This is definitely one of the best Roguelike game options for 2024!
Following “Balatro”, “Backpack Brawl: Foxifa’s Treasure” sold 100,000 copies on the second day of release in a lightning-fast manner. Will 2024 be a surprise year for indie games?
This is a PVP game based on backpack management and auto chess game framework. Its simple yet unexpectedly addictive gameplay makes countless players unable to extricate themselves. The placement, fusion, and high randomness of items give each game of “Backpack Brawl” a unique experience, perfectly demonstrating the charm of Roguelike games.
Backpack Management – Making the Most of Treasures
The “Backpack Heroes’ Friendship Competition” does not require too many constraints. The relatively simple but ever-changing rules make “Backpack Brawl” a game with a light and clear rhythm that makes people unable to stop thinking deeply.
The preparation phase
No one can point fingers at the backpack heroes. In the battle stage of this game, players cannot control according to their own ideas, and can only make their backpack reach an ideal state as much as possible in the preparation stage before the battle round, so as to face the next battle.
Before each round, players will rest in the store and adjust their backpacks here to meet the challenges of the next round.
Similar to the mechanism of traditional auto chess games, players will obtain an increasing amount of gold coins as a starting capital to purchase new treasures before each round starts. The amount of gold coins obtained each round will continue to increase as the number of games progresses, and the rarity of items appearing in the store will also increase.
Heroes never lend money at high interest rates. It must be said that “Backpack Brawl” cancels the traditional “interest” setting, which means that players cannot earn interest by losing or winning streak, or by saving a certain amount of gold coins. This will weaken the impact of players spending all their gold coins at once, which shows that the designers encourage players to win every game.
Nevertheless, spending a lot of gold coins to win the game or saving up gold coins for subsequent purchases of rarer powerful items or brushing core props in key rounds is still an important decision to determine whether the player’s backpack deck can be formed, but compared with traditional auto chess, the strategy of “Backpack Brawl” is lighter and more liberalized.
Of course, as a backpack hero, the store owner will certainly give due respect and treatment. The existence of [discounts] brings more randomness and uncertainty to this game, and it is also the most difficult place to balance in the game. When entering and refreshing the store, the store owner will have the chance to give a half-price discount for a certain item, and players can buy it at a lower gold price.
If this were a PVE game, the generosity of the store owner would be harmless and the heroes would be grateful. But this is a PVP game, and no one would want to face someone who bought a bag of rare items at half price in the first round! This has already won the game solely by luck, and normal players cannot compete with it. This will bring unacceptable endings and processes to players, which is the key point that the game urgently needs to optimize and balance.
The purchase of cards
Adhering to the principle of accepting all who come, all players will be able to obtain cards from the store by paying gold coins. The cards that can be purchased from the store can be roughly divided into several categories: “equipment” cards that can directly cause damage or defense, “jewelry” and “food” cards with various special effects, “pet” cards with various uses, “potion” cards with powerful one-time effects, and expanded backpack grids that form the base of the backpack chessboard and “gem” cards mainly used for embedding on equipment.
You get what you pay for, and more expensive cards will have higher rarity and powerful abilities.
A backpack that is large enough can hold more cards. After the initial backpack grid is full, players need to purchase new backpack grids to allow more cards to be placed in the backpack and play their role. After purchasing cards, they cannot be used in the storage area. “Grid” cards, as the most special type of card in this game, are equivalent to players adding an additional cost on top of the gold they originally spent on buying cards. This makes the player’s economy, which cannot earn interest, even more tight, and indirectly slows down the pace of the game and the formation speed of the player’s backpack.
However, this will also make the player’s sense of gap stronger. If the opponent wins or unexpectedly obtains stronger cards in the early stage, it will be difficult for players who are difficult to form in the early stage to resist their attacks, resulting in a sense of gap and frustration. After all, the randomness of Roguelike games also contains a lot of luck, especially the discounts of store owners!
