🃏

i wish i had more to say about eden after sinking dozens of hours into it. it’s a modern mmbn deckbuilder that i kept coming back to try out in new ways—what more could you want! the systems bounce around each other at an overwhelming pace & the slivers of lore hint at a bigger world, but after finishing all the routes i’m left a little wanting. maybe that’s a fitting feeling at the end of the world.

➡️

really learning the game comes from playing & beating the game with every character, who tell most of their story through gameplay. doomed prodigy saffron shows an open plate of possibilities & everyone else gets more specific from there. selicy cheekily teaches the importance of working in attacks with your cards, reva incentivizes running around the stage to stay busy building up shield, and hazel even has her weird interaction where she can repair hostages like she does her machines. my favourite was the musician violette who basically has two kits that exploit each others’ weaknesses in a duet & help you see a whole class of risky cards in a new light. information isn’t told to you outright, it comes with time and experimentation as you put the pieces together.

🎻

after you have your fun & get a handle on the mechanics though, that’s kind of it! multiple endings add different levels of challenge and hint at the secrets of the apocalypse, but past a certain point it’s just challenge. the second half of my playthrough didn’t reveal any new twists, which were what pulled me in the first place. i don’t need exposition or explicit answers, but it’s sad to see a world that’s had so much work put into building the characters up to not have a little more to chew on, even through it’s strengths of mechanical storytelling. fun new lines & randomized elements from each run help a bit, but they never add anything to make certain runs more memorable. the upcoming duelists of eden game shows the developer’s hand a bit in being more vibes & systems based, so let the vibes roll.

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i’m so happy to see the mmbn formula get some new indie life though. it’s one of those systems that almost got lost to time that i think can tell another dimension of stories we don’t get to see much. i put a lot of expectations on this game because there’s so much i want to see from it, and i hope that this isn’t where things end with its lineage.

🌐

[fav builds were big decks that worked in 3 or so focuses (+shield) at a time, like flow/trinity/kunai or jam/frost/poison OK BYE]