Quick Review: Recesses

You ever hear kids giving each other philosophy classes in the schoolyard? Nah, I usually just see them play children’s card games.

The start of an epic card game journey.

A creation of Sanjuny released on August 23rd, 2024, Recesses is a roguelite card game. Your character is a fifth grader, and your best friend Clair teaches you about this new awesome card game called Battaliens. Later, she goes missing, and everything points to this disappearance being linked to the game. You set out to investigate, challenging kids at recess in growing order of grade. One student per day, all week. Maybe, by Friday, you’ll have enough information to find Clair?

I should explain Battaliens, then; there's a lot.

Hey, you can even save up to 8 different decks! Good to
set up strategies against specific opponents.

-Battaliens are split into four types: Cute, Weird, Gross and Scary. Each type has one other type it's generally strong against, and a third it's generally weak against.

-Each Battalien has a value on the top right that counts as both its HP and attack power. When a round is played, both monsters attack at the same time, each deducting their attack from the other’s HP. A monster whose HP hits 0 as a result of battle gets sucked into a black hole, while a survivor returns to the shapeship (the deck) with its new, post-fight HP/attack.

All my remaining monsters have strengths and weaknesses.
Just hope you're lucky

-Most monsters have strengths and weaknesses, where their base attack/HP will be modified depending on the type of the creature they’re fighting. As an example, “Cute +1” means your card gains 1 HP/attack if it fights a cute creature. A monster doesn’t die if its HP reaches 0 from strengths/weaknesses/effects alone. (The cap for HP/attack is 9.) Most monsters also have a special ability that triggers at specific moments (at the start of a turn, when first played, when it wins a battle, or when it loses).

-Both players' “spaceships” can hold 8 cards. The player that sends all cards from the opponent’s spaceship to the black hole wins. (In Story Mode, a tie is considered a loss.)

-If both cards have effects that activate at the same time, a coin is tossed to figure out who goes first. Luck can screw you over here. You do not know which cards your opponent uses until they use them – which can make picking random targets a double-edged sword.

That’s the basics. You’ll figure it out as you play.

Beat that other kid up? Nah. When the core of the game is
about a competition (cards, monsters, etc.), I only desire to
punch those who deserve it. I call it the "Lysandre Rule".

The further in you go, the harder the enemies become. They
even have their own Egyptian God-level cards...

The story's format is a roguelite. Each day, you’ll battle another student. No matter the outcome of the duel, you get a booster pack with 8 extra cards, so you can build your “deck” from there. Opponents get tougher every day, so you’ll probably lose at some point – in which case, you start over on the next Monday. But! You later get access to tools that make the week more tolerable. The first is a friggin’ time machine (…don’t question it) that lets you skip to the day of the last opponent you’ve beaten. Which means that you’ll have to beat them again before accessing the next opponent, sure, but it helps. More stuff comes up over time. Perhaps more intriguing are this game’s bosses and their “Elder God” Battaliens…

I swear these fifth graders talk like university
philosophy students.

No, wait, even MORE intriguing is how all the opponents you beat have some spooky, borderline philosophical talk about life, the universe, and everything. Stuff no kids should be talking about, but apparently, there’s just something about Battaliens that opens their minds. Ehhhh, don’t question it.

The game started out with a lot of goodwill on my end; the concept was interesting, and the game's simple look hid its depth, which I discovered the longer I played. The story is engaging and the art style deliberately imitates the look of stuff drawn by elementary school kids. Even the difficulty feels fair for the first few opponents, but then the game takes a big swerve into Ultra Hard territory.

This opponent has TWO Elder Gods. And she's goddamn
unbeatable unless you literally cheese the battle by using
cards that specifically counter her big two. I HATED this fight.

You can hardly plan ahead due to the randomness aspect and the fact that even coin tosses can screw you over if you’re not lucky. Later opponents have downright unfair cards, and are so hard to beat they turn the game into an utter slog. Your only option is to tailor your spaceship to fight specifically what you know you’ll encounter (final opponents have randomized decks, aside from specific cards they always carry), and hope you'll be lucky with card interactions. For a game with so much strategy, that so much of it still boiled down to luck, and not enough to skill to my liking.

I think it says a lot that, after beating the game's final story
boss (not the girl here), I found out there were higher
difficulty levels and I instantly went, "Nope!"

You might still enjoy this one if you like card games and feel like trying to beat its roguelite format – all I can say is, good luck. There's even extra difficulty settings if you can beat the story a fist time.

Recesses is available on Steam for 4.99$ USD.