Turn-based strategy RPG with deck-building? Yes, please!
Floppy Knights takes a genre that’s already lacking in games and throws in a card deck to make things interesting. More importantly, it works really well. Floppy Knights starts with our protagonist Phoebe trying to modify her arm-computer named Carlton. Her mother and father who very clearly doesn’t abide by conventional gender norms, ask her to spend some time outside. Mother, who is the town smith and receives a LOT of “thank you cakes”, thinks honing your craft requires more than just sitting inside and working, you need to experience the world! Abiding by her parent’s requests, Phoebe reveals the modification she was adding to Carlton allows her to project holographic figures and control them all from Carlton. The stage is set, our precocious young entrepreneur is now ready to hit the job board, grab some cash, and impress everyone at the science fair.
Right out the gate the art and music of Floppy Knights impress. Thematically, Floppy Knights tries to capture an audience using somewhat childish art with stick-figure trees and cute enemy avatars. The music is reminiscent of an older video game style. Both of these things, in tandem, fit the game very well. The animations loop quickly and offer little more than a squat/stand rotation but all together they create a beautiful symbiosis with what’s happening on the game board. It’s simple, but it’s atmospheric and draws you into the game.
Your deck of cards is split between utility cards, attack cards, and summon cards. Summon cards allow you to put units on the field. A small area on the board, marked by blue squares, marks where you can summon units. While the first attack in a turn is free, there are attack cards that allow you to perform extra attacks or special attacks. These can range from attacks generating extra single-use cards to cards that enhance your next attack. Finally, utility cards allow you to move, upgrade/heal your units, or grant you extra speed based on the terrain you’re in. One of my favorite utility cards allowed me to bring the unit back into my deck so I could attack with them and not allow the enemy to attack the unit once my turn had ended. As you complete levels you’re given extra cards to put in your deck. Cards require energy to be played and throughout the demo, my energy never changed, every time my turn came around, I had five energy.
Like other games of its ilk, in Floppy Knights you have a commander character that’s a special unit on the field. Once the commander unit dies, the game is over. Although the demo allowed me to play the first four levels, I was still treated with a variety of different objectives. It seemed while, most often, I was just killing all the enemies on the field, objectives like destroying a radar or keeping a unit alive on a specific tile for two turns also showed up. I was also given secondary objectives to complete like stealing a bag of vegetables before the enemy got to them. All objectives felt obtainable and though I struggle to get some of the secondary objectives, I could see the strategy in my mind almost immediately after finishing a level. Going back and completing the secondary objective would not be a difficult task.
I had an incredible time with Floppy Knights. Right now, it’s just a highly anticipated game for me. I’m really looking forward to Floppy Knights release, whenever that may be.
