Wildfrost Review – A Hot New Card Game

There are a lot of deckbuilding roguelikes out in the world now, and each one tweaks things slightly to try and keep things fresh, but not all succeed. Wildfrost manages to feel reminiscent of several heavy hitters from the genre, and despite similarities, also carves out its own identity, and that identity is very much worth paying attention to because it’s amazing.

It starts with you choosing one hero from among three options. Now, these heroes come from a specific tribe, and while you unlock more as you go, you’ll initially only have one choice. However, each hero also has a mix of different abilities, health, attack, and other qualities that guide the potential deck you’ll be building as you go.

Battles have you placing units on six possible slots across two rows. Most units only attack what is directly in front of them, so positioning is essential, especially because if your hero dies, your run ends instantly.  Each unit has a counter that ticks down until they take action, enemies go first if there’s a draw, and you can also play cards that will have actions tick down. You’ve then got a bell that you can ring to reload your hand. The bell will also cause the timers to tick down, unless you’ve waited a certain number of turns to ring it.

On top of that, different units have loads of different effects. You can find units that grant a shield to any allies that manage to kill an enemy, or one that heals everyone in their row whenever they kill sometimes. Then some units might slow enemies down and stop them attacking, or poison them so they take damage every turn. You can move units around at will, but you need to keep an eye on every single thing on screen to avoid accidentally losing one. It’s a lot to track, but slowly getting to grips with every single countdown and how to best speed them up or slow them down is a lot of fun, especially as you slowly start to make everything work exactly as you want.

Then you’ve got the gameplay in-between battles. You’re usually presented with two paths, each with different potential upgrades ranging from new units, more money, shops, treasure chests with new cards, and charms. Charms are fascinating because they allow you to alter cards, like making a unit hit one more time, or having them inflict status effects. You can also buy crowns from the shop that will put a card into your opening hand, which allows you to play it without effecting any countdowns.

Mixing and matching all of this allows you to get further into each run, and your understanding of what synergies work or don’t is a painful lesson, especially given how punishing Wildfrost is, despite its adorable appearance. Seriously, I’ve been playing games like this since they appeared, and the first few runs of Wildfrost are more punishing than most others in this genre. That just makes every bit of progress all the sweeter though.

There’s also an extra layer of meta-progression as you upgrade your home town. This is done by achieving things like killing a certain number of enemies, or healing a certain number of times. Sometimes these achievements will unlock new units, sometimes a new tribe, and sometimes it’ll be new cards or charms to find in your runs. It’s a nice way of adding a bit more of a concrete path forwards, and has even the worst runs feeling a little less offensive as you’ll likely make progress towards one or more new unlocks.

Summary
The whole thing is a delight, and one of the more interesting takes on the deckbuilding roguelike genre I've played since Monster Train, which is apt, because it definitely takes some inspiration from that game. This is one of those games I'll be playing for months and possibly years to come, because it just feels good when you finally get a strong run going. However, the difficulty may put off some players. I recommend pushing through and fighting for those small successes, and those that do so will be rewarded by one of the best indie games of 2023 so far.
Good
  • Adorable design
  • Lots of potential options for runs
  • Meta-progression is good
Bad
  • Really hard
9
Written by
Jason can often be found writing guides or reviewing games that are meant to be hard. Other than that he occasionally roams around a gym and also spends a lot of time squidging his daughter's face.