Zoeti uses familiar poker hands to fling spells and launch powerful melee attacks, making for a card-based roguelite that’s easy to pick up and understand.
Monsters are about! They’re doing bad things like leaving wet towels on the floor and coming to bed with dirty feet! Well, presumably they’re doing something more sinister than that, and you neat to beat them up as you cross the countryside. To do this, you need to play pairs, straights, and other Poker hands you’re likely familiar with (the game will teach you if you’re not, though). You aren’t limited to playing with just a tiny hand and getting the exact right cards, though. You can keep a huge hand of cards and see what you can create out of it. This gives the game some great strategy as you look at your hand to see how you can maximize what you’re holding. Sometimes that means holding stuff to see what you draw next, sometimes that means making a huge, damaging play in one turn.
There are some different characters you can play to get some different results for your hands, too. Valentina is a knight that has a lot of staying power while still having great offense. Nicora uses elemental magic to mess with your enemies, and Alves also screws up enemy attacks using tricky abilities that affect speed or their likeliness to hit you. They all have their own card pools and moves they make use of, so you have a couple of roads to tackle the game.
Zoeti‘s Poker-based play style felt like it might be limiting, but it’s an intuitive system built around a well-known card game. It makes you feel like you can pick it up and play it quickly (even if it does have its own complexities to learn), making for a challenging card game that feels welcoming at the same time.
Zoeti is available now on itch.io and Steam.
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