izigame.me

Wildfrost is honestly one of the best deckbuilding roguelikes I've played in a long while- it reminded me that the genre *can* be fun, if done right, and manages to avoid some of the pitfalls that plague the genre. While there are some issues that begin to rear their head once you get into the high level gameplay, for the average player I'd say it's a fun, if challenging, game that is definitely worth the price.
In Wildfrost, you play as any number of adventurers seeking to end the sudden eternal blizzard the world was plunged into. You recruit new companions and obtain new cards to build a synergy strong enough to take down the frost spirit that has ruined the world with unending winter. I'd say the gameplay is fairly reminiscent of Slay the Spire, but it puts enough unique spins on it to be its own thing that I honestly don't think is like anything else on the market, so I'll assume you've played most deckbuilding roguelikes and get down to the unique parts of this game.
Unlike in most deck battlers, there is no cost system whatsoever. Instead, every card has a cooldown (or conditional activation) that advances once a turn, and a turn is consumed by playing a card- that's it. Thus there are no "expensive" or "cheap" cards, the only limit is how much time you have to play everything. When the cooldown timer for a card reaches 0, it activates its attack or other special effects. This results in interesting situations where you can't play everything you want and you have to decide which is more important- where to cut your losses, and who to sacrifice. This is the meat and potatoes of this game and it's a lot of fun! It also means synergies are a lot more freeing than they are in other games of this genre, as there are no cards locked away behind high costs and the like.
The game also has a unique positioning system: there are two "rows" and 3 slots for each row, for a total of 6 slots- this is the same for the enemy side as well. Normally only the units in the front of each row can be hit, but special keywords can help you reach the back lines, and the same is true of the enemies. Choosing where to position your units is almost half of the challenge, and messing it up can be the difference between life and death in a lot of cases. Combined with the previously mentioned cooldown system and you have a game that's got a lot more strategic depth than meets the eye.
The game has 3 tribes- one is available by default, the other two you unlock through playing the game (along with a host of other companions and cards), and all of them play dramatically differently. To roughly summarize: there's the Snowdweller faction which focuses on various status effects, the Shadowmancer faction which focuses on summoning and sacrificing tokens, and the Clunkmaster faction which revolves around the production and use of "junk" cards in exchange for having powerful effects. There's more than one archetype for each faction and even some cross-archetype support cards, meaning there's quite a few deck types you can make.
These are all elements that make this game fairly unique and I think their excellent execution, along with the overall polish the game has, are what help it stand out from a relatively bloated genre as something special. That being said, it's not without its problems. I'll introduce some issues I encountered with the game in no particular order:
- This game suffers from the "Balatro effect" where the lower difficulties are fun and everything is viable, but as you get to the higher challenge levels, the amount of viable builds takes quite a bit of a hit and some cards are just straight up better than others. Unlike Balatro there's a lot of strategy with card positioning and support cards meaning that to some extent you can still win with a "bad" deck with enough skill, but it still remains an issue.
- Every deck has a "leader" card that must be on the field at all times, and if that leader dies at any point you instantly lose the run. This can be very fun and lead to some tense situations, but at the same time it also means that if you mess up, your leader can be oneshot and instantly kill your attempt. Combined with the fact that this game has a lot of oblique interactions, and you can often find yourself playing your card and then dying without realizing how for a good few moments. This would be fine if the runs weren't so long- you might speed up as you get better at the game, but even after ~30 hours it still takes 1-2 hours to win a run for me. Imagine suddenly losing 45 minutes of progress to a dumb mistake, and that's something that will forever be a threat no matter how good you get. This may vary for different players, but for me it can be rather disheartening.
- Wildfrost has a "charm" system where you can get little charms to put on cards during runs to empower them. The system itself is very clever and fun, but I personally take issue with the meta-progression system used to unlock them- essentially you unlock charms by completing achievements. Some you will unlock over the course of playing the game and others are fun challenges, but there are a few that are extremely luck-based or require getting a certain build online, which given the random nature of what is given to you, may take several hours to even get a chance at completing. I would like to see some of these requirements changed, especially the "get a 6x combo to unlock the last pet" one, because locking gameplay behind luck-based achievements kind of sucks.
While it's got some rough edges, I think there's more than enough fun to be had here to offset that, and with daily runs and hardcore challenge modes available, there's enough here to last you potentially hundreds of hours, if you so desire. The game occasionally goes for sale, but I think it's plenty worth it to buy even at full price!