I’m staring at a card, trying to figure out if it’s best to use my dwindling energy to increase my block, or make a list ditch effort to attack. Am I playing Slay the Spire? No, Mori Carta.
Mori Carta is a “handless deckbuilding roguelike”, aiming to set itself apart from the main titan of this specific subgenre by not having a hand of cards. Instead, you draw off the top of your deck and play each card one at a time, swiping left or right in a Reigns– (or Tinder-, I won’t judge) like manner to determine the effect. Does this stop me thinking of Slay the Spire every second I’m playing? No, but that’s a compliment!
Nevergreen Games have developed an absolute gem here. By combining two of the most addictive games in recent (recent is doing a lot of legwork here, since both games I previously mentioned were released in the earlier half of the last decade) memory, Mori Carta has the same more-ishness as a recently popped tube of potato snacks.
You progress through levels by traversing along a path. You hit a checkpoint, and are thrown into battles, where a little introductory story is told on a couple of cards you swipe through, before you get into the fight proper. Your deck is composed of your characters cards, the cards provided by the enemy, and the cards you gain throughout the story. Most cards have two different effects, that you activate by swiping them left or right. Each side may cost a different amount of energy, and the game quickly becomes a juggling act of managing energy and block levels, whilst trying to reduce your opponents health to zero and avoid meeting the same fate. Win a battle, add a random selection of cards to your deck, or upgrade a card in your deck with a modifier.
When you first boot up Mori Carta, there’s a barebones tutorial that gives you the basics of combat and nothing more, the rest you discover as you go. The other thing you get is a message warning you of the difficulty of the game. This put me off instantly. I’m an easily frustrated man, and tend to avoid anything that touts its difficulty as a feature. I persevered, because it’s my job in this case, and won my first game without even having to try. I’m not sure how down to luck this is, but I manage to establish a pretty broken “engine” very quickly. The combo involved giving a few cards the quick modifier, which meant they appeared first out of your deck. These cards were a combination of effects that basically gave me free energy, upgraded themselves, and then reshuffled my deck when I upgraded something. This resulted in me spending a minute or two at the start of every match upgrading every card to its highest power without even touching an enemy card (the way your opponent deals damage to you), and then suddenly hitting my opponents with a stream of cards that obliterated them without even blinking.
To put it in perspective, I got the achievements for getting 150 energy (most cards cost 2-6) and dealing over 100 damage (most enemies at this point had 30-50 HP) in a single attack, all in the first half of my first run. The difficulty was trivial to the point of boredom, almost. There was enough secret sauce in the inventive writing, and curiosity at the next character unlock (with a good smattering of that inherent “one more go” effect all these games have) to keep me going though, and I’m glad I did.
Controls-wise the game is simple by design. You perform 99% of your actions with left, right, or select. I will say that the sensitivity on the joystick is a little ridiculous, meaning if you have more than two options to select you need the precision of a surgeon (slightly exaggerating for comedic effect here, but only slightly) to pick any of the options in the middle.
The music and sound effects are just fine, and the art style is understated but beautiful. Mori Carta is a treat to behold in all visual and audio departments. There are four characters with their own set of cards and unique abilities, and the description quotes over 185 unique enemies to face, so for just over £10 at standard store price, you’ll have plenty to go at here.
All jokes aside, Mori Carta strikes a good balance of copying some of the best parts of its contemporaries whilst managing to cut out its own identity in the final concoction, and if you have ever enjoyed a round of Slay the Spire or other similar games, I can nearly guarantee you’ll enjoy your time here too.
Mori Carta was reviewed on Xbox Series X, but is also available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Steam.