Iris and the Giant

Welcome to Iris and the Giant, a card battling rogue-lite. Rogue-like meaning whenever you die, you will be losing most of your progress, and there is a bunch of random things that can happen and change your current playthrough. You won’t lose everything, though. There are certain things that will stay and help you. The battle system of this game is a pretty satisfying card style, which I will describe more later.

Now, I’m not good at rogue/rogue-likes/rogue-lites, but I did really enjoy this game. It is satisfying with a good deal of strategy and variety. This is not a full playthrough, since there are two more paths after the first Path of the Giant.

Thanks to swaswj for making this review possible.

Find it on Steam.

The story of the game is an adventure in the mind. I won’t to into it too much, but you will discover backstory through memories found within the battle stages. Memories seem to come randomly, and each memory you find allows you to unlock permanent upgrades. There are also scenes as you get deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of your mind. It is solemn and quiet.

The battle system of the game is really fun. There is a lot of randomness going in, so you need to have several different strategies and to know how to deal with enemies. The way you attack is through a deck of cards. Each card has an effect from the basic attack one enemy to the magical attack all enemies of a certain type. There are lots more with many different methods of getting rarer cards. It is really solid and the action of playing cards feels pretty cool.

Each card card can only be used once, unless it has a special effect. So you need to keep on getting cards because if you run out, you lose the run. The other way to lose is to take too many hits and you run out of willpower.

Then there are the enemies. There are a bunch of really interesting enemies. They are like the enemy deck. They come at you in a grid form. As your defeat them, other stuff in back slides into take their place. It’s not always enemies. There are random things such as jars that might contain something helpful or chests that contain more cards. What you want to reach is the stairs in each level that allow you to move down. Of course, there is a reason to defeat enemies. They give experience which allows you to get more skills for the current run.

The enemies are all really interesting to face. You start off with simple ones such as can only attack when in front of you or can attack from any range. Then comes the enemies that start to deal more damage or those that have other effects such as turning your cards into fire so they damage you when you play it. Soon, the game becomes balancing which enemies to take out fast while hoping you have the right cards to do it.

Soon enough, the battles become really hectic as you try to keep certain enemies away from you or to bring certain enemies closer into range. Then there are the boss monsters that have really powerful effects. You don’t have to defeat them, but if you do, you get even better skills for the run such as making your axe cards stun any enemies that survive the attack.

To help you out, each time you lose, you start the next game with some random gifts for that run. Memories can be used for upgrades that you can swap out between runs. You can also have imaginary friends, but to unlock them, you need to complete challenges. They also provide boosts, but they can also have penalties.

The graphics are charming and clear. Things are simple but effective. The wide variety of enemies and locations keep things interesting as you travel into the labyrinth.

Iris and the Giant has solid gameplay full of interesting strategies. You must adapt to what you can get, or maybe use certain skills to try for a more stable strategy. So you go in, lose, try again. Try until you succeed or maybe unlock something new. I’m not the kind that really wants to go through the same things over and over again, but my time with the game was still fun.

Find it on Steam.