The backpack management
Each card will occupy an unequal amount of backpack grids. How to use the limited backpack grids to arrange and combine the cards to the best state to win the game as much as possible is the most troublesome thing for heroes. Based on the grid rules, there is also a unique “association” mechanism in the game. Most cards will have “association” star marks and card face descriptions. Triggering the “association” effect of each card in the correct order can make the battle of the backpack grow geometrically. Even for the same card, different arrangements will make their strength different.
[Fusion] is the core gameplay in this game. After players collect and purchase specific treasures, they can be placed in their backpacks for fusion to obtain more powerful treasures, such as fusing [Bramble Whip] and [Hunger Blade] into [Blood Thorn]. Usually, the cards obtained after fusion have incomparable powerful effects, even the core cards of many decks. The creator has put a little effort into the [Fusion] gameplay. Players cannot directly view the detailed introduction of the synthesized items in the guidebook, nor can they know their synthesis path, which requires players to explore in the game themselves. When a fusion treasure is unexpectedly discovered, it may give players a little surprise, perhaps the creator sends a naughty greeting to each player.
However, be careful. Players need to place the items before synthesis in adjacent positions in their backpacks in order to merge after the round ends. This also means that players may have to perform this round with a less ideal arrangement or weaker item sum to lose the game. Therefore, players should have enough health before preparing for fusion to maintain safety. This is also a practice that designers do not encourage players to save coins by losing games.
At the same time, it is necessary to pay attention to the “preparation time” of each card. Cards need a certain preparation time to prepare their effects, so how to arrange the preparation time to make the cards activate the effects in order should also be considered by players, increasing the vertical depth of the game’s strategy. Although this part requires more complicated calculations, it is still an advanced content that players want to master in this game.
Fatigue value is the game’s restriction mechanism. Using weapons will consume the player’s fatigue value. When the weapon is ready but there is not enough fatigue value, the weapon will re-enter the preparation state until the next countdown is completed. Just like the “damage limit” mechanism in some games, “fatigue value” is also a means used by “Backpack Brawl” to limit players’ output and choices. Without the restriction of fatigue value, this game will inevitably form a situation of blindly choosing weapon cards, and fatigue value forces players to choose 2-3 weapons as the main output ability, except for some special genres.
The management of the backpack is the most reflective of the strategic depth in this work, and also the most fascinating part – when completing these preparations and entering the game, watching the heroes defeat their opponents under the envisioned plan, the sense of achievement is unforgettable.
Differences and balances among different professions
The professional character chosen by the player has different unique exclusive skills and some cards, which will largely determine the composition of the player’s deck – the ranger who focuses on weapon crit will be able to maximize the role of weapon cards, and the reaper who is good at imposing abnormal states on opponents can use various card games to torture opponents.
There are currently four different professions in the game. Choosing cards suitable for this profession can bring great advantages to players, and it is also one of the expressions of designers using differentiation to bring fun to players. At a certain stage of the game, each profession will differentiate into five sub-professions and obtain exclusive items for their sub-professions.
A Master of Weapon Skills – You Xia
Precise and lucky arrows are the reliance of the rangers to occupy a place here.
Rangers with a variety of unique long-range weapons are good at maximizing their weapon capabilities. They often rely on their bows and arrows to build their entire backpack, and their high hit rate and critical strike allow them to quickly defeat opponents in a short period of time. It should be noted that shields cannot withstand bows and arrows in the game.
The dark magic that tortures life – the Reaper
The Reapers like to slowly torture her opponent, letting their health points slip away unnoticed until they die.
The Reaper has items that can quickly give the opponent various negative buffs such as poisoning. Accumulating a large amount of toxins to make it difficult for the opponent to bear is their usual trick. Always pay attention to the number of poisoning layers on your body! Soon, the poisoned person will fall down, and no one can withstand an unimaginable amount of toxin accumulation.
