Nowhere Prophet

Far from being yet another deckbuilder, Nowhere Prophet cleverly innovates on established gameplay elements to produce a heartily challenging and compelling card game worthy of standing alongside the best of the genre.

A sublime blend of deck building and post-apocalyptic survival, Nowhere Prophet is tense, thoughtful, and incredibly satisfying.

Nowhere Prophet combines a well-structured card battler with an intense story and a gorgeous art style to create a deck-building roguelike with genuine depth.

Nowhere Prophet is still not an entry-level video game. Until you learn how to play it smartly and efficiently - which could take a lot of trial and error - you will see a lot of death. It’s unforgiving and terse, but in that challenge lies a deep and layered roguelike card game. Not everyone is going to make it out of the wasteland alive, but a few of us will guide our Space Moses character to victory.

I do say my criticisms with a grain of salt; I have definitely under-appreciated many roguelikes in the past, only for them to "click" much further down the track on a repeat play. At this point, I feel like I get the gist of where Nowhere Prophet is going, and I think for genre fans who grow weary of the old mainstays of Into the Breach, Slay the Spire and FTL, there is a familiar compulsion to the way Nowhere Prophet’s systems are constructed, even if they often pale in comparison to games which came before. If there’s anything to be learned from Nowhere Prophet, it’s that a successful rogue-lite is like intricately designed lightning in a bottle, and no amount of mechanics which look good on paper can recreate a truly well-planned experience.