Cobalt Core

Genre: Turn-Based Card RPG / Roguelike

Players: 1

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Review:

Cobalt Core, released in 2023 on PC and Nintendo Switch, is a Turn-Based Card RPG and Roguelike, that little subgenre that everyone knows for the phenomenal Slay the Spire, but has since gone on to include multiple other truly excellent takes on this style of gameplay, such as Balatro, Inscryption, Wildfrost, and Nowhere Prophet. Is this becoming its own new genre? Should we be calling these “Spirelikes”? Well, in any case, I won’t bury the lead here – you can add Cobalt Core to the list of superb entries in this growing subgenre.

In this game, players control a team of three anthropomorphic animal spacecraft pilots stuck in a time loop as they fend off space pirates, strange crystalline entities, and other enemies. While these pilots all share one spacecraft, each has their own specialty, such as direct attacks, defenses, evasive maneuvers, or drones. Using their combined strengths, you must take out increasingly formidable enemy ships while avoiding damage.

The pilot system is one of the clever things that Cobalt Core does to set itself apart from other games in the genre, as each pilot has their own associated cards added to the deck. Because of this, using different combinations of pilots as you unlock them is akin to using different combinations of magic colors in a Magic: The Gathering deck.

The other clever thing that Cobalt Core does is by building combat around the idea that both yours’ and enemies’ ships are not one static single entity, but a construction comprised of multiple parts. Ships can have empty framework sections that enemy fire passes through, and lining up your guns with enemy missiles fired out of a missile bay enables you to shoot those missiles down. Likewise, shuffling your ship around on its horizontal axis can orient your weapons to fire at enemy weak spots, or move your own weak spots away from enemy fire. For these reasons, dodging in this game is every bit as vital a mechanic as attack and defense.

As if these clever gameplay mechanics weren’t enough, Cobalt Core wraps these great mechanics in a really endearing presentation using some really nice pixel art graphics, some absolutely adorable characters with wonderful dialogue (“You lost your memories.” “My memories??? I needed those! I assume!”), and a truly catchy synthesized soundtrack, with great tunes like Epoch, DT, Gravity Well, Defiance, and Beneath a Birchen Moon.

Clearly, I have a lot of good things to say about this game, so now let’s turn to the bad. I do think some of the cards and card types here can be a bit overly-confusing, or their usefulness isn’t readily apparent. I also feel like even when you’ve got a really good deck going, it doesn’t exactly feel like you’ve got a killer deck in the same way you feel in games like Slay the Spire – at one point, I actually beat the campaign and didn’t even feel like I was doing all that well. I also think a part of this is that you don’t feel like you’re getting a really good progression in how your deck is improving.

However, while there are some details that seem like they could have used more fine-tuning, overall Cobalt Core is a rousing success in the Turn-Based Roguelike deckbuilding Card RPG genre. The presentation is great, the ideas are original and clever, and they all largely work to create an overall excellent experience. If you do enjoy games in this genre, you won’t want to miss out on Cobalt Core.

tl;dr – Cobalt Core is a Turn-Based Card RPG and Roguelike much like Slay the Spire, but it brings its own clever ideas to the genre, such as battling with spaceships consisting of different parts, and being able to build a deck using three different characters with their own specialties. All of this is within a really endearing presentation. I have my issues with the game’s progression, but overall this is a fantastic addition to this genre, and fans of games like this will definitely want to play it.

Grade: B+

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