First Look: Shroom and Gloom Spices Up the Deckbuilder Genre
Sometimes it feels like you can’t open Steam without seeing a new roguelike deckbuilder for sale. Don’t get me wrong: I love the genre, but it gets a bit stale after a while. That’s why a game like Shroom and Gloom feels so fresh.
Entering Early Access today, it melds the deckbuilder format with a psychedelic, gross-out art style and novel gameplay mechanics that make it stand out from the crowd. Published by Devolver Digital and developed by South African Team Lazerbeam, this first-person dungeon crawler trades the genre's standard 2D maps for 3D exploration and a culinary combat system that requires you to literally eat your fungal foes to survive.
Shroom and Gloom is played from a first-person perspective. While that doesn’t drastically alter the core combat loop of a deckbuilder, it does boost the immersion a bit. I enjoy the fresh perspective, at least.
What really sets the game apart, however, is its dual deckbuilding system. Not only are you building a combat deck to take on foes via tight synergies, but you’re also managing a separate Explore deck.
These support cards are used between battles to heal your character, discover new cards, interact with the environment, or upgrade your existing deck. It makes decisions between battles just as crucial as the combat itself, and it’s vastly more engaging than just clicking down branching pathways on a static map.
Another unorthodox aspect is the card scaling. If you build an Explore deck that allows you to fully utilize those quiet moments between encounters, you can continuously modify your cards throughout a run. It turns weak starting abilities into overpowered attacks and game-breaking super-weapons.
While most deckbuilders rely heavily on damage mitigation, Shroom and Gloom revolves around taking damage—and then immediately eating your enemies to heal it. You can add modifiers to foes so that, upon death, they become edible and bestow energy, health, or both. You can season, skewer, roast, and physically devour the fungal myco-monstrosities, or throw them into a pot to brew game-changing soups.
Because Shroom and Gloom is an Early Access release, it’s naturally going to need a bit of time to ripen before hitting 1.0. Developer Team Lazerbeam estimates a 12- to 24-month Early Access period to get things just right. The current serving offers two distinct zones to explore, complete with different characters and tailored decks, but there's a lot more on the way. The studio plans to gather direct community feedback while they cook up the final version.
Ultimately, the standout feature of Shroom and Gloom is its vibe. There’s something deeply unsettling about the secrets hidden in the Gloom, and I have a feeling that the more we uncover, the worse it’ll get. It doesn’t help that you’re literally told you’re being "ripened for consumption" during the game-over screen.
And the unlockable characters include “concerned parent,” who I’m assuming is looking for her son–the Paper Boy, which is the default starting character. This is a dungeon crawler that promises to be as weird as it is strategic, and I'm looking forward to what Team Lazerbeam has in store for us in version 1.0.
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