SHROOM AND GLOOM
A delicious dungeon delve that plays with expectation
Developer Team Lazerbeam Publisher Devolver Digital Format PC Origin South Africa Release TBA
Team Lazerbeam co-founder Ben Rausch
Team Lazerbeam isn’t interested in explaining ‘why’, citing inspirations from David Lynch to Jeff Vandermeer. The evolution of the game’s eldritch fungi is left for you to consider.
This game is best described with a single word: absurd. It has the now-familiar structure of the Roguelike deckbuilder, but displays an intentional recklessness towards the conventions of the genre. It prompts startling discovery after discovery about just what it will allow you to do, as you hack, slash, season and toast your way through a cave network of mushrooms that are equal parts cute and vicious.
It becomes clear to us that developer Team Lazerbeam is doing something different the first time we see a card that can be upgraded multiple times within a single turn of combat – and those upgrades stick, not only for the remainder of that encounter, but for the rest of the entire run. From there, an early experiment in making the one damage card to rule them all is nearly as much fun as the realisation that Shroom And Gloom is still tactically chewy enough that one strong card alone won’t win the game.