Hexitten

This game is far more than just a sci-fi card battler. You begin by choosing a starting squad, and as you explore the world, you'll face enemies and collect loot. Along the way, you’ll need to level up your heroes, modify your deck, upgrade your cards, and enhance your squad’s battleships with various abilities. But don’t just toss cards into your deck without thought. Many cards require synergy with the clan they belong to, so make sure to check both the card’s symbol and your crew members’ symbols. By continuously refining your deck and abilities, you'll gain the strength needed to take down the bosses.

Played through the first campaign. You have some light positioning elements (with friendly ships on the left and enemies on the right) and a fairly standard deck builder engine (spend movement to reposition on the hex grid and spend energy to implement cards). The higher your speed, the faster you act, so speedy DPS can tear up non-boss enemies. Bosses put out a substantial amount of damage, so it is helpful to bring a Tank character along to handle them. I had played the demo, so I knew the basics going in, and I translated that experience into beating the first campaign on my first run. Once you build a good trio of ships (and have respect for the DPS on enemies), you are in pretty good shape to get through that campaign. Card pool is fine, nothing too surprising. Because you always control what goes into your deck (well decks as there is a shared card pool and unique cards) you can pick up cards to try out later. All cards can be upgraded once with upgrades locked to different colors of cards. You get many more upgrades as the campaign goes on and by the mid point, it was easy to play with only upgraded cards and a reserve of gems if I saw something new to try. Persistent elements involve upgrading your pilots between runs and adding new ship cards and mods to the card pool (you can also unlock pilots, but why spoil the fun of doing so during the campaign?). If the core ideas of the game sound attractive, then you'll likely enjoy it. If you don't like deckbuilders or only enjoy them when they feel like high Ascension level games of Slay the Spire, then this won't be to your taste.