Rose City Games' deck-building adventure, Floppy Knights, is too cute. It's a chirpy card game about a programmer called Phoebe and her mechanical AI arm Carlton, who collect old floppy disks and use them to summon armies of creatures. Using their talents to run a side hustle, the two take on clients and solve problems through turn-based tactical combat.
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Rose City Games released a free demo on Steam as part of last weekend's Guerilla Collective livestream and I can confirm it's as charming as the art implies. With turn-based tactics games, it's inevitable that units will fall, but Marlowe Dobbe's art style is making me feel very protective over my adorable plant pot squad.
The demo takes you through the game's first scenario, as Phoebe and Carlton take on a client whose veggies are being nicked by beanie-wearing goblins. At the beginning of each turn, you draw a hand of cards which you play to carry out certain actions. You can summon units on the field, beef them up with special abilities, and command them to move and attack.
As much as I would love to fill the battlefield with anthropomorphic plants, you can't play cards willy-nilly. You have an energy meter each turn, capping the number of cards you can play. Once all the cards have been used they get re-shuffled and put back into the deck. It plays out similarly to other lightweight card games, only this time you're commanding an army of angry shrubbery.
The deck in the demo has a plant theme, with units and special cards all geared towards our wonderful leafy friends. There's the Barrel Cactus unit that can unleash thorny attacks, Bamboomer units equipped with bamboo bazookas and—my personal favourites—the Succulent Kickers, potted leafy dudes that angrily kick enemies. The commander of your deck is Captain Thistle, a buff sword-wielding warrior who leads your army into battle.
Rose City Games has yet to announce a specific date but says Floppy Knights will release sometime in 2020, so I'll have to wait a bit longer until I can continue kicking butt with my plant-based crew.
Although it was released for the Guerilla Collective livestream, Rose City Games are keeping the Floppy Knights demo live as part of the Steam Summer Festival so check it out if you're into lightweight, adorable deck builders.