Arrogant and bloodthirsty natural battle enthusiast – Berserker
The more damage they suffered, the crazier the berserkers would become.
Whenever the Berserker’s health drops below 50%, they will fall into a bloodthirsty state. At this time, their abilities will greatly increase. If they cannot quickly kill the Berserker, their opponents will suffer because it will be a tough battle. The Berserker will put away their hypocritical politeness and stick to you like a plaster, recovering their lives from the battle until the end of the game.
The Dancer Who Burns Everything – The Fire Mage
As the name suggests, flames are the only faith of flame mages, and they are as elusive and dangerous as flames.
Purchase unique flames and put them in your backpack. The flame mage can draw power from these flames to reduce the preparation time of all items. The stronger the flames, the faster her attacks, just like a dancer dancing with the flames.
Even with a large number of general equipment, the differences between each profession in “Backpack Brawl” are still significant. This is due to the unique items of each profession. Due to the overlap with the “fusion” mechanism, the items obtained by fusing each profession with their unique cards will further increase, thereby expanding the differentiation between professions. In addition, the special skills of the profession characters themselves ensure that players can get different gaming experiences when choosing each profession.
However, it is precisely because of this that the balance problem that all PVP games have to talk about has also come to “Backpack Brawl”. Currently, in ranked matches, the flame mage seems to be too strong. While being able to output at high speed, it can also synthesize powerful pets like phoenixes. Sorry, with two lives, you can really do whatever you want. If the opponent does not have targeted items such as purple gems, then you can basically declare failure when facing a formed flame mage. I hope that the production team will pay more attention to the issue of balance in subsequent updates. Weakening powerful professions and strengthening weaker professions will determine the future balance direction of the game.
The fascinating backpack battle
Compete with other players!
Rarely seen, “Backpack Brawl” adopts the asynchronous PVP gameplay that is quite rare in Roguelike games, which means that players may encounter any different opponents, directly breaking away from the single-player boss design framework of traditional card Rouguelike games.
This solves the problem of low repetitive playability in card Roguelike games to some extent, greatly increasing players’ playtime. However, correspondingly, players’ uncontrollability of the game will also become higher, and it will reduce the freedom of single-player gameplay, which may not be so friendly to some players who are keen on challenges.
Moreover, as the game is still in its unofficial version, some game content may not have been released yet, including the inability to play online with friends, which is quite regrettable.
Play a game in your spare time
In order to obtain the most trophy rewards, players must win as many games as possible within a limited number of lives until they reach the highest level, but this process will not last too long! Winning all the trophies probably only takes a few rounds. After becoming familiar with “Backpack Brawl”, each round of the game will become very short, about two to three minutes? And players can stop at any time after each round of challenge until the next time they want to play.
Fragmentary and shortened time arrangements have turned “Backpack Brawl” into a game that can be played at any time, which is probably the best choice for people to pass the time. However, too short a time can also bring uncomfortable aspects. Players are often forced to end a round when the backpack deck has just taken shape. Oh! It’s like the feeling of not being able to go to the bathroom and suddenly stopping is really terrible.
Shouldn’t we consider making the gameplay of “Backpack Brawl” longer? This may make it more attractive and allow players to experience the pleasure of forming a genre deck.
Review summary
Almost set card class Roguelike game advantages for a body, and made many changes in the original system and finally got the backpack brawl: the treasure of forcifer, no doubt has become the history of Roguelike games must play a masterpiece.
If ” Slaughter Spire ” is a sign of the beginning of card Roguelike games, then “Backpack Brawl” is a turning point for card Roguelike games to make changes, which may mark a new way of playing card Roguelike games.
Overall, the current price of only a little over 30 yuan in the Chinese market is quite worth buying. Whether it is for entertainment during leisure time or for serious consideration and long-term investment in playing, “Backpack Brawl: Foxifah’s Treasure” is a game that will never disappoint players.
