Zoeti

The gaming industry has been awash with card games lately. Zoeti is the latest evolution of this, but unlike so many that have come before, Zoeti is breaking the mold. Zoeti offers a card game base but builds on it with rogue lite themes and strategy. The new game is currently in pre-release, to a warm reception from players who have tried it. The game features a pilgrim on a journey to the four temples of Provenance, with a goal of getting promoted to a higher rank in the church.

Beautiful Artwork

Zoeti really stands out with its artwork, which is crisp and beautiful with a strong color scheme. Each animated scene is done in a 2D RPG style. The colors and tones give off a watercolor impression, but are nonetheless well done. Your character, a beautiful red-haired woman, fights various monsters and bosses based on your card playing ability.

Card game

The card game itself is interesting, using the elements of poker to make it both a game of skill and luck. Each playing card activates certain skills, so your attacks change depending on the hand you play—and are dealt. The game is very similar to Poker Quest, another rogue lite card based strategy game. As similar as the idea is between these two games are however, the look and feel of it are very different.

Some issues

While the developers are very responsive and are in the progress of fixing these errors, there are currently some issues in play. Among them are translation issues, and a difficulty to tell who is speaking with both sides of a dialogue lumped in the same box.

During gameplay itself, there are times when the monsters don’t act the way they should. In one instance, a player experienced a loss before any moves had been played, full health and full shields. The game flow could also be improved, with an option to quickly play all the hands in your deck. This isn’t necessarily an issue, but it feels slow and bogged down when you have to individually play the rest of your remaining attacks to finish a fight.

Coming soon

This game is still in early release, which means most of these flaws will likely be fixed. The developer is present in many discussions about the game and has mentioned that many of these things will be fixed. It’s exciting to see the developer be so in touch with the community, an so eager to bring their best version of the game to players. A game has to be pretty exciting to make a genre already flush with similar entries exciting. Zoeti has the possibility of being great with its smooth graphics and enjoyable storyline, but its going to need quite a bit more polishing before it gets there.

Pros:

• Community-centered developer
• Decent graphics

Cons:

• Some gameplay issues