SoloGamiSoloGami

Build a deck. Explore the world. Take a card from everyone you beat.

Sologami is a single-player card battler with a side-scrolling overworld. You explore a hand-painted map, run into the creature blocking your path, and the two of you settle it at the card table. When you win, you choose cards from that opponent's deck and keep them for good. Your collection only grows, and every fight after that is played with what you took from the last one.

How a battle works

A battle is a best-of-three. Win two and the fight is yours.

Before each round, you choose up to 10 cards from your collection. Anything you play is gone for the rest of the battle, so giving up a round on purpose can be the right call.

The table has three lines on each side: Ground, Water and Sky. A card can only stand in the lines its movement allows, so deciding where to put it matters as much as deciding when.

Players take turns until someone passes. Once both sides have passed, the higher total power wins.

The rules change as you go

Scoring is not the same from start to finish. The game introduces new rules and ways to score as you progress.

Early battles are simple addition: put more power on the table than your opponent and the round is yours.

Later fights also count everything happening to your cards, from boosts and drains to damage, so a board can be worth far less than it looks.

Eventually, the table stops being cleared between rounds. Whatever you committed in round one is still sitting there in round three, still bleeding, still being patched up.

In the final stretch, two boards are scored at once: what your cards are worth right now, and what they were worth before anything touched them. Working out which board you are actually playing on is part of the challenge.

What's on the cards

There are 117 cards. Most are units: creatures, beasts, monsters, heroes and bosses. Each has a power value, a set of lines it can be played into, and usually an ability that affects the cards around it.

Some help their neighbours. Some only help their own kind. Some are worth far more together than apart, while others do nothing until the right card lands beside them.

The rest are cards you play at the table rather than onto it: weather, parasites, cures, swords, magnets, mirrors and spies.

Every card also keeps a record of its own fight. Hover over one to see what bit it, what healed it, what the weather did to it, and which ally is boosting it.

Progression

You face 37 opponents in order, each unlocked by beating the one before it. The campaign starts with a snail on a garden path and ends up somewhere else entirely.

After every win, you get to pick from the cards your opponent just played against you.

You set the difficulty for each opponent in the conversation before the fight.

Give it a try

The rules are easy to pick up. The hard part is figuring out what the game is actually asking you to do.

Play a few battles. Try different cards. Lose a few rounds. See if you can figure it out.

Also included

• An original soundtrack.

• Hand-painted card art.