Where it Shines:
Music - 8.5/10
Just Vibing - 9/10
Simple Story - 7/10

The Good:
Cobalt Core really surprised me. In an ocean of overly complicated roguelike deckbuilders, most of which don't hold a candle to StS, Cobalt Core managed to easily stand out as being a good #2 for best of all time.
The characters are charming, the music and art are top notch, the gameplay delivers for the most part, and there even is a cute story if you like having that sort of thing - but unlike games like griftlands or gorian quest that have EXCESSIVE dialogue as "story", Cobalt Core tells it simply, with brevity. I really appreciate the thought behind that choice.

The Bad:
The game errs on being a bit too easy - this can be mitigated by upping the difficulty, which I appreciate, but most of those setting feel unfair and not really "more challenging" as much "more annoying". The problem with this game really lies in it's core mechanic of having a mixed deck of 3 different archetypes - you choose three characters, all with different styles. But the issue is that some of the later characters are just flat out too obnoxious to figure out or not worth it, and the early characters just provide too many staple cards that the others don't, like basic evasion, shielding, and medium attacks. If you go for too frilly of a deck with the special characters, you will just find that you have nothing to attack with, nothing to evade with, or nothing to shield with, all of which are run enders.
I do appreciate the idea behind this idea, but the characters really needed to be more balanced.
So what winds up happening is the game feels too easy if you stack your characters, and too annoying if you throw in a "fun" character.
I would go as far as to say some of the characters are just flat out unplayable garbo.

Summary:
Although it does have it's flaws, it is overall a better game than a bad one, and it stuck my interest better than other similar titles like Monster Train. I highly recommend this game, it feels like StS meets FTL in all the right ways, and is a perfect chill game to play for 20 mins at a time.

Note on my ratings:

Treat my stars like Michelin Stars - just having one means the game is worth playing in some way.

1/2 ⭐: hot trash garbage, since you can't do zero stars here
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite

Un roguelite deckbuilder fantástico que incorpora mecánicas propias con las habituales del género y ofrece una experiencia totalmente única y divertidísima.

Quizá le falta un poquito más de variedad en las runs. El bucle jugable es muy muy bueno, pero todas las partidas acaban siendo tan parecidas (más allá de cambios en las builds particulares de cada una) que da sensación de haberlo visto todo antes de realmente haberlo visto. Quizá, si hay alguna expansión o contenido adicional más adelante, lo revisite.

También esconde una historia sorprendentemente profunda y personajes muy simpáticos con interacciones muy divertidas, cosa que no esperaba y me ha sorprendido muy gratamente.

Si sois fans del género, dadle una oportunidad porque merece muchísimo la pena.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A fantastic roguelite deckbuilder that incorporates its own unique mechanics to the usual tropes of the genre and offers a completely unique and very fun experience.

It perhaps lacks a bit of variation in runs. The gameplay loop is very, very good, but all the runs end up being so similar (beyond changes in the particular builds for each one) that it feels like you've seen it all even if you haven't. Perhaps, if they release an expansion or additional content later, I'll revisit it.

It also hides a surprisingly deep story and very charming characters with really fun banter, which I didn't expect and really surprised me in a good way.

If you're fans of the genre, give it a chance, because it's absolutely worth it.

The second best roguelike-deckbuilder out there. Slay the Spire is still the king.

This game is so good in every way. The way you construct your deck, the fun ways to customize your playstyle, the amount of options in terms of your party/ship build, the artifacts, the music, and even the writing is top notch. It's got a lovable cast of characters. Everything is short and to the point, but it was always charming.

I love almost everything about this. Please play it.

The only thing it lacks is the feeling of endless replayability, but that's okay. Not every game needs that.

Cobalt Core is an absolute delight. It's Slay the Spire meets FTL, and that should sell you on its premise right at the gate.
If you're still skeptical then hear me out. (Minor spoilers)

It's a deck-builder set in a space time-loop. You pick three characters to set up your starting deck along with a ship and try to make it through three stages to reach the end. At the end of each loop, depending on which characters you play with, you can unlock memories for one of the characters on your ship.

I feel like the writers and I have the exact same sense of humor because the dialog in the game is perfect. They got me laughing at loud multiple times - I especially love Peri's second memory. IYKYK. The game strikes a good balance between absurdism and seriousness that's really difficult to pull of and I think they landed it with flying colors. There are a couple of 'oh shit' story moments too that hit me harder then they should have, don't you worry.

