Zet Zillions review

As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t a better way to spend between fifteen and thirty minutes than getting stuck into a run on a deck-building Roguelike. I must admit most of these games have rather dull themes though, and I’ve more than had my fill of drab fantasy settings in my card games at this point. Enter Zet Zillions, a deck builder that replaces orcs and thieves with an injection of Saturday morning cartoon sci-fi and is a hell of a lot of fun.

It will take all of ten seconds for you to see the wacky nature of Zet Zillions when you start playing. Our hero “Foam Gun” and their oddball crew is looking for a new planet for humanity to inhabit, as the human race has all but perished leaving only robots and aliens behind. It’s your job to travel through space on your planet-ship “Baby Violence”, build up your army of robot cards, and take down any threats that stand in your way. If you think that sounds silly then you ain’t seen nothing yet, but rest assured behind the daft exterior is a wonderfully designed card game.

For the most part battles work similarly to a lot of other deck builders, like for example Slay the Spire. Each turn you’re presented with a hand of cards you can use to attack the sci-fi threat in front of you, and can play as many as you want providing you have the energy points to do so. You can always see what the enemy is planning on doing next turn, so planning out whether you need to attack or block is pretty straightforward at least in the earlier sections of a run.

As well as attacking and defending with cards, you can also use your less useful robots to populate enemies. Each enemy has a population capacity which when filled will stun them for a turn, and often you can take advantage when they’re in this state with other cards that deal extra damage based on population. I must admit that the framing of this mechanic made it seem a little confusing for my first few fights, but once you realise it’s basically just a stun meter that you can use to block powerful incoming attacks you’ll be more than happy to keep using it.

Zet Zillions has even more exciting gimmicks for you to use in combat too, like the ability to fuse cards together. By simply dragging one card onto another you’ll create an entirely new and often more powerful card to play with, which is especially useful when your hand is full of basic block cards you don’t need to use. Experimenting with fusion is key if you want to survive the tougher bosses waiting for you deeper in the galaxy, and with very little downside to making two become one you’ll soon start relying on it.

Outside of fighting space adversaries, you’ll spend most of your time in Zet Zillions choosing which branching path you’d like to follow in order to improve your deck in various ways. As well as battles which reward new cards and the zany pineapple currency, you’ll also find labs to upgrade cards, a dragon you can sacrifice cards to, and all manner of other random activities littering the star map. Unlike many Roguelikes with branching paths, you can actually backtrack here to get even more upgrades, but with a constantly approaching threat and a lot of opportunities to lose precious health, it’s a hell of a balancing act.

Eventually, you’ll master all the different elements of Zet Zillions and successfully complete your first run. There’s so much more to the game once you’ve done this though, with different chapters, decks and a whole host of extra cards to unlock by successfully jetting around the galaxy. If you want to try out all the different options and strategies then there are countless hours of deck building waiting here.

There is so much to love about the card-based Roguelike that is Zet Zillions, but a couple of small things hold it back from the top spot of the genre. The story, while wacky and entertaining, is just a little too prominent for my liking and takes away from the action somewhat. There are also a few too many cards that simply don’t seem useful, and especially at the shop where you can spend your hard-earned pineapples I rarely found anything worth investing in. Perhaps there were some strategies that I just wasn’t able to figure out though, or some powerful fusions I hadn’t discovered yet.

Zet Zillions is an incredibly compelling deck-building Roguelike, with a delightful Saturday morning cartoon style that helps it stand out from its peers. With some seriously clever mechanics and a whole lot of content to unlock, Zet Zillions will certainly not disappoint genre veterans and isn’t a bad place for newcomers to start building their first deck of cards either.