Cobalt Core reviewDeveloper: Rocket Rat GamesPublisher: Brace Yourself PublishingPlatform: Played on PC and Steam DeckAvailability: Out now on PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch.
Earth has a space junk problem. With each new rocket launch, or decommissioned satellite, we add more detritus to high orbit. Already satellites sometimes collide and one day, or so I’ve read, there’ll be so much flotsam up there we’ll be earthbound; unable to launch new spacecraft through a prison of shrapnel. Anyway, I’m no rocket scientist, but this does seem an apt metaphor for today’s games market. Back in the day there were few enough new indies that games like Super Meat Boy, Crimzon Clover or FTL went straight to the moon. Today we’re blessed with so many launches that it’s hard to spot the gems among the debris.
Nowhere is this truer than the deck-builder genre. Slay the Spire, 2017’s roguelike indie darling, made such an impact with its spontaneous cardplay that it blasted 1001 other deck-builders into the atmosphere. In the half-decade since, it’s barely been touched. Monster Train and Inscryption have come close. But nothing has yet landed the very same way and, for each successful take-off, there have been scores of spaceX style catastrophes. Against this celestial backdrop, then, enter Cobalt Core, a plucky cosmic roguelike from a little-known, three-person dev team, which maybe, just maybe, earns a place among the constellations.
If you’ve played Slay the Spire or any of its lineage, Cobalt Core’s premise will be familiar: Navigate a bifurcating map of random encounters and random events, collecting gameplay-altering artefacts and adding cards to your deck (Pro tip: Less is more! Don’t take cards you don’t need!) while preparing for a show stopping boss battle at the summit. Cobalt Core’s literal twist on the genre is that card battles take place on a 2D grid. Two spaceships face each other in a dogfight, with a row of asteroids, rockets or murderous drones between them. You spend cards and resources clacking these around like a Rubik’s Cube, positioning your ship beyond range of enemy gunfire, launching drones to harry or cover weak-spots, then lining up your own lethal cannons with the enemy’s exhaust ports and pulling the trigger. It’s responsive, precise – perfectly calibrated for gamepad – and all this rowshifting drifts you into a meditative flowstate as you flip and twist the playfield in rhythm to the stellar ambient soundtrack. A raft of clever little complications – shields, weak-points, hull-corroding acids, dodge mechanics and deck manipulation – add genuine strategic depth and nuance. The line between explosive victory and inglorious defeat often hangs on small moments of inspiration, cleverly meshing different systems together.
Cobalt Core’s second innovation is its smart synthesis of narrative and gameplay, centred on a motley crew of intrepid space critters. You can only pick three of eight total crew members per run, and each brings along unique cardsets and mechanics that synergise in interesting and unexpected ways. There’s Riggs, the scatterbrained possum pilot, whose cards let you whiz your spacecraft around the screen and rapidly cycle through your deck. There’s Dizzy, the lizardy science officer, whose shield and return-fire mechanics let you turtle enemy assaults, absorbing shots and responding with answering volleys. There’s Drake, a hot-tempered draconic sellsword, who pumps out increased damage at the cost of your own ship’s hull. Or rocket-ram Isaac, who fires missiles, launches killer drones and uses solar winds to manipulate protective asteroid belts. There are space wizards and computer hacking llamas and rhinos manning the cannons, all of it overseen by the cute AI cat at the centre of the mystery.