What a blessed year this has already been for roguelike deckbuilders. Even with Slay the Spire 2 being delayed into next year, fans of the genre have been treated to some truly stellar titles. With the release of Utu Studios’ My Card is Better than Your Card!, we might just have gotten the best one yet. I am very much aware that this is quite the claim, especially for a game that is still in early access, but I have been so pleasantly surprised by the depth this game has on offer on top of just a whole lot of fun that I no longer fear stating this.
The premise of the game is delightful in a similar way to Kabuto Park’s: you play as a young child, and you’re using your card collection to become the coolest kid in the playground. You pick one of several starter decks – later on in the game, that choice becomes harder and harder – and you set out to battle other kids in pretty simple, yet satisfyingly deep, card battles.
In a way, this combat reminded me of the card battles you face in something like Ooblets, with all of its flashy colours and the funky music. Every card that gets played, both by you and your opponent, will be met with admiring glances and lots of oooh’s and aaah’s as you both enjoy each other’s beautiful creations. Yes, creations, because this is not just a collectible card game. You will also collect stickers, and you can use those to create your own cards or edit pre-existing ones.
Each sticker has a different effect on the gameplay. These can be offensive or defensive, or add tokens to the battlefield. You’re entirely free to choose how many stickers you want to put on any one card, but beware: cards cost pieces of candy to play, and adding stickers will enhance the amount you need to play them. Pieces of candy aren’t dealt out all that freely either – unless you have cards that give you extras – so it’s always an interesting balancing act to be aware of.
The amount of freedom you’re given to create these cards from the very beginning is quite staggering. I played it quite safe early on, as I found I ran out of candy way too easily. But once I switched decks and was able to create cards that generate candy for me, I could totally let loose. Of course, it’s a risky strategy, but against certain opponents it can really pay off.
The goal in each battle is to win a kind of tug of war, with a bar at the top of your screen starting out straight down the middle. Win a round, and the bar will tip more to your side, but if your opponent wins a round, they will reverse the direction. To win a round, you have to collect stars through the cards you play and sometimes even through the toys you can collect outside of battles as well. These toys function like relics in most deckbuilders, so their effects can do plenty of other things too.
Similar to Kabuto Park, My Card is Better than Your Card! takes place over the course of a number of weeks. Each day you’ll have to face another kid for a card battle, but there are plenty of other things to do as well. You can go to the shops to buy more stickers, do a treasure hunt where you’ll dig up stickers from the sand, win toys from a claw machine, and so much more. And at the end of the day, you get to create! That’s when you sit down with your current collection of cards and stickers and change them up any way you want. This is a functionality that allows for freedom the likes of which I have seldom seen in deck-builders.
It can also get a little overwhelming, though. You earn so much good stuff, and especially at the start of the game, it can be daunting trying to figure out how to get the best synergies out of your deck. As you win runs and unlock more weeks, you’ll also unlock more and more starter decks, which all come with their own unique mechanisms and synergies. I was reminded of Magic: The Gathering by just seeing the multitude of options on offer: there are so many ways of tackling this game, and while that’s amazing, it can also lead to some issues, the main one for me being balancing.
During my number of runs, I tried out a lot of different tactics, and most of the time I did really well. But every once in a while, I’d start a battle and instantly know I was never, ever going to be able to win. Some of the decks just do not have the ability to counter some of the other strategies, and that feeling, well, sucked. Despite doing well and having created something that generated so many stars, I was completely helpless to do anything but watch my counter drain until I lost heavily. Hopefully this is something that will be smoothed out during the early access period of the game, and I do believe the developers mentioned that this was one of the focuses during that time.
Other than that though, what a game. The art style is delightful, full of vibrant colours that really manage to translate that sense of childlike wonder that we might miss out on as adults. There are all these delightful touches that create such a wonderful atmosphere to the game: the friendly taunting, this one kid who lets their cat play the cards, the costumes, the stickers themselves, … This really is a standout game, which delivered upon the promise of the demo and then some.
