REVIEW: ‘Cobalt Core’ Lets You Play Your Way (PC)

Cobalt Core is a roguelike deckbuilding game from Rocket Rat Games and published by Brace Yourself Games. While roguelikes and card games tend to scare off potential players, Cobalt Core is absolutely worth a try. Much like the deck of cards that players will be building to succeed, developer Rocket Rat Games has assembled a masterful experience that shines brilliantly. 

Boasting a pixel art style and cute anthropomorphic animal pilots, Cobalt Core is replete with imaginative ships, including one that resembles a sheet of crystal, a giant nautilus, or even a castle complete with a wizard pilot. The UI almost resembles a sleek sci-fi board game, and the design of the cards themselves is concise and aesthetically appropriate, cleanly displaying information like card effects and which pilot it belongs to. To get started, players must choose their own ship out of five options, and a trio of humanoid animals out of eight to serve as the crew and venture forth, battling other ships in turn-based combat as they attempt to escape the time loop they find themselves trapped in. While they remain aware of each loop, they struggle repeatedly to reach and board The Cobalt, the eponymous ship that awaits them in the third sector, providing both their ultimate goal and their toughest challenge.

Each character brings along their own deck of cards, along with dialogue and further cards and memories to unlock, while ships each possess unique mechanics regarding their weaponry and layout. When first starting out, players’ options are limited. A single ship and 3 crew members are available, but more can be unlocked over time. The requirements to unlock them are usually visible from the starting screen, giving players smaller goals to work toward when struggling to reach the end of the line. 

Once players are ready to go, they’ll be thrown onto a map strewn with paths, allowing them to decide how they’ll traverse space, including seeking out tougher elite enemies or avoiding them in favor of repair shops or random events. Battles entail taking turns with an enemy ship, which will telegraph its attacks, allowing you to respond before firing away. This back-and-forth makes each fight feel like a puzzle, with a solution waiting to be discovered; even when it seems like the next turn is your last, using a drone as a makeshift shield to survive is a uniquely thrilling scenario that becomes commonplace in Cobalt Core.

While the prospect of battling tougher ships can be daunting, the rewards are worth it, providing with each defeated elite new cards and artifacts, items that provide helpful passive abilities. Normal enemy ships still provide cards as a reward, but artifacts are vital and creative tools to utilize with each run. Additionally, while there is a wide array of enemies and elites, you’ll still run into them repeatedly during your time with the game. Each one comes with its own gimmicks or dialogue, making it easy to recognize them on subsequent runs. One particularly humorous moment pits you against a stubborn pirate-mole who begins the conversation with “Dead or Alive!” but refuses to bring you in alive anyway.

Upon reaching the end of the third sector, players will face a boss battle that, when beaten, ends the run and restores one of their crewmates’ memories. This is where the bulk of the narrative is found. While your crew’s dialogue during various runs gives a peek at their lives and personalities—changing with subsequent runs to provide more and more information—these memories show the player how and why each character has been trapped in the time loop. Without delving into spoilers, the story was a delight. Learning about the characters and why they each have a specific type of card made them relatable and likable, even if they weren’t used very often in subsequent runs. The conclusion of the story, reached upon unlocking all three memories for each character, was incredible. The only negative was that there wasn’t more. 

While the gameplay and the story (and the amazing soundtrack, full of memorable songs) are enough to make Cobalt Core good, it’s the meticulous design that makes it great. Each of the eight crewmembers and the five ships offer a unique way to play. One ship completely lacks cannons, instead firing drones that attack enemies for you, while another ship can move just by playing cards on either end of your hand. The crew members specialize in drone combat, high-risk/reward attacks, and even a gambler-style deck that relies more heavily on luck than the others. These are just a few examples of how different each crew member plays, but you’ll need to assemble a crew of three for each run. Despite how different and mismatched they seem at first, each combination can grow stronger and more synergistic with each new card or artifact gained. 

This is Cobalt Core’s greatest strength: it gives the player the freedom to pick their playstyle, and it’s so well designed that there isn’t a combination that’s doomed to fail from the start. Proof of that concept exists within the Logbook in the pause menu, which shows each crew member and all of their combinations that have completed a run successfully. While it doesn’t keep track of the ships used, there are still hundreds of combinations to explore, and seeing each trio come together as a cohesive team is one of the best experiences in gaming this year.

Cobalt Core provides a memorable story with fun characters, tense gameplay moments, and a payoff that is nearly unmatched. Despite the characters’ best attempts to escape the loop, it’s a game that you should play over and over.

Cobalt Core is available now on PC and Nintendo Switch.