Cobalt Core News

RPS Game Club is back in action for 2024 today, and our first pick of the year is the exceedingly good Cobalt Core, a spaceship roguelike deckbuilder where you're slipping and sliding out the way of incoming missiles to get to the bottom of why you and the rest of your animal pals seem to be stuck in a pesky timeloop. I had an absolute blast with it when it came out at the end of last year, and really, this is just the perfect excuse to shove it back in front of your faces again.

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After a successful first outing, RPS Game Club is returning for another year of gaming show-and-tells, and this time, we're publishing the schedule in advance so you know exactly what's coming up and when. Handy, say, if you want to keep an eye on certain sale prices for games you've got your eye on, or you want to clear your calendar so you can join us for our end-of-month liveblog session where we all get together book club-style to talk about the month's pick. Each member of the RPS Treehouse is getting involved this year as well, so read on below to find out what's on the Club docket.

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Well, I’m doomed. I’m down to my last sliver of health and there’s an incoming attack aimed directly at my ship. Shields? Ha! Buddy, I haven’t drawn a shield card in years. Probably because I foolishly didn’t put any in my deck. I have no movement left, nor any dodge cards in my hand that will give me more. Time for my spaceship and its animal crew to bite the stardust, because there’s nothing I can-..
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CONTENT:

New event! (It’s a very fun one.) ⚽
Duncan, the pilot of the Mining Drill, overcame his shyness and can now talk
5 new artifacts:


Tiderunner’s starting artifact has been split into 2 artifacts, to be easier to parse
Tiderunner now has a boss artifact, meaning all 5 ships have boss artifacts :)
new Dizzy artifact
new Max artifact
new Isaac boss artifact

BALANCE SHIFTS:

Made Caffeine Rush cap at 2 triggers per turn
Heavily reworked Jupiter’s boss artifact
Instead of “your Jupiter Drone card now costs 0”, it is now:
If there are no Jupiter Drones currently in the midrow: when you launch a Jupiter Drone, gain 1 energy
Gemini now starts with one new extra card, Basic Swap
If a bubbled drone is launched into a midrow object, the bubble takes the hit first. This means Brac is more dangerous! Watch out!

INTERNAL CHANGES:

Reworked how a few artifacts worked internally
Reworked how a lot of enemy code works
Essentially, did a bunch of work under the hood, so we can do more cool stuff in the future

BUG FIXES:

From Hell’s Heart B can no longer kill you if you play it twice through Max + Zero Doubler shenanigans
Fixed a rare case where Sticky Note and Safety Lock could be wasted buffing temporary cards
Fixed that
• *Heal Booster** would also boost enemy healing (only relevant once, but still: whoops!!)
  Various other smaller bugfixes
  

What might be the year's best deckbuilding game launched last month, to little fanfare, with the release of Cobalt Core. It's a mechanically rich and well-developed little game that brings out the best of the roguelike deckbuilding genre by combining its own twist: Tactical positioning that means every attack comes from somewhere and goes somewhere, allowing you to dodge enemy attacks—or have the enemy dodge your own...
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