Roots of Yggdrasil

Less than the sum of its parts: Want a city-builder? mechanically, this is Islanders, but with a bunch of extra UI elements between you and your city. the game settings can only make the UI larger and MORE cluttered, never cleaner. Want a deckbuilding roguelike? pick any of them, this one doesn't add anything new or interesting to that genre. you can skim reviewer play hours and see that there's not much replay value. Want mythological themes? play Hades again. The game elements don't support or justify each other, it just feels like someone picked a few trendy store tags and then made a game to fall into them.

It is hard to write about Roots of Yggdrasil without being comparative. Many now-staples of the deckbuilding genre are here - modifiers, exhaust pile, artifacts - while also adding Islanders-like gameplay, where building placement is meticulous and key for not only optimizing resources but also avoiding incompatiblity. The pain that will arise if you didn't place a Barracks just right and now have no room for a second... it's a bit of learning that pays off. All of this is wrapped up in a mythological bow, with (sexy) gods and scions who make callbacks to Norse mythology while also forging a new path forward. Forging forward is the theme of the story and gameplay, a delightful merger. Sunna and her crew are ushering faceless unseen mortals, innocent victims of Ragnarok, to an actual haven. You're not building communities (for the most part, we'll get there), you're building temporary reliefs that will be consumed by an unstoppable void. This applies to the broader world map as well as levels; I was often only tending to the starting island on a stage for the first three rounds, before the exploration meant shifting my focus to accomplishing mini and major goals. This is not a complaint, but rather an acknowledgement that this is less of a city builder than it might appear. You're not making a thriving town, you're using the mechanics of construction and building placement to rapidly expand before leaving. I never took photos of my finished city like I do in so many other games. That focus on functionality makes it very purpose-driven. At a certain point, Iron Mines stop being living workplaces and rather a number. Which risks a bit of tedium. Even the one spot where I could build a lasting community fell off a bit by the end. The hub haven lets you build a whole town that lasts to give roguelite benefits like better draw chance or starting resources. Good in that I liked making something that lasted, but also it had yet again become numbers. This dissociation was accelerated by exploring the characters and kinships. They're great and well-written. Special shout-outs to the romances. But some of those kinships require a lot of grind and sometimes luck to unlock. I still went through and did them all (I hit all achievements), but some of the process was much more mindless than I wanted. Starting and restarting runs searching for the Golden Strand just so I could befriend Sybil. Doing all of this sadly has little conclusion; there is no buildup to an actual finale. Do I recommend playing it? If you like deckbuilders, absolutely. Just great solid take on the genre. But I also do think it's important to set your story expectations lower. If the gameplay hooks you and you go through the grind and replay naturally, it will be all the better than just trying to see a sort of non-end through.

Super fun! City builder roguelike cards nordic mythos and a hot himbo what more could u ask for

Roguelike deckbuilder meets city builder. This is a genius mashup of Against the Storm and Terrascape.

if this was in early access I would have easily given this a thumbs up, its got a really strong idea but needed more time in the oven, after a few runs you'll notice there isn't much in the way of variety which wouldn't be bad on its own if it had some other way to keep you hooked, the story gets through its main plot at around the 3rd finished run and the side plots feel very strange to even focus on. and during this whole review I have not even mention how one of the resources you can generate during your run just doesn't really have a use (the magic resource) like its closest use is to generate 'action cards' that will do some effect and you keep those cards for the rest of that level, but ask any rouge like veteran, having more cards in your deck is not always a good thing which is only compounded by the fact that this game does love to fill your deck with status card so half the action cards can't see any use unless they remove themselves after your first use unless you want to risk making it even harder to find the buildings you need to get your objectives

Charming!