Meteorfall: Rustbowl Rumble review

I genuinely cannot think of a developer with a more consistent track record than Slothwerks. In their time making games, they have all been card games that use the same art style and have been part of the same universe known as Meteorfall. Oh yea, and they've all been awesome. This is still very much the case with Meteorfall: Rustbowl Rumble. Despite arguably being the least mobile-friendly entry in the series so far, I've dumped hours and hours into this game on my phone, and I'm looking forward to more.

Meteorfall: Rustbowl Rumble is a deck-building roguelike where you build a party of three heroes to face off in a series of arena-style battles, slaying foes in hopes of being the last team standing. The game is turn-based, but in an odd way that creates room for manipulating turn order mechanics (or falling victim to them).

To explain, certain cards are "ability" cards that activate the moment you play them on a hero--straightforward enough. But, there are also "equipment" cards that heroes equip and then use at the end of a turn, and the order in which all these cards activate is predetermined by where on the battlefield your heroes are standing. Each hero in Meteorfall: Rustbowl Rumble comes with its own set of unique ability and equipment cards, along with passive upgrades and special mechanics, which trying new combinations of heroes on new runs feel fresh just about every time you play.

The card-type and timing mechanics alone can be enough to add a ton of variety and depth to Meteorfall: Rustbowl Rumble, but the game does not stop there. Fight schedules shift on each run, there are wild cards that can mutate the way an entire round plays out, and between fights, you even have a chance to visit a hub for getting more upgrades or otherwise powering up your deck, but you are limited to following a "schedule" that gives you just a few options of things to do before going into the next fight.

These systems can be overwhelming at first. When I first started with Meteorfall: Rustbowl Rumble, I couldn't even make it through the first fight, but--like any great roguelike--I learned enough on that run to make it further in the next run. Now, I am at the point where ever run goes fairly deep, and I even cleared a new difficulty on the first run it was available with a hero team I had never even used before. This was all thanks to the way the game teaches you through failure, as there are no upgrade mechanics that make subsequent runs easier (unless you count unlockable characters and wild cards, which you can opt to not have to unlock to use).

The different hero classes, their cards, and the way they can mix and match into unexpected synergies are really the stars of the show in Meteorfall: Rustbowl Rumble. Even the most humble starter cards can become the most powerful parts of your deck, provided you know how to use them. There are not many card games where I have felt like I had the patience or luck to try some of the harebrained strategies I've been able to pull off in this game, and I think that's a testament to how well-designed Meteorfall: Rustbowl Rumble and how well it empowers this kind of play relatively quickly.

As impressed as I am with how tight this game's core mechanics are, I will say I am a bit disappointed with how Meteorfall: Rustbowl Rumble displays everything. It still has the amazing, goofy art style of the previous games, but there seems to be an awful lot of wasted screen space, which can make playing on a smaller screen uncomfortable. There's also quite a few visual bugs, a pretty lengthy startup load, and some performance hitches that can occasionally tank the frame rate. None of these were enough to put me off from playing, even though one visual bug in my last run led to a hero being killed! If you ever find yourself in this situation, just know you can sort of "save scum" your way through a run by force quitting the app to resume your game at the start of the fight you were on.

The amount of technical hiccups in Meteorfall: Rustbowl Rumble put enough of a damper on my enjoyment of most games that I'd have a hard time looking past them, or otherwise would put the game down entirely after playing enough to write about it. Meteorfall: Rustbowl Rumble is a different kind of game, though. This roguelike is so sharp and tight that I want to keep playing it even though I could have a more convenient experience playing something else.