Golden Swirl Initial Impressions
Golden Swirl is a dark fantasy deckbuilder that truly does something different.
Golden Swirl is an ambitious roguelike deckbuilder which utilizes semi-real time combat with pause instead of turn-based battles. It sounds counterintuitive to how a deckbuilder should operate, but I thought it was worth a try. What I found was a unique game with a lot of depth and strategy. I really liked it! I also found myself enchanted with Golden Swirl’s dark fantasy world.
The first thing that struck me about Golden Swirl was its aesthetics. The opening cutscene sets up the story and the background but was admittedly lost on me. There is quite a lot of detailed lore and it was thrown at me perhaps too quickly. That said, understanding the story is not required to enjoy the game, and to me just kinda served as very cool window dressing.
The world of Golden Swirl feels inspired heavily by FromSoft’s work – think Dark Souls, or Bloodbourne. There are lots of mysteriously named characters in intricate outfits. They all say strange things that seem to be more commentary on the duality of man than actual dialogue. There's weird eldritch monster design. Then there's trying to save a dying world. It's a specific vibe that players are either going to eat right up or immediately be turned off on. As someone who loves the aesthetic of FromSoft games but could never get into the gameplay (I have old people's hands dang it!), I have to say I really liked it. In that way it feels like a love letter to those games, sometimes straying toward imitation, but the gameplay… it carves an identity all its own.
Golden Swirl is a different sort of deckbuilder than others I've played before. As mentioned, it uses real time action with pause. Initially it took a little bit to sort out — it definitely requires thinking about battles in a different way. Not only did I need to pay attention to synergy, buffs and debuff, and overall proper utilization, which comes with the territory for any deckbuilder, but also aiming and dodging. I can't count the number of times I played a card only to botch the execution in the first few hours. Once I was used to it, combat felt amazing. The enemies were shockingly tough and I had to think quite a bit about what I was doing to win. There were definitely a few times I was at the edge of my seat, and even one point where I got a boss down to his final hit point only to perish before landing the final blow.
Combat works as such. Each round opens with a set number of SP which can be spent on playing cards. After playing a card, attacks can be aimed (and which enemies are hit by an attack will light up) or with movement cards, a character can be moved. Note that characters will not move unless there’s a card played that allows them to. When cards are played that are in sync with each other (though I’m not quite sure what activates a card being in sync), the SP costs go down. Once SP is depleted, players can redraw their hands though. Be careful of redrawing too much as after a set number of redraws, a cool down timer between each redraw activates. I have also included a video of one the battles below, for anyone curious how exactly this plays out.
As far as I can tell, Golden Swirl is not early access. That said, the game is still in development with a road map out, and more content to be added down the line. As such, I will not be posting my final review until the product is finished. Golden Swirl is currently $19.99 USD on Steam (though at the time of posting on sale for 15.99 USD).
