Shroom and Gloom Early Access Review
Eat or be eaten in Team Lazerbeam’s crunchy, hand-drawn deckbuilder roguelike Shroom and Gloom.
Shroom and Gloom. Credit: Team Lazerbeam / Devolver Digital
Team Lazerbeam and Devolver Digital’s Shroom and Gloom recently hit Early Access on Steam. It’s a deckbuilder roguelike about delving into fungus-infested dungeons, with a distinctive hand-drawn art style. Team Lazerbeam expects the game to remain in Early Access for 12 to 24 months, but I’m already having an absolute blast with its current version.
Shroom and Gloom splits its cards between two decks: one for combat and another for exploring between battles. Exploration cards let you interact with a room through actions like dig, unlock, break, reveal, or light. Those actions can uncover resources or new cards, as well as upgrade or modify battle cards. You only have three action points, so every card played brings you closer exhaustion. Resting restores your exploration action points, but it also increases gloom, which deals more damage each time you rest. Some exploration cards can mitigate that damage and buy you a couple of turns. It’s often worth the risk. Just make sure you end up with enough points to play the cards that unlock at least one path out of the room before monsters murder you in your sleep.
Battles begin with the familiar deckbuilder rhythm of drawing a hand and spending energy on attacks, buffs, and debuffs. The twist is that certain cards let you turn fungal enemies into consumable food cards for healing. This is crucial because there’s no typical defense mechanic. Instead, you must maintain a supply of tasty fungus and heal frequently. Food cards carry over to your exploration deck, where they also serve as currency at the shop or as gifts for friendly creatures. The entire game’s theme revolves around eating, feeding, or being eaten. Whenever you die, a mysterious creature speaks from the darkness, disappointed that your journey ended before you became tasty enough for it to eat. It’s delightfully disturbing.
Shroom and Gloom. Credit: Team Lazerbeam / Devolver Digital
You can also upgrade cards mid-battle, which is how runs start getting truly bonkers. Some cards modify other cards in your hand, while others upgrade themselves after meeting certain conditions, like using them to kill an enemy. Combined with the upgrades you trigger during exploration, this can turn weak starter cards into absurdly powerful damage dealers. Your upgraded starter cards can become so powerful that later rewards stop looking like upgrades. It’s incredibly satisfying to do absolutely broken things, and that seems to be an intentional part of the design. I’m curious how Team Lazerbeam will balance that by the final release.
The game’s art is one of the most stunning combinations of 2D and 3D that I’ve seen in a while. Its 3D tunnels and rooms are built from densely layered hand-drawn 2D illustrations in what I can only describe as a hyper-stacked parallax effect. That layering combines with atmospheric perspective created through color gradients in isolated hues. The monochromatic blue, pink, red, or green environments are punctuated by glowing yellow fires and the glint of locks on doors and chests. Screenshots flatten everything; you need to see the game in motion for the full effect. Even setting the environments aside, the grotesque fungal creatures populating the murky tunnels are memorably disgusting and rendered in beautiful line art. This is an incredible-looking game.
I’m eager to see how Shroom and Gloom evolves over its Early Access period. Even so, it’s worth picking up now. This is another win for Devolver, still one of the most exciting game publishers in the business.
Shroom and Gloom
Even in Early Access, Shroom and Gloom is worth picking up for its tense two-deck structure, gloriously broken upgrades, and grotesque beauty.
Eat or be eaten in Team Lazerbeam’s crunchy, hand-drawn deckbuilder roguelike Shroom and Gloom.