There are a wide variety of cards and mechanics that keep you on your toes. I managed to hone in on a number of good strategies, and each of them felt satisfying when they hit.

If I could be a little bit critical, there are definitely characters that stand out above the rest. If I want to win, I take Riggs, I think she's nuts. If I want to have a hard time, I take Max or Books. The later don't feel like they can do too much on their own, which is fine, but sometimes I end up removing all of their cards in a run just to make my deck more consistent.

Additionally, I won't lie, the game is pretty easy. After getting some strategies down, Normal difficulty became a matter of 'how' and not 'if' I was going to win. Some people have said they beat the game first try, and I can see that. There are harder difficulties however, that make parts of your ship weaker and add bricks to your deck that make things more difficult. I say, if you're looking to have fun, do Normal, and if you're looking for a challenge, crank the difficulty lever to Max and ban Riggs from your ship. That'll get you sweating!

The soundtrack needs a shoutout as well. Aaron Cherof did great, the leitmotifs are banger and the beats are bumpin. The Dreadnought theme is my favorite and it's definitely finding its way onto my playlists.

So yeah, don't sleep on Cobalt Core or Rocket Rat Games. I'm gonna keep my eyes out for whatever these guys do next because this was great and I'd love to see more from them.

Cobalt Core is primarily similar to slay the spire, while mixing in some elements from FTL. You may choose 3 pilots which all have different card sets, and choose ships which all have different gimmicks.

The game doesn't have as many artifacts as slay the spire, and the builds are a lot less interesting. But the game does add complexity with its ship combat. You must maneuver your ship out of harm's way, or have drones block the damage, or stun the part of the ship that's attacking you.

This one is for slay the spire fans who liked ftl, not the other way around. good game, but i wish it retained some of the flexibility of slay the spire's gameplay

When I play a roguelike deckbuilder, the question I always ask myself is "would I rather just play Slay the Spire?". Usually the answer after a couple runs is yes, but Cobalt Core is a rare exception. It helps that it's clearly not a forever game, instead more of a Hades, where it is a straightforward story with an ending in the guise of a roguelike. It helps even more that it's extremely capable as a deckbuilder, using a lot of the fundamentals of StS but twisting it with a positioning system that actually works for once in this genre, and some really unique ways to switch up your runs. And then it's wrapped in the same charming character design, legitimately funny writing, and banger OST as its predecessor Sunshine Heavy Industries. Between that and this, I'm a forever fan of Rocket Rat, and will check out anything new they put out sight-unseen.

Slay the Spire (deckbuilding, card play, map) meets Into the Breach (graphics, tactics, movement, time-repeat, pilots) with a dash of Galaxy Trucker (theme, encounters, ship parts). What's not to love?

Perhaps a lack of content after a few hours of play, and although the characters and the deck building around them is variable enough, they don't feel that different from each other.

If the creators continue to add content, this has unprecedented potential. If they don't, that's reprehensible, as the gameplay loop here is better built and more engaging than the vast majority of genre-related games. And there have been countless of them in recent years.

A fantastic roguelike deckbuilder + tactics combo that is sort of like Slay the Spire with touches of FTL and Into the Breach.

A little light on content but that's not a knock against it. The writing is surprisingly good and the characters and art are fun and charming.

Hope to see more from this dev in the future.

Becoming bored with Cobalt Core was, ironically, the best thing that could've happened to improve my time with it.

Here's the thing: the game is charming, stellar sound design and art direction. The characters are written sparsely but with great charm, the storyline is unobtrusive but interesting. There's very little downtime, decks are mash-ups of the three crew members you select, ships have notable differences and the whole thing just flows along nicely with a proper sense of balance. So, what's the issue?

It's just too… smooth, for lack of a better word. The difficulty is sanded down to a fine, low curve. I won my first run. I won my second one as well. I won my second go at hard mode. In all, I cleared an easy 75% of my runs, and the ones I didn't were almost always due to me just zoning out and not paying attention to the card I was playing.

