Preview: Prismata (Steam Early Access)

A uniquely gripping hybrid strategy game like no other, inspired by RTS, deck builders, and tabletop strategy games. Outwit your foes by efficiently constructing and commanding a powerful cybernetic army. A radical achievement in game design, Prismata rewrites the rules of strategy games.

Pros:

• Nice hand-drawn graphics.
• Steam achievements.
• 623MB Download size.
• Graphics- Texture quality auto, high or low, Resolution, Fullscreen, Prevent window resizing, Particles, Disable animated skins and set frame rate cap.
• Streaming options menu- Move UI components around your streaming software.
• Can rebind controls.
• Tutorial within the story mode.
• Campaign mode- Five episodes each with standard and expert challenges.
• Leaderboard support.
• Game modes- Vs AI with 7 variations, quickplay, casual, ranked, vs com and vs friends.
• Card battler gameplay with an RTS twist on proceedings.
• Three phase turns- Defend, Activate/buy and attack.
• Undo button.
• Spectator cam.
• Trading cards.
• Daily bonuses.
• Badges- Achievements.
• Profile- Unlock/equip 3 badges to show off in your profile and set unlocked avatars.
• Earn EXP, Level up and unlock blueprints (cards basically)
• Slide and go! Easy to use a system where you can click the first card then slide it across to select all cards.
• The system of resources and mechanics that improve/add to the experience as you progress.
• Resources in-game- Activate cards to earn cash, gems, and power etc so you can pay for the cards you want to play in your hand. You keep cash between rounds but everything else gets lost.
• Deeply strategic but stays very approachable.
• Good well-paced tutorial.
• Many many unlock, Blueprints and avatars.
• Hover over cards for pop up info.
• Keyboard shortcuts.
• Combat training- Five tiers of challenges plus a concept pack comprising of puzzles.
• Play how you want with a lot of options available to you, Set cards to defend damage or cash them in for money or sacrifice a card to improve another.
• Slick animations.
• A lot of content.

Cons:

• Players guide section not ready yet.
• No real voice work and the story is all just text.
• Looks daunting due to the sheer number of components on the screen.
• The story is forgettable and feels a bit unnecessary.
• Tutorial whilst good could be tightened up a bit more and be more focused.
• No real WOW moments.
• Leveling up feels flat and uneventful.
• AI can be really hard and quickly.

In Summary:

Prismata is a strange game, It is fundamentally a card battler but it has such an RTS twist with an almost base building mechanic, Resource management and just general appearance. By that I don’t mean to take it as a bad thing, What is strange is just how well it all flows together, I mean it is just easy to play and fun to learn. It will feel basic at first but just watch a few high-level games and man it really opens up. I feel deep down something is missing but I don’t know what it is yet. To you, I say the game has so much content and feels really polished for what you get. In short its a terrific game with bags of charm.