The Endless Wyrd is a strategy adventure video game wherein you must escape the Wyrd and its dangerous denizens. Developed by Design Imps, this 2D side-scroller roguelike adventure game features dice-based deck-building gameplay that puts emphasis on attack synergies and combos to deal devastating blows against your enemies. It’s in early access and offers a demo version to get a sneak peek at its fun and challenging features.

The Wyrd is overwhelming

The story of The Endless Wyrd is pretty straightforward: you play as one of the three characters you can select at the start, who must escape the insidious Thing of the Dark by scavenging the Wyrd. For the demo, however, you can only play as Ezekiel. You start off by choosing his deck, which mostly defines the game difficulty. There are three decks available: Witch Doctor, Enforcer, and Hard Mode.

Before you start the actual game, it quickly becomes apparent that the learning curve for the gameplay will be steep—especially if you’re new to strategy card games. There’s no battle tutorial to walk you through the complexities of the game mechanics and you’ll just have to read it on the flashcards that appear before your first fight. This can be frustrating as there are various little mechanics that you need to master.

This game is comparable to Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon in terms of strategy gameplay. However, this one also mixes dice-rolling to keep things exciting. You get random moves depending on your chosen deck at every turn but you can reroll these to get a better move, which will cost Sanity points. Additionally, using augments can stack the odds in your favor whenever you roll for a better choice.

Doesn’t spoonfeed you

All in all, The Endless Wyrd is a challenging strategy game that has card battle-like combat mechanics. However, it’s unique enough in that it can be tricky to grasp for a while—especially with the lack of a proper battle tutorial to assist players unfamiliar with these game mechanics. Design-wise, however, the game looks beautifully-crafted with its various enemy NPCs. If you liked Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon, this is a recommended title.