To be honest, I am very impressed with the way the Swedish studio Image & Form develops a line of games in their own universe. Starting with SteamWorld Tower Defense for the Nintendo DSi, the company released a fun mining platform game SteamWorld Dig , then an unusual fantastic turn-based strategy SteamWorld Heist , then SteamWorld Dig 2 , more like an action/RPG. Well, welcome to the fifth title in the SteamWorld series, the SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech card RPG.

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Five games – three different settings adapted to the SteamWorld universe: the Wild West in Tower Defense and Dig 1/2, the fantasy setting in Heist, and now the fantasy kingdom in Hand of Gilgamech. The worlds are united by the characters. So, the events of the new game are a fairy tale about the affairs of bygone days, which is told to the child by one of the heroes of SteamWorld Heist.

If you have already seen projects from the SteamWorld series, then you know very well what to expect from the authors. Stylish hand-drawn pictures; grotesque steam-bots assembled as if from disparate parts; detailed backdrops with hidden Easter eggs. Plus a sea of humor, self-irony and absurdity in the dialogues. The authors make fun of the clichés of role-playing games that they themselves use, of their own grotesque characters and the situations they find themselves in.

So, two friends of bots, eccentrics and visionaries, from whom no one expects anything worthwhile, go to the forest for mushrooms, or rather, for a special mushroom. A worthy start to an adventure that will take them into battle against dragons, druids, mad canaries in a mechanical body, and other followers of the cult of Darkness. What to do if the “real” heroes don’t strike a finger without a hearty five-course dinner and, in accordance with all the rules, the completed “Application for Salvation from the Great Evil”, form No. 145-2 / b in triplicate with a wet seal.

Over the course of 19 acts, the heroes, who will be joined by three more characters during the journey, will explore ancient ruins, wander through mysterious forests, break into the heart of the magical academy, look for a way out of the mines and, of course, fight against numerous opponents.

Combat in SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech is like a mixture of jRPG and card game. Each of the characters, and you can take up to three heroes into battle, has a deck of eight cards, that is, there are a total of 24 cards in the game. Having received six cards in your hands, you can lay out three of them in one round, plus a certain number of cards, depending on the number of fighters, the opponent will also play. First, the effects of the cards you laid out are triggered, then the opponent’s cards. If you played three cards of the same character in one turn, at the end of your turn you will get a combo, the effect of the weapon of this hero will work. Some effects of the heroes, the same Orik, allow you to play not three, but four cards in the next turn, believe me, this is a very significant increase. At the beginning of the next turn, the cards in hand are completed to six.

Some of the cards are simple hits and spells, you can play them for free, but after use they give you a special resource, gears, an analogue of mana in the same Magic: The Gathering . More powerful and tricky spells require a certain number of gears to be laid out, usually two or three, but sometimes all of them. Some cards are single use and can only be played once per battle. Cards that have fallen into the rebound interfere back into the deck if the battle drags on.

Our heroes start with the simplest hits and spells, except for Orik and the twins Tara and Thane (that’s one character), who will join you already in the middle of the game with more powerful cards in the base set. These same heroes have a more complex game strategy. New cards can be found in chests hidden in the game world, obtained in some locations in the story, or crafted while camping. In total, each of the characters has about 20 cards (remember, only eight can be taken into battle), and some of them require a special approach in the formation of the entire deck and the choice of play style. Cards differ in the type of damage they deal, and decks should be regularly revised to accommodate new opponents that may be immune or partially protected from a certain type of damage.

Each character has a specialization. Dreaming of getting into the Guild of Heroes and speaking in quotes from heroic books, Armilli prefers direct physical damage. Reasonable Copernicus is an alchemist who uses elemental magic and protective spells. Resembling a huge green toad, Galleo’s lout is a mechanic, his specialty is protection, repair (in the world of steam bots, this, of course, is treatment) and direct damage. The mysterious Orik, who can change masks that give him certain bonuses in battle, is good both in attack and defense, and some of his tricks can literally sweep away opponents, consuming, however, all available gears. Well, the twins Tara and Thane are thieves, their specialty is dirty tricks and the use of darkness magic. Some opponents, especially bosses, require very careful selection of the team and deck of each of the fighters.

In the process of battles, heroes gain experience, increasing their basic characteristics. In addition, the parameters of the characters can be improved with two amulets (in the second half of the game, you should pay attention to protective rings). Plus, from the merchant, about whose van, which can climb steep towers and descend into the deepest dungeons, the characters regularly joke, you can buy healing potions, new weapons (which means new combo effects), etc. Her van also allows you to create cards, the range of which expands as you progress through the campaign.

Despite the fact that SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech will certainly be compared with the extremely successful Slay the Spire , these are different games that are united only by card-based combat mechanics. There are few roguelike elements in Hand of Gilgamech – it is primarily a story game. And although some of the locations here are quite confusing and they can be re-explored, in general the campaign is linear, so re-passing is a big question. And in terms of the principle of building a deck, limited in size and partially tied to the equipment of the hero, the game is closer to the same Card Hunter than to Slay the Spire, built on continuous deck building and balancing its size.

All in all, SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech is a very nice and interesting story based card RPG that will take you 15-20 hours to complete. If you like games of this genre and the style of the SteamWorld universe, we highly recommend it.