This would be fine if the game had any real version of ongoing, unlockable incentives, especially those tied to ships and difficulty. The few that are there are easy enough - win on hard mode, win without the core three on your ship, etc - and the unlocks themselves are significant: new crew, new ships. But the cards are where things are lacking. There's no new ones, save those tied to the crew members, and those only when you play as them. It doesn't take long to see most of what the game has on offer, even less to whittle winning solutions down to a science. There's no scaling difficulty to apply pressure, no reason to try difficult combinations. Once the game is solved, you're golden, and that solution comes with ease.

And that's fine. This is a game that is well positioned as an entry-level deckbuilder. Deck thinning is a minimal concern, artifacts are plentiful and quite powerful, bosses are always the same. It's fun, unless fun for you lies in the challenge, in which case you'll be where I was: getting bored.

Still, I wanted to play on. I wanted to see how the plot ended - quite nicely, I'll note - but dreaded churning through the 18 clears required to see the ending. And so, in my boredom, I started just playing as fast as I could, borderline speedrunning my clears, basically daring the game to kill me. Trying new, untested, suboptimal builds, strange crew combinations, going into major fights without repairing.

And that was where I found the fun. Playing as fast as I could, as close to the edge, brought a sense of satisfaction and joy that had quickly faded from the game's early stages. Making builds where I couldn't move, ones where I had few actual attacks, decks with five cards that I drew through multiple times a turn. I don't think I lost a single one of these breakneck, risky runs. A testament to the game's ease, and a reason to embrace it rather than turn away.

Right here off the top I feel I need to give a short and lazy explanation of what this game is.
For those with a small working knowledge of indie titles, Cobalt Core = FTL X Slay the Spire.
For those not jamming with that equation, Cobalt Core is a roguelike deck builder where you control a spaceship and have three crew members (at a time) each with their own specialities as you try to head to an end point through branching paths, repairing, upgrading and obtaining new things as you go.

Roguelike deck builders are something I have always enjoyed, with a background in tabletop games, spending years of my life rolling dice, moving miniatures, shuffling cards and more. This genre was laser targeted at my interests.
However the genre is not particularly niche and there are many games under that banner.
It will be a turn off for some, a barrier that you may not be able to get past but I would like to explain why this one in particular is special to me.

To speak more to the fans of the genre, Cobalt Core is neither the deepest or most balanced of these games.
It has a wonderful story but nothing that gets close to being as intriguing as Inscryption.
What it does have over virtually all of the games in this genre I’ve played is that it feels better than all of them.

To explain how a card game could feel better, I will briefly describe the average game of Cobalt Core.
Your ship, which as you progress more unlock but I will get to that later, is at the bottom of the screen. To the left side are the portraits of your three chosen crew mates who have added their cards to a basic deck which will represent their speciality, be it a pilot, an engineer, or a weapons officer.
At the top is the enemy, typically a ship. You draw cards, have energy which is an equivalent to action points, mana or whatever resource is easiest for you to imagine.
Like virtually all card games, the cards cost these resources each turn and it’s your decision how to play these out.

The target isn’t simply just a ship though, you and the enemy both have segments.
Your cannons fire directly in front, ships can also fire missiles or release drones.
Some parts may be weak whilst others are armoured and all these things mean that there isn’t just a strategy to what you’re playing but also about positioning because in Cobalt Core it’s just as much about being in the right place as it is having the right cards.

How this works is you get a heads up of what your enemy will be doing, where they’re firing, if it will cause a negative effect and importantly how much damage you will take if you are right in front of their cannons.
Here is where Cobalt Core differentiates itself from many card games and that movement is a strategic and exciting factor. It isn’t just attack and defend, those are represented but positioning is key and this is how the game feels more involved, even if perhaps simpler, than many others in the genre.

Swaying between cannon fire, positioning the part of your ship which is armoured to take the hit or, further into the game, using and even controlling a mid-row of objects such as meteors or missiles to deal the most, take the least and have the best turn is a lot of fun in each and every battle.

I’m sure there’s an argument that having all these different tools to your disposal can make things too easy, but your enemies get similar things and further into runs and especially on higher difficulties you are managing so much that the wide variety of tools may be great but the wild variety of bad situations you are facing can be greater.

The variety is here. There are eight different characters to unlock and five different ships; that's two-hundred and eighty different combinations before we even start to look at different cards and artifacts picked up along the way.
I’m sure there is much more in others but this is more than enough.
Building a crew that feels powerful is like any great card game, it’s not just the combinations you come up with but how your mind works with them, what sort of play-style you prefer.

