HAXITY Impressions for Steam Early Access

I play card games for a balance of turn based tactics, strategy, immersion, and replay value, but they have this way of being plodding. Boring, even. The deckbuilder genre has been missing a polished, high-energy title to dominate the PC market.

Enter Megapop Games’ Haxity, with a bang

At the time of writing, Haxity offers absolutely no microtransactions or card packs, just the way I like it – a clean test of deckbuilding finesse and card gaming skill with zero pay-to-play elements.

It’s a pretty cool model, honest. Megapop’s engine merges the procedural generation and player choice of deck builder ‘drafting’ with a turn-based fighting-cards battle system. Haxity offers endless replay potential, in my opinion – I only started playing a few days ago, but I’ve already logged more than 24 hours of cybernetically-enhanced, retrowave-thumping strategic play.

I’m pretty shamelessly hooked.

Let’s dive in!

THE FEEL + BASICS

Players can duel a random AI, online challengers, or their friends to a best-of-three-fights in Versus mode, or hack their way through a roguelite Campaign mode. Campaign mode amounts to an Armored Core-style series of Versus duels and character interactions with the denizens and misanthropes of Haxity’s High City and techno-anarchist underworld.

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There’s a sense of immersion in the background art and the attention paid to detail, which isn’t normally present in card games. Overall, Haxity nails the cyberpunk vibe.

THE ARMORY

On selecting a character for Versus or Campaign, you’ll choose one of three base decks (each composed of three Moves and seven Hacks – more on those later).

You’ll modify your deck heavily over the course of the best-of-three match. Even before the first bout, players are made to draft extra cards and Hacks, over a series of draft types (Synergy, Color Triplet, Move/Hack pair) in order to round out or specialize their starter deck.

Once a fight is finished, players get a chance to streamline and upgrade through more procedurally-generated boost, cut, and draft options before the next fight.

THE VIOLENCE

You start a fight with 80 Health. You also start with 2 maximum Energy, a resource used to play Hacks which increases every round. The player with Initiative gets 1 extra energy for the round.

At the beginning of every round, a player places three cards from their hand into play within three columns. After the players place their cards, all cards are revealed, and players have a chance to Hack the moves on the board (using separately-drawn Hack cards, most of which require Energy to execute). After Hacking, turns execute column by column, from left to right – a flurry of skill animations and sweet, sweet damage.

Haxity uses a Rock-Paper-Scissors system to determine whether a move will execute or not. Red cards (Melee) always beat Yellow cards (Skill) always beat Blue cards (Ranged). In the case of a tie, both cards execute, unless one move is Faster or Slower than the other. Use this information to outplay your opponents during the hacking stage, or to force their hand once you get used to their combo of choice.

Once all three columns execute, all Shields drop, players draw a new hand, and another round begins. The gameplay itself is pretty easy to understand, but don’t let its simplicity fool you – Haxity is a game of deception and outplay on three levels, and deckbuilding is never as simple as ‘build the combo that works’.

One fantastic aspect of this premium title is the absence of card packs and guaranteed builds – netdecking is not possible in Haxity, and instead, procedural generation ensures that no two matches will be the same. There’s also no ‘optimal build’ for any given character, which is fantastically refreshing for players with CCG metagame experience.

THE CHALLENGERS:

Haxity currently has a cast of three unique, dynamic characters. Their playstyles are wildly different, though there is some commonality between their mechanics. I’ll outline some of the basics, but each character can be played in almost any way. Try something new!

Copperson is easy to understand, but difficult to master – flashy and deceptively skill-heavy, he scales his damage through multihits/multipliers, the Momentum mechanic (permanently boosts move power after execution), and his survivability through regeneration/shielding.

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• I’ve spent hours playing Copperson specifically. Here’s some extra information I gathered!
  • Cards to draft: Nootropics is a must-draft for Skill (yellow) builds. Doppler for Momentum builds. Red Pill for that sweet, sweet card draw – and remember, mods that double incoming healing have a chance to generate! Draft ‘+1 Hit’ or ‘Double’ moves, then pump them with damage boosters like Orbital Bombardment.
  • Mechanics to build into: Momentum+Rewind or Replay can result in some obscene numbers and truly degenerate staying power. There’s a few cards out there that heal based on acquired shield, and a mod that allows 75% shield carry-over – if you get lucky on the draft, you can build Copper as an impenetrable fortress.

Always a safe bet, Banshee relies heavily on the Charge mechanic (temporary boost to damage + a card-specific effect) and two-card combos to force damage through for early kills. In my opinion, Banshee is the challenger with the simplest but most effective combos – though her moves need to reliably execute to really scale, she counters by being the best at fighting through disruption.

A number of Banshee’s Hacks deal with Charging attacks, and one of her available Replacement Hacks is an across-the-board Melee (red) replacement which can be used at the last minute to outplay counters to a Skill-heavy setup. She’s probably got a higher skill ceiling than I realize – in my limited opinion, her Ranged presence is a bit secondary, mostly consisting of enablers and utilities.

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Generally speaking, Banshee makes a fine option for beginners – Charge is really easy to understand and utilize, and she comes with enough early-game gas to close out most games. If you want to emulate the Sligh/RDW archetype in Magic and Hearthstone, or you just like ending matches turn three, Banshee might be your pick of choice.

Like the idea of taking your opponent from 80 to 0 with one move? Think gas masks are high fashion? Dr. Ratz is easily the combo king of Megapop’s turn-based fighting game. Simple and complex, Ratz’s goal is to skirmish while inflicting stacks of his signature Infect condition (each stack increases damage inflicted by 5% additively), slowly conditioning his opponent into a state of complacency before finishing them with effects that scale additional damage based off said stacks of Infect. The master of debuffs in both the Hacking and Execution stages, Ratz can be wildly unpredictable but inevitable – it is impossible to tank against Ratz forever, and he demands an aggressive answer.

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This is the character that I’ve mastered the least, but over the next few days (weeks) I will hone my technique with him. I can tell that he has two(ish) base strategies – aggro and tempo – but I have a lot to learn about this half-mad half-rat half-man. He is surprisingly easy to pilot at first, and much of the time his deck plays itself, but building the right balance of enabler, manipulation, and finisher seems to be the primary challenge, and he’s susceptible to early-game blowouts by Banshee or simply bad luck of the draw while drafting.

If you’re looking for a character with a high skill ceiling and truly ludicrous damage numbers with the right setup, the Doctor will scratch your itch. Just… wear your haz-mat suit.

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN FIGHT?

Haxity has overperformed my expectations in every way.

I went in expecting a solid turn-based beat-em-up, but this game floored me with its strategic complexity and sheer depth of customization and generation. I’ve been recommending the game to friends, and hopefully we’ll have a bit of a league going soon. With a game balance between the characters that reminds me of Starcraft and a truly fantastic deck building system, I can confidently say this is the best deck builder I’ve ever played, and maybe one of my favorite card games period.

This is Sun, signing out.

Check Out the Haxity Steam Early Access Gameplay Trailer:

Haxity is available for PC via Steam Early Access. You can also join the Haxity community on Discord.

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