AMUSEing Card Slinging: Why Card-En-Ciel makes for an interesting Roguelike

AMUSEing Card Slinging: Why Card-en-Ciel makes for an interesting Roguelike

     My journey to addiction began a little while back when I was scrolling Twitter and Twitch innocently. An acquaintance voice actor of mine retweeted this, and I fell in love with the art.

https://x.com/IntiCreatesEN/status/1831739074190962943

Later that night, after I finished watching someone stream some incredible shitpost art one Thursday, I decided to hop over to a streamer acquaintance of mine’s stream. Once I was in his chat, the only explanation of the game I got was that it was “Megaman Battle Network and a roguelike card game mixed together”. The only other thing I got from him was that, “If you like doing dumb card game things, this is the game for you.” As someone who LOVES dumb card game shenanigans I gave the 3GB demo a download and instantly fell in love with the game. As much as I gush about this game, there are some really cool mechanics and game designs that the developers put in, so this will be my official article on why this game is so well designed and why I think it is one of the hidden gems of this year.

This game is created by Inti and is majorly a shill for all of the Inti IPS, but don’t let that fool you. While this game features all of their IPs and has a loosely constructed story around it, the gameplay itself is what makes this game shine. 

Battle Network Online! Amusing Systems… Gone Rogue.

As I explained before, the game is a roguelike deck builder in the style of Mega Man Battle Network. Each dungeon will have you start with a deck of predetermined cards and a possible muse. These muse cards are outside of the deck and can help you pick a theme to build around. Each of them have an activation trigger and when completed, awards a blue special skill energy and a special ability. An example of the activation cost and skill is that the activation cost is to “Use a 3 Cost Card 2 times” and the effect “Gain 5 additional damage and break whenever a 3 Cost card is used”. As you go throughout the dungeon, by opening treasure chests and beating enemies, you’ll gain a choice of 3 cards, where you can choose one to add to your deck. By adding cards to your deck, you can strengthen it to take on tougher opponents.

Attack, Break, Draw!!!

The three main mechanics that cards can do is, attack, break and other, labeled as red (or yellow), blue and green cards respectively. Attacking deals damage to an opponent. In addition to normal attack cards, there are special action yellow attack cards that can dodge your opponents attacks and reward you for dodging. Other falls under the category of either drawing you cards, increasing your attack power, or any other special ability that isn't attacking or breaking. As for breaking, there are 2 effects it has. One lowers the break meter by the determined amount while the other lowers attack damage of any opponent it hits by the number indicated on the card. If an enemy’s break meter hits zero, it inflicts breakdown on the enemy. A broken down enemy cannot attack and any damage dealt to a broken down enemy is doubled until the next turn. In addition to these mechanics, you can also use the special skills of cards. Using a special skill of a card fractures it, making it clog up your deck to only be banished or discarded (banishing is discarding, but it cannot be used for the rest of the battle instead of shuffling back into your deck when you run out of cards). However, activating a muse gives you that blue special skill energy, allowing players to activate card’s special skills without fracturing it.

Keep it Moving

Unlike games like Slay the Spire, Card-en-Ciel has an additional movement mechanic to the game. In Card-en-Ciel, both you and your opponent position yourselves on a 3 by 3 grid. While cards have costs and effects, they also have different movement patterns and attack ranges. You can choose to discard a card for no cost in order to move in the way that card indicates. This can help the player get out of the way of an incoming attack. Whether you use a card or move, each enemy has a time counter that ticks down every time you perform an action. By moving out of the way before their time counter reaches zero, you can dodge an attack.

A Muse can only sing so Far…

After defeating an enemy, you can choose to recover, enhance a card or position an ally. Enhancing allows a player to choose one of 3 random cards they have and add a “cheat code” or upgrade to it. Positioning allows a player to place a card that gives that player a buff within a certain range. Muses can also be placed. Placed muses automatically trigger when the battle is started and automatically gives the player a blue special skill energy. This is a powerful ability that can greatly increase your potential damage output. However, there are muse enemies placed on the board that give the player negative effects when they battle in that muse’s range, such as discarding the leftmost card in your hand and drawing another. Once defeated however, the player recruits that muse, giving them extra powers. Finally, recovering allows the player to heal health and recover their memory gauge. This memory gauge increases every time you run into an encounter and can only be healed by either defeating all the enemies in a “room” or whenever you beat a dungeon floor. If a player skips too many fights, this can incur additional penalties on future battles, such as drawing one less card or other penalties similar to enemy muse penalties.

Speedrunning Dungeons

While the concept of the game is fun, it only gets better with incentives. The game awards tokens for clearing dungeons and will reward you for taking less turns. This is where the real fun begins, and this game wants you to go INCREDIBLY FAST. If you want to get the rewards, you have to balance your memory gauge rising with what battles you pick. Will you try to enhance your deck through treasure chests and battles? Will you add more card draw, more power, or more ways to trigger your muse? Will you instead rush straight to the boss and incur multiple possible penalties? While many roguelikes put emphasis on deck building and beating the game, this one has a unique emphasis on balancing your deck, your overworld penalties and the number of turns you take. I believe this game formula makes for an excellent game that does something unique, and I don’t hear this talked about. Card-en-Ciel takes the formula for normal deck builder roguelikes and adds multiple layers to it that players need to worry about, all while speedrunning a dungeon with multiple floors. Overall, I believe this formula makes for an incredibly fun and addicting experience. 

If you enjoyed the art, the gameplay or anything else about this article, I highly recommend you give the demo a try before the game launches October 24.