Must know
What is it? A dice-based deck builder about killing heavily armed animals.
Release date February 29, 2024
Expect to pay $13.50/£12.80
developer Yarrow games
editor Versus Evil, tinyBuild
Reviewed on Asus ROG Ally
Steam deck TBA
shortcut official page
We live in a golden age of roguelike deck builders. If you like using cards to deal death, there are tons of great games that I highly recommend. Tamarak Trail tries to stand out from the crowded group by ditching the cards altogether, tearing up the cards and opting for dice instead. A Slay the Die-r, if you will (of course not, I'm so sorry). It's actually a pretty good argument for a finicky deck builder, although unfortunately it's hamstrung by a campaign that could have used a replay or two.
Armed with a pair of deadly dice, you set off on the titular path, a life-threatening nature walk. Almost every move you make leads to a fight with a monstrous beast armed with a weapon. Good thing each side of your dice has a different power to help you fight this NRA wet dream.
Combat is turn-based, with your starting dice rolling either a basic attack, some defense, a nasty bleed effect that deals sustained damage, and one that allows you to dodge an attack. This final force also “flips” the cube, allowing you to use the force that was on the opposite side as well. Powers often drain from a pool of stamina, which also serves as a last line of defense. A small amount of stamina is regenerated each turn, and this amount increases a little with each die you roll not Therefore, knowing when to hold back requires some tactics. You can see what your opponent will do on their turn. So if he's planning on shooting at you, it might not be a bad idea to use a defensive power.
It's a good, if unremarkable, combat system, similar to those you'll find in the seventeen deck builders released on Steam since you started reading this review. What sets it apart are the dice. Some powers, like the aforementioned bleeding power, only trigger when you “bounce” dice by intentionally throwing them into each other. But dice you discard cost more stamina. There is also a small chance that if a die bounces, it will be thrown to another side. As insane as this can be when it destroys a winning strategy, I like that Tamarak Trail looked at the actual behavior of dice.
Each successful battle is rewarded with a choice of three dice faces, and you can customize your dice layout to your liking. For example, covering a defensive area gives you a consistent shield die, eliminating the need to rely on blind luck. But it's only when you start unlocking more faces that can flip the dice that the game shows its full potential. I made a die that could deal a nasty debuff and then flipped it to the right, to a side that deals good damage And rotates again while the enemy is weakened (which the previous face had already done, heh heh heh).
Ah, but what if you have a cube force that flips the cube one way, and the next force spins it back the other way? previous Face? This triggers an infinite combo, a massively boosted attack based on the repeated die side. I loved discovering these. I had a dice power that caused confusion, which reduced the enemy's attack damage. At one point I had an Infinite Combo going that caused a stack of ten Confusion, turning a feral pigeon armed with a rifle into an enemy about as threatening as a real pigeon trying to use a rifle to use.
Imagine my joy when I finally managed to add a face to each side of the cube always Switch to another side and increase the chance of rolling an infinite combo to 100%. While the game does have safeguards in place to prevent you from spamming them – the dice's powers deplete and require high stamina expenditure to recharge – but after I also built a dice that could do an infinite combo with massive damage , I felt like I finally had a winning duo of six-sided death dice to see me through my first successful run.
lagging behind
Tamarak countered with a second act full of ghost enemies. Every time you break through their defenses and deal sustained damage, you gain the Fear debuff. Once this stacks three times, you take damage. The terror rate drops by one each round, so sudden all-out attacks are suicidal. At first I liked this twist and the fact that I had to repeat my once successful strategy. Until the game rewarded my success against three ghost dogs by making me fight three more ghost dogs. Oh.
Then three ghost dogs. And then another three. I started to wonder if I was trapped in a time loop (no, I was just so bored that I dreamed about…). better deck builder). Typically, the fun of these games is building the perfect deck that can survive a variety of challenges. There's none of that if the game forces you to repeat identical battles over and over again. At least during a difficult run you have the opportunity to rethink your strategy and take the right course. But if you do it well, the game becomes incredibly boring, especially if you've managed to completely modify the randomness of your dice rolls with flip abilities. You won't always experience four of the same fights in a row, but the fights repeat themselves so often that I'm afraid to try again. This is a pretty critical problem for a roguelike.
A hut that you return to between runs has permanent upgrades like more stamina regeneration and additional gold dropped by enemies, all at a somewhat steep price. I would recommend investing in the one that gives you money every time you die first, then unlocking the other characters afterwards, which will at least help reduce the repetition. The Mage introduces elemental powers that stack and interact in novel ways, and the Tracker introduces single-use traps. Both provide a welcome change, but are still hamstrung by their involvement in this all-too-monotonous campaign.
Tamarak isn't particularly good at passing on information either. “Ice Mirror: Attackers Gain Two Ice” has a power. Fine, but would you mind telling me what the ice debuff is before I decide to add it to my build? If you are offered a choice between three new powers after the battle, you cannot check your current deck before choosing one, because life is cruel and unfair. It's a shame, because there is definitely potential here. A few UI patches and some new enemy types make for an infinite combo that would boost the score tremendously. But the idea of this becoming a staple of the Steam deck in its current form, compared to current classics like Cobalt Core and Balatro? No dice.