As you unlock more ships, completely new strategies appear and you’ll be cursing out a ship for being crap with little understanding before wondering if actually it’s OP and not balanced later and that journey is fun.
Each card you pick up after a fight can later be upgraded, this breeds new strategies. While also collecting artifacts (permanent changes to your ship) will create even more.

I’ve explained the average battle but I should briefly explain the average campaign or run, and what the objective is.
As previously mentioned, the campaign map is much like FTL or even Inscryption (although left to right rather than foreground to background).
You can plan ahead looking down at the locations on each branch, and there are seven different icons (including the exit) you will see.
Three are similar, these are the enemies, elite enemies and all the way to the right is the boss.
This is simple to understand, the elites are harder but give you more rewards and the bosses are less random as you will learn what comes at the end of each sector as it is the same each time - how you plan to prepare for them is up to you.
Between these can be; events, artifacts and repair yards.
Events range from meeting NPCs which may give you new cards, ships in distress or even pirates wanting to steal from you.
Artifacts are simply a choice of a permanent upgrade that can dramatically change your strategies as you move on. Without wanting to spoil all that there is, some of these are as simple as extra energy each turn, better engines meaning you start with more movement or possibly interesting effects such as starting with less cards in hand but getting free draws for taking specific types of actions.
These artifacts come from a pool that are available on all runs, but also one's specific to the crew you have picked and even the ship itself.
Lastly is the repair yard, this is where you can, as you would imagine, get your ship repaired of some damage. However here you also get the opportunity to upgrade cards or remove them.
Removing them is for the classic case of “deck thinning” an important strategy and common knowledge to most card-gamers as having less cards means you’ll see your best cards more often.
Although sometimes you’ll be using the bin to rid yourself of a bad card you may have picked up along the way.
Upgrading is as you imagine, making a card better. Each card has two choices of upgrade, most typically these are the choice of cheaper cost or more powerful effect but as you progress it may be to add more effects or be rid of negative ones such as letting a card that is usually once per battle be more permanent.
As you can imagine, this is just another layer to the variety and strategy the game offers.

A single successful run will take around an hour, typically less as you play more of the game and get quicker at making decisions and fighting bosses.
If you manage to make a successful run you are rewarded with the chance to see a cutscene for one of your crew. I will not dive into the story to deeply but your characters are caught in a time loop, something happened to the titular Cobalt Core and getting to the end of these runs and confronting it allows you start piecing memories together to understand what is really at stake and how the crew ended up here in the first place.
Also if it wasn’t clear before, doing X amount of runs or things at higher difficulties may unlock more and the game politely points you in the direction of what to do if furthering the story isn’t enough.

The story itself I will say is good, heartwarming and funny thanks to the cast. A simple enough tale that is fun to unravel due to how it’s presented.
I feel that maybe they could have dug a deeper hole, but I respect the fun almost Star Fox like animal pals with the silly comedic panels, enemy designs and more along with some quality writing would maybe be at odds with anything too complex.
Really the lightness of it all helps the game feel so moreish. Runs aren’t long, dialogue isn’t too deep. You can pause when you like, come back when you want and it will always be fun.

If I had played it closer to release Cobalt Core would have been in my top five games of 2023 and that is extremely high praise.
There are small elements of the game that are not perfect, even ignoring that is may not be the deepest or most balanced of these games, simple things like the end of sector bosses never changing isn’t the best and maybe the toughest part is although everything an enemy is going to do seems heads up, how they are going to move is not and can really make or break some battles.
Outside of those two minor complaints there was never a moment while I was playing the game I thought the game needed changing. There are small dials that could use twisting and the balance and story not being the peak of what they can be is what keeps this “down”, to “only” being top five of one of the best years in gaming and not the very top.
Essentially what I am saying is as long as you enjoy deck builders you should be going out of your way to get this game and play it.

For the last year I've had roguelikes blacklisted from my steam store, the overwhelming swarms of them proved too much for myself.

