Talystro Preview

Talystro is a deckbuilding roguelite game developed and published by Filiokus. This game is incredibly unique compared to other card battlers I have played in the past. Instead of fighting your regular type of monster, you play as a Math Mouse who faces off against evil, mutated numbers using a combination of cards and dice. There is a lot of strategy here, as you will need to use your brain to calculate simple math problems to defeat the foes that stand in your way.

When you start, you can choose between Normal mode, Expert mode, or the tutorial. If you have played a lot of deckbuilding titles in the past, you might think you can bypass learning the mechanics and just jump straight in. I’m warning you now that this would be a mistake, as there are many unique gameplay aspects in Talystro that you need to understand to be successful.

 

The enemies you battle against resemble numbers, and their value represents the total you need to play to defeat them. At the beginning of your turn, you will draw five cards, and underneath these, you have six dice. Once you have decided which cards you want to use, you drag a die into one of the two slots on the card: one is a plus slot that adds to your total, and the other is a minus slot that subtracts from it.

To hit an enemy, your number must match the enemy’s value exactly. To help you keep track of your dice total, there is a calculator on the right-hand side of the screen. Once the number matches what you need, it lights up, letting you know that you are ready to attack. Essentially, you are performing simple math equations.

As soon as you successfully defeat an enemy, new numbered foes will appear to challenge you. They won’t attack immediately at the end of the round; instead, they remain inactive until their turn comes around. There is no travelling between nodes or locations on a map here. Instead, the evil numbers come straight to you.

In the top-right-hand corner of the screen, there is a route map showing that you are on Act One, Level One, along with the enemies you have defeated so far on your run. Once your hand is depleted and there are no more cards to play, your turn is over. This means your opponents get a chance to attack you. You will notice that beside each enemy is a pink box showing the number required to block their move.

You are not restricted to playing just one card at a time; you can combine as many as you need to reach the number required to defeat a foe. Just remember that if an enemy is not defeated by the end of your turn, they will have a chance to attack you. Your maximum health is six, so it does not take many hits before you reach zero and lose the run.

In addition to attack cards, you also have three different resources you can use during combat. Re-roll does exactly what it says, allowing you to re-roll all of your dice, which is extremely useful when you are stuck with a handful of ones. Adjust lets you manipulate the number on a die by plus or minus one, allowing you to turn a three into a four, for example.

Once the tutorial is complete, you can select a difficulty from three options. The harder the challenge, the better the rewards, and the number range of the enemy also increases. The options are: Easy, where the enemy numbers range from one to 11. Rewards include two coins and one card. Medium is where the enemy numbers range from one to 13, and they rewards two coins and one card. Finally, the highest one is Hard, where enemy numbers range from five to 16, and the rewards include three coins and one random artefact.

Talystro has a great art style that looks hand-drawn and cartoonish. All of the enemies you fight are unique and fun takes on classic numbers, each with its own personality. One thing that feels a little odd is the lack of music, but the slicing sound effects when you attack enemies sound excellent.

I’m having a lot of fun with Talystro. I really enjoy having to calculate simple math problems to take out enemies instead of just clicking random cards; it feels genuinely unique. I can’t wait to see how the game changes before its full release. Will they add music, or will they continue to focus on sound effects instead? Either way, this is a fun deckbuilding game with a cute mouse protagonist that will definitely give your brain a bit of a workout.