During the ActuGaming French Direct, Goblinz Studio announced Neurodeck: Psychological Deckbuilder, a rogue-lite deckbuilding card game thematically centered around psychological conditions and fears. You build your deck while progressing through the game, akin to Slay The Spire, through meditation, personality tests, and visiting rooms, giving you traits that can drastically alter your gameplay.
The foes you face are the monsters in your mind that represent real-life phobias, given horrific yet recognizable forms. Monsters such as Agora, Tokophobia, Masculinity, Blenno, Arachno, each representing a different phobia.
To defeat them, you'll have to explore a subconscious maze full of cards and improvements, using the life-inspired cards to attack or power yourself up. From a simple piece of pizza as Comfort Food, cleaning your house as Big Cleaning, to Pain Pills, but also less positive cards such as Self-Blaming in order to facilitate your wrath as a gameplay mechanic. Using cards such as Retrogaming you'll even be able to give your Phobia stacks of Anxiety. Show them what for!
Characters and places from your past will tell facts and stories that relate not only to you but mental health in general. A mixture of deep gameplay and light RPG mechanics allow you to customize your character while offering a strong focus on replayability and gameplay diversity.
Neurodeck: Psychological Deckbuilder is slated to be released near the end of 2020. For those who are curious how a slay-the-spire like deckbuilder and a game investigating the human psyche can mesh, Tavrox Games is offering a demo on Steam, as well as giving out free alpha keys on their Discord.
What do you think of Neurodeck: Psychological Deckbuilder? Do you suffer from a phobia or know of one that you might (dis)like to face in this game? Do you think this game will shine a supportive light on people suffering from particular phobias? Let us know in the comments below.