Once in a while however, something manages to slip through the cracks in my shield towards the onslaught. In short, it's good to have friends with good taste to spy on over steam, which is how I found myself aboard Cobalt Core. Very much a simplistic, yet sound take on the deckbuilding genre that I welcome wholeheartedly, the less Yu-Gi-Oh novel text the better, and after spending a summer once upon a time trying to run through covenant 25 Monster Train, something easy is never a thing I will bitch about. It always feel great to feel overpowered when you get the right combos, and don't need to worry about the bosses pulling a fast one on you at the last second. You would expect something simple to run itself dry fairly quickly, but the events and character/ship combinations along with the cast of pixelated animal people come into play throwing haymakers at my overly emotional heart. The writing is simply adorable, and I enjoyed thinking of the voices the characters had in my head. Something I kind of miss in a day where everyone wants voice actors.

Unlocking the memories after every run enamored me a bit more to each one, and it made the epilogue very heartwarming to play through. I very much implore you to get all the memories so you can experience it, assuming you yourself want to try and help these poor souls break out of their time loop. I mean, I sure did. No one deserves such a fate as to be trapped in a roguelike deckbuilder for all eternity! I would be very upset at that!

Cobalt Core can also sleep soundly knowing it's the only roguelike deckbuilder I have never turned the music off to listen to my own playlist, which is probably a testament to both it's soundtrack and runtime for myself. Thank you for being digestible in an age where developers value bloating their games.

More characters should be named "Dizzy", a very good name.

Like many other's have pointed out, this game is a love letter to Slay the Spire and FTL, two of the greatest roguelikes of all time. I think overall it does do some really cool things but unfortunately lacks the depth of either of its two ancestors. I enjoyed this for a time but after a while I was just like... I'd rather just go back to Slay the Spire.

The ship movement mechanic was neat and the thing that separates this the most from other rougelike deckbuilders. The writing was cute and there was some good jokes that gave me chuckles, but I also found myself not really caring about the overall story too much. It did feature beautiful animations, too, but stylistically I still prefer FTL.

Overall, while there were redeeming qualities and things that separated this game from others in the genre, it didn't do anything strong enough to make me want to play it over it's predecessors.

62/100

Cobalt Core is fantastic, it really took me by surprise. I don't consider myself a Roguelite Deckbuilder fan, but this game is so engaging and fun it might've made me one. Piloting a ship along a single dimension with turn-based combat is such a cool concept. Bobbing and weaving inbetween bullets and lasers while firing off potshots with your cards is awesome, and the game makes you feel good for doing it. The fundamental mechanics are so simple and easy to pick up, I'd forgive you if you didn't recognize the huge potential skill ceiling the game has. The amount of creativity and build variety available is incredible. Between the game's cast of 8 characters and 5 ships, each with their own unique playstyles, you can formulate some absolutely diabolical builds. Aside from the gameplay, the visuals and sounds are also great. The pixel art is very well done, and I really enjoyed the music - intense when it needed to be, but not overpowering so you can slow down and think in tense moments. The characters are well designed, and the story is cute and pretty concise. The writing gets a little lol xd random on occassion, overall though I really appreciated the humor, and just the dialogue in general. Alongside the "memories" you're working to recover in-game you get to know each character little by little, and the ending was genuinely touching. Overall, the amount of content here isn't quite infinite, but I think it's easily worth the $20 price tag to support an indie developer. My only thought regarding balance is that it's a little too easy to get an Exodia with Books, she is totally mental even on the highest difficulty. Honestly though, this isn't even really a complaint, it's fun. It's possible my inexperience with the genre is blinding me to the game's flaws, and if so, then so be it. All I know is that I like Cobalt Core, a lot.

"It reminds me so much of Slay the Spire" is both such a compliment; but so - so high of expectations. Yes, Cobalt Core is a roguelike deck builder with multiple classes. No, it's unforutnatly not the pinical of the genera like the aforementioned Spire Slaying game.

Cobalt core is fun. It's cute. There is a lot of replayability because at it's core you get to mix and match three crew members to start your run. These three crew members make up what cards are in your deck. So you can select your favorite character's mechanic and integrate them with others in unique, fun, and highly replayable ways. The replayability is good, because if you want to get to the credits you have to win 18 runs.

God of War Valhalla? 4 runs.
Hades? 10 runs.
Cobalt Core? 18. EIGHT. TEEN. It's, a lot. If you're not super into it.

In addition to mixing and matching your crew, there are 5 unique ships each with unique mechanics to set out on your journey with.

I loved the world and the characters and the new take on the genera. It's good. Not every game has to be the best. But it has some flaws from keeping it in the same tier as the others.