It’s heavy metal vs. demons in deckbuilder Power Chord
“Take back the city, one dive bar at a time.”
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Who doesn’t love it when the battle of the bands is a literal battle, and also the enemy band is demons? Nobody, that’s who. Power Chord is a roguelike deckbuilder where you assemble a team of musicians, then use their musical prowess to build an unstoppalbe strategy to defeat bands of enemy demons in order to close the hellmouth that’s ostensibly opened up, or something.
For me, Power Chord really stands out from the pack because it’s not trying to be Slay the Spire, or Monster Train, or Darkest Dungeon, or like many, many indies a mix of these three. It’s comfortably a game of its own, with an aesthetic, music, and playstyle all its own. Each of the four band positions: Drummer, Bassist, Guitarist, and Vocalist have their own role in the party.
Strategy comes from how you combine and decide to use each character’s cards to win. Lose a specific character and you lose their cards until you can get them back in action, which will probably put a huge cramp in your style. In other games you’ve got a big pile of gear to upgrade yourself, but in Power Chord you have to choose what each character equips in their own set of limited slots.
I spent some time with the free demo, available on Steam, and liked what I saw. Enemy variety was pretty good, as was the structure of fights and events that you came up against on your road to a level boss. Power Chordwill release on Steamin early access in December.
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Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he’s not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.
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