StarVaders is deck-building meets grid-based tactics and it's basically perfect

StarVaders from developer Pengonauts is a colourful and action-packed mix of a deck-builder with fast grid-based tactical combat and it's a thoroughly great time. I've never seen another game so smoothly blend these two together. Disclosure: key provided by their PR team.

Here you pilot a mech to fight off swarms of alien invaders across a rogue-lite campaign, and the tight design of it shines right on through. It's a game that doesn't take you particularly long to blast through either at about an hour a run, which is part of what makes it so great. That, and just the overall fab design of it with multiple characters and lots of ways to build up your decks. Even the tutorial was good in this, with it getting you right into the action!

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The combat, while challenging, is not overly punishing. However, it definitely is a tough one to get through even on the initial difficulty level with the first character. But, there's tons of features and little touches that make it worth pushing through. Getting hit by enemies for example won't end up destroying you, not directly anyway, as you just build up useless junk cards in your pile.

Your main things to worry about are how many turns you've used, since most battles have a turn limit and how far down the grid the enemies are getting, which is the main point of the combat. These aliens are trying to get closer and closer, moving a step each turn and It's your job to use up all your cards and move around the grid to prevent that. If the invaders manage to get to the bottom 3 rows you'll start to build up Doom, if you build up too much Doom it's all over. Doom carries over between missions too, which is where a lot of the challenge comes in. If you hit the turn limit, enemies will build up Doom no matter where they are — so you need to take them out fast.

With lots of different enemies that have different abilities, strengths and weaknesses along with the boss battles that are their own little mini-game due to the boss creatures having their own special mechanics it sure does keep you on your toes.

Enemies have a big mixture of behaviours between shooting at you, spawning more enemies or obstacles, shields you need to take down first (with some becoming invulnerable the turn the shield goes down), firing rockets across a whole area making them hard to avoid and so on. There's lots to think about but it's never overloading on your brain.

I especially love how clear and accessible the game is to get to grips with thanks to the neat design. The battles are all across a small grid, and you can hover over anything to get a readout on what it is (including enemies and their abilities). On top of that, you get the chance at a do-over too. Did you mess up spectacularly? Well, you can spend your limited Chrono Tokens to wind back time to the start of your turn and see if you can do better. You can also earn back more of these tokens during combat by destroying certain types of enemies too and they get refreshed when you finish an Act.

You start off with one character and one mech (the Gunner) to choose from. Even just by itself, that would have been a great game due to the heat mechanics of the first mech. Heat is its card cost system, or mana that you might see in other deck-builders. Each card has a heat cost, and you have a maximum amount of heat you can build up per turn (it resets each turn). However, you can also go over your max heat to overheat and still use another card but you'll burn up that card and be unable to use it for the rest of the battle. A nice change compared to other similar deck-builders that allows a little wiggle room but with that big drawback. Remember those junk cards mentioned earlier? You can satisfyingly burn them up to get rid of them too.

However, once you manage to complete a full run the game will expand and open up to give you more characters with their own set of initial cards and uniqueness, and two other mechs that completely change the way you play the game which was a huge surprise. So to be clear: you pick a character with their own set of initial cards, and then pick a mech which comes with their own game mechanics for the battles. These layers add tons of replay value to the game to keep you going for hours.

The other two mechs you unlock replace the heat system from the Gunner with an energy system for the Stinger and a Mana system for the Keeper. The Keeper is the most different to the other two, as you're not inside a mech, instead you summon entities and haunt them moving them around the board. It's like three versions of the game in one.

However, one issue I have with it is how long it takes to unlock the two other mechs, which can be quite a while depending on how good you are at the game. However, leaning back into how accessible it is, there's options to skip the progression systems entirely to just play it your way with everything.

Like any good deck-builder, after each successful battle you'll be rewarded and here you can build up your deck to give you new tactical options during battles. There's some really fun cards here with lots of different combinations that become possible, which is why playing through it multiple times stays fun. Much in the same way that Slay the Spire had a firm grip on me, this very much did too.

As for the campaign, it's also nice and simple on the layout. You battle across the world, picking between nodes on the map that have different encounters in terms of enemy types and rewards. Initially you don't know exactly what will be inside until you've played through them to discover the enemies, and then picking between them gets a little easier.

Tested on Desktop Linux (Kubuntu Linux 25.04) with the latest Proton 9.0-4 it was flawless. Valve gave it a Steam Deck Playable rating noting it has small text and sometimes doesn't show the right icons. I've played a bunch on Steam Deck too and while some text is a bit on the small side, it's mostly fine. I didn't notice any gamepad or icon issues. It's a great fit for the deck with gamepad controls and I really enjoyed playing it on the go too.

Overall it's an absolutely wonderful game that's a seriously easy recommendation. The style of it is just wonderful. Even though it's turn-based with cards, it somehow almost feels like an arcade game, at least a little. With the crunchy sound design too it's all just fantastic. Really unique and inventive and absolutely crammed with content even though runs are short, I'm absolutely hooked on it. Go and grab it.

Highlights:

• Craft the ultimate deck from the 400+ unique cards and artifacts available.
• Choose from 3 powerful mechs, each with completely distinct playstyles and mechanics.
• Master 10 diverse pilots, each adding new cards, mechanics, and a personal backstory.
• Use Chrono Tokens to rewind time, undo mistakes, or land that perfect combo.
• Battle through the multi-part story campaign and uncover a secret finale.
• Endless replayability with ascending difficulties, daily runs, and challenge modes.
• Designed for clarity and intuition—no long tutorials, no wiki required, just pure tactical deckbuilding.