes 2-3 full runs to unlock 1 creature after reaching level 5.
- Player is at a distinct disadvantage if you don't know what moves the boss has before facing it. The main way to get this info is by watching a YouTube Video or reading a guide to see their moves.
- After 2-3 fights, the enemies get much stronger and the player is forced to sacrifice creatures just to tame 1-2 in the next battle. If you don't play your turns optimally, you are out of creatures by the time you fight the boss.

- Show debuffs on top of the card instead of bottom left corner of creature. I am used to seeing negative effects on top of card/character in most card games.
- Add abilities or moves that disable heal moves for a turn. Healing creatures are too strong and require more resources to tame them.
- Add a shop before the boss to allow player to trade food/items for other items. After eight battles, you are stuck with several food items that can only be used to heal 2, which is not much compared to the health of enemies.

Conclusion:
Balance is the main issue of the game and is extremely grindy to unlock better creatures. If you can overlook the frustration with the difficulty, the game offers a interesting twist on the monster catching formula.
The roadmap specified they will adjust the difficulty so the devs are making changes based on community feedback.

I am recommending the game with the hope that they can make the difficulty more manageable and require less experience for unlocking new creatures. If you enjoy the difficulty from souls-like games and strategic elements from card games, check out the game or play the demo.

Originally posted by author:

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I've played tons of roguelike deckbuilders, and this one truly seems special. It leverages some unique risk/reward mechanics as you work to tame enemy creatures while sacrificing your own in order to pull off wins.

Shout out to the art style, bestiary & lore entries as well. It's rare that games in this genre can captivate you with the actual universe being built but I love the direction here.

It's challenging, fun, and has engaging mechanics...can't ask for much more when it comes to a roguelike.

This game is amazing

You will like this game if you are the following:
1. Love Cool artwork of Creatures (the creatures are very cool)
2. Play Deck-building and Roguelike games
3. Going off Deck-building - you like getting really powerful creatures at the end that hit really F****** hard
4. Are a nerd

This review does not go into why the game is good. After playing for a while I was trying to understand why the reviews are not overwhelmingly positive, here is the consensus on why people are not recommending it, and my answer to their complaints:

1. The game is too hard - Fair point. I don't think all runs are winnable at the highest difficulties. At harder levels getting a bad starter, encounter and reward means an insta reset. But if by battle 2 or 3 you build momentum and get decent creatures you are set to beat the bosses. I dont personally get why this is such a big deal, and btw, does noone else here play Balatro, Slay the Spire etc? At higher Stakes (Balatro) or Ascension levels (Slay the Spire) you will reset on a bad seed. For new players one thing I can suggest to make runs easier, play "pokemon" and catch as many as you can at the start. You will need bodies even til late game. Then start learning why you are losing runs. Yes the enemies are sometimes Bull****, Yes the boss has 50+ Hp. You can do two things, complain about the game being the game, or place every syringe on your Sky Whale and whup that guys ass. Be a Man! Again, if every run were easily winnable, there would be no satisfaction for clearing higher levels. Also use the undo button stupid.

2. Run structure is repetitive - Players want the option not to battle: Shops, Healing, a break (?). Shop would be cool, but I want to add if you do not battle you do not get creatures. Adding a coin/money mechanic for a shop (given the currency wont be the items that you have) may not be gameplay that the devs want to have, the rewards in between may have been their compromise. I can see supporting this, I dont think I would ever go to the shop to skip a battle

3. Takes too much processing power - Yep agree for endless: Running endless at stage 25+ with creatures that have almost all abilities is impossible. Had to abandon the run because it was taking too long and lagged a lot. As of now I am not spamming endless runs, so this does not affect me as much, and based on how active the patches are I dont see this being a problem in the future

4. The game does not give you enough resources - Thats a Skill issue. In parallel Slay the Spire it is not explicit but HP is a resource of yours, not just the attack cards. Dont be afraid to lose creatures! Why are you using a taming item to heal +3 on a useless creature when you can use it to catch a 3-4 star one. Your goal is to beat the boss, not save your little petting zoo.

End of the day, the game is hard. If you want to win every game, this one is not for you. What gets me is the wording on steam reviews as "not recommended", for this game it should be "not for me, but its still a good game"

I was writing this and the game went from Mostly positive to very positive, so I thought about not needing to post this - ♥♥♥♥ it they deserve more positive reviews. I hope they keep updating this game (roadmap looks so promising)