Floppy Knights is a top-down tactical game with a mix of CCG (Card Collecting Game) by Rose City Games. While you would expect the gameplay to be similar to Fire Emblem or even Final Fantasy Tactics, the twist here is that Floppy Knights adds an element of cards. Much like how the popular NFT game Axie Infinity implemented its battle system. In this Floppy Knights review, let’s look at the game’s strengths and weaknesses. Does it fall short of my expectations? Is it even fun to play? Let’s quickly dive into the review.
I was lucky enough to become one of the early adopters of Rose City Games. They’re a relatively small independent team based in Portland that always seems to be involved in creative, unique, and challenging games, from Cat Lady to Garden Story. And I suspected from the beginning that Floppy Knights was something special, even for them. It is a tactical story of a young inventor named Phoebe. Although she lives in a magical world of goblins and spells, she is a bit of a rebel. She uses magic for a different purpose: scientific discovery! This leads to her robotic arm/ally Carlton and the titular Floppy Knights, complex light holograms created from floppy disks. The game follows her misadventures through this world, full of fantasy, humor, and wonder. Keep reading this Floppy Knights review to find out why this is one of the best tactical adventures I’ve played in a long time.
Floppy Knights Story
Phoebe is a clever inventor and the main character of Floppy Knights. She has invented an army of little projections that can battle, move, and interact with the world around them. She has decided to use this invention to help her take care of some freelance jobs around town and hopes to help her win the science tournament soon.
Floppy Knights Gameplay
This strong female lead character has a sidekick, a robotic arm named Carlton, who helps her upgrade, launch, and use her Floppy Knights to battle against all manner of evil. These two heroes are ready to take on the whole world if it means getting a paycheck.
Playing the game is a mix of the best parts of deckbuilding games like Slay the Spire, Roguebook, and others in the genre. Players choose a commander, similar to the commanders in EDH or Commander in Magic: the Gathering. If the deck commander dies, players lose and must try again.
To start, you get one unit that will act as the leader. Once the leader dies, you would lose the level. Each Floppy Knight has individual stats like HP (Hit Points), ATK (Attack), SPD (Speed), and RNG (Random Number Generator). The HP is the total health that your character has, while the attack is the amount of damage it can do to a singular enemy. The SPD affects how many tiles your character can move to, and RNG determines their attack range. You can identify your leader if the unit has a crown icon on top of the HP.
Each turn, the commander/the leader will generate a special card (tied to them) which you can use. Accompanied by the particular card, you draw five cards from your deck, which you can use to move, buff, or command units to attack enemies. You have limited energy per turn, and each card use has a particular energy consumption, giving players more obstacles to overcome as you can not play every card on your turn. Each unit also has one free attack per turn, but additional attacks that use cards will use up energy, so be wary. To add even more challenge, unused cards go to the bin at the end of the turn.
Every level has different objectives, and completing all of them grants you more gold to expand your deck or buy powerful cards. Building your deck is the most crucial component in the game, as this determines what cards you will get and what moves you’ll be able to make throughout the whole level. Make sure that most of your cards synergize well with one another. The best cards in the game allow you to restore energy to ensure that you’ll have enough to make more moves throughout your turn. Lastly, terrain bonuses depend on the type of card you’re playing. Units that receive rewards usually include additional armor that takes the place of your hitpoints whenever you take damage.
The Brains Behind the Game
The artistic mind created this game behind Dicey Dungeons, which is a game that I adored the aesthetics for. So it’s probably no surprise that I jumped on Floppy Knight‘s demo as soon as it was available. I have been waiting a long time for this game to come out, and I am both honored and very excited to be able to review it for LadiesGamers.
And what a game it turned out to be. This blend of turn-based tactics with card slinging is something I didn’t even know I wanted until I played the demo. It makes for an exciting kind of RNG to this frustrating, difficult, and fun game. It’s easy to tell that this game was lovingly rendered by fans of both genres with beautiful characters and a lively playstyle, and I enjoyed just about every minute of this game.
Floppy Knights Sound and Visuals Design
The sound design fits the game’s overall theme, which is light and jumpy. Everything fits together nicely and tightly, from the poppy sound of the menu and the sound effects to the background music.
As for the graphics, it’s not something that will blow you away, but you learn to appreciate the game for what it is, a simple, jolly, and cartoony art style that will surely please your eyes. The character designs look unique, and even some of the Floppy Knights look cool, in my opinion, especially the monster knights. There are also multiple-level designs based on the area you’re exploring.
Will Floppy Knights Be Able to Captivate Players?
While the gameplay and the core mechanics are all polished, something about the game doesn’t draw me to invest more hours into it. The main hindrance was the card system’s limitation for a strategic game. There are times wherein you have to rely on the RNG Gods to give you a sound card, but you get a bad one and lose the entire level. Unlike Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea, you can not out-level enemies in Floppy Knights. The only way to pass classes is by understanding the game and having multiple backup plans if the card you want does not appear.
Regardless of that, this game is for you, for some people who are into strategic games with a hint of RNG like TFT (League of Legend‘s chess game). It’s still a fun and unique game, although expect a steep learning curve once you decide to grab the game.
Problems in Floppy Town
Floppy Knights had a few issues that disappointed me while playing the entire game. I wanted to be able to tweak and tailor my deck to the card, but for the plant and monster decks, it looks like there are an awful lot of cards you can’t remove from your balcony. I understand why there are so many locked movement cards; you need to be able to move your Floppy Knights around the board to even dream of winning. But it would be nice to be able to replace those movement cards with better movement cards, at least.
As someone who has played Magic: the Gathering for decades, I understand how easy it can be to accidentally hobble yourself by forgetting to include something in your deck. But forcing players to use five or six-movement cards isn’t a way to fix that. Like there is no rule in EDH forcing players to have a certain amount of each color mana, Floppy Knights shouldn’t lock so many cards to prevent the player from accidentally preventing themselves from winning.
Floppy Knights some bugs
There is a lot of wasted time in this game; there does not seem to be a way to fast forward through the enemy turn. Also, when you are guaranteed a win because there are no enemies left on the board, it doesn’t always give you the win. This is something that I would have added, especially since this game is complex enough that you will be playing the same fights repeatedly.
However, I also ran into a couple of bugs while playing Floppy Knights. The first bug that locked the game for me occurred when losing a battle.
Whenever I was sure I would lose a battle, I would go into the menu to hit the “retry” button. If I lost the game while in the menu, it would hard lock, making me force quit the game and boot it back up to try again. It didn’t happen often, but it was frustrating every time I lost while on the menu.
Verdict
That Floppy Knights is a good game with a solid foundation for its deckbuilding mechanics, and everything ties nicely with each other. From the joyful graphics to the melodic sound design and its fast gameplay. It’s not a revolutionizing game, but it’s still a solid game nonetheless. Floppy Knights are available now on Steam and Xbox.
