An innovative new deck-builder has just arrived on Steam Early Access – and on sale for $11.89 no less. It’s called Lost in Fantaland, and it’s shaping up to be an indie gaming classic.
This is partly down to the adorable pixel-art visuals, which make Lost in Fantaland look like a game from the golden-age of turn-based JPRGs.
But it’s got more to do with the gameplay. Lost in Fantaland is a genre-straddling single-player adventure that fuses deck-building with turn-based combat and rogue-like mechanics.
Set on a mysterious new continent, it sees you playing as an intrepid adventurer and monster-slayer belonging to one of three classes: Warrior, Mage, and Deceiver.
Alas, the Deceiver is absent from the Early Access, so you’ll have to wait to see it in action.
Your adventure consists of a series of choices. The world is made up of various branch zones, with each branch letting you fight monsters, go after Artifacts, sit at a bonfire to replenish your hit points, and experience random events.
In that respect, Lost in Fantaland is similar to other popular deck-builders. But it’s much more three-dimensional than most, taking place in an isometric, grid-based world with various different terrains and weather effects.
These aren’t just for show. If you’re clever you can use the weather and the terrain to your advantage, and you can lay traps in the environment to trip your enemies up.
There are cards for attacking, defending, and moving, and using these costs action points. Combining them in the right way, meanwhile, will let you deploy powerful combos, inflicting untold damage.
New cards are added to your deck after every victory, allowing you to become more and more powerful over the course of a run. These cards, and the terrain itself, is randomly generated, making for some tense, highly addictive rogue-lite gameplay.=
The Early Access version of Lost in Fantaland gives you three maps to try out, which is more than enough to give you an idea of what the full version will be like.
Download it now on Steam for the special introductory price of $11.89.
