Staff Only

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What is this game about?
Staff Only is a rogulike deckbuilder that is a bit different from the usual mechanics that follow the subgenre. In this game you place your cards on a grid with the trick being that cards need to connect to each other but some cards only have connections on some sides (e.g. bottom and right). When you are done with your pattern you pull the lever, and all cards activate at the same time. On top of that, enemies usually place some debuffs on your board and if those are left uncovered, they also activate when the lever goes down.
This creates an interesting decision point each turn: you need to place cards in such a way that you can connect all cards from hand while also being mindful of position of cards with special abilities (like upgrade adjacent cards) AND also trying to cover important enemy traps.
The game is still early in development at the time of the review, which means there is not that much content, with some expected balance issues, but the proof of concept is there. The concept itself, however, is quite fun if you like tactical games.
The positive
+ Puzzle like gameplay. It's fun figure out the most optimal way of placing cards and trying to balance attack/defense, optimal placement of special cards and avoid triggering enemy debuffs.
+ Easy to build your deck. The card shop is always active on the map and there are plenty of ways to remove basic cards and build an optimized deck.
The neutral
Note: These are mostly tied to the game being an Early Access and could be resolved in the future, but it may be useful to point them out nonetheless.
* Balance seems off but beatable. Some enemies seem like giant difficulty spikes compared to others. There is one enemy on the 2nd level that is able to one shot you if you don't build a super aggressive deck. The second boss will also destroy decks that are slow & steady.
* The soundtrack. There is only one, and while it's ok, it's a bit too aggressive sounding for a game that is about being thoughtful and deliberate.
* Monster debuffs. While a cool concept when overdone it feels very frustrating as it essentially constantly throws wrenches in your well-oiled engine which can take the fun out of building one.
* A bit too few enemies and card combos currently.
The negative
- A little grindy. While in games like Slay the Spire you have fixed number of moves before the boss, here you can go back to previously skipped map nodes. This means that once you build a strong deck you can go back and effortlessly kill weaker enemies of which there can be a lot. Players who want to be effective are forced into the grind for resources, while others who are not, may end up being removed from the game by stronger encounters.
Conclusion:
A fresh take on the roguelike deck builders with a very cool puzzle-like concept of connecting cards which makes both the play order of cards and their placement matter.
Recommended.

The gameplay is great and the music is great. The downside is that the game is not very stable. It frequently crashes and also it often hits various bugs causing the cards to not do what they're supposed to do, especially after a crash and a reload. I'm still recommending it because it's cheap and I definitely enjoyed it more than I would enjoy, say, a pizza, but you can't really time-sink into it because soon the various bugs start getting under your skin

A nice and interesting deckbuilding game with fresh elements. The oldschool graphic fits really well and I'm excited to see more of this little gem. ;-)

I really begin to love this game. In the beginning I thought "Well, game mechanics somewhat like 'night cities', fun, but not too hard to win" but man what a difference it makes, if you add rules which add/remove boni and mali to certain cells. For 10 bucks a must have in my opinion.

Pros: Nice deck-building roguelike game in the spirit of Slay the Spire. It is much more challanging to do battles as you have to put your cards in a 3x3 grid and they have to connect properly (it feels like solving mini-puzzle every round).
Cons: A little content for now, but I have it is good purchase for a low price that can get you few hours of fun gaming and possibly even more with addition of new content.

Good game. Its a bit little, could use more haptics. But fair enough with the market saturation around here. Follow Card Game KING (a "Curator") for more games, Steam never properly shows Slay the spire types. I don't know how much replayablility this game has. I played 2 hours outside of steam, so yes i have beat the game this fast. The games difficulty, once you get the hang of it, is easy, but it does have, maybe a few dying tries til then. IDK, maybe there is a difficulty modification i'm unaware of. EDIT: not that easy, but i need that semi-slay difficulty

Good game, awesome idea!