Game: Shroom and Gloom
Developer: Team Lazerbeam
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Genre: First-Person Roguelike Double-Deckbuilder
Released: September 10, 2026 — Early Access
Platform: PC (Windows & macOS)
Price: $14.99
Content: 2 pathways · ~300 cards each
EA Window: 12–24 months
Steam Deck: Unsupported (see below)
📋 This Is Early Access — and Team Lazerbeam Are Clear About It
Shroom and Gloom launched into Early Access today, with a planned window of 12 to 24 months. Currently: two distinct pathways with unique characters, roughly 300 explore and combat cards per pathway, plus quests, synergies and unlocks.
Still to come: a third pathway, new character classes, and additional quests and challenges across all pathways. Team Lazerbeam say the price won’t change between Early Access and 1.0 — so buying now costs no more than waiting.
$14.99Price
2Decks at Once
600Cards Total
14Achievements
13GBInstall
🍄 Know this first: there is no block button. Shroom and Gloom removes defensive cards entirely. You cannot prevent damage — you can only kill things fast enough to eat them and heal. That one decision reshapes everything about how you build a deck, and it’s the reason this doesn’t feel like another Slay the Spire.
⚖️ Less Blocking, More Eating
In almost every deckbuilder since Slay the Spire, block is half the game. Every turn is a calculation: attack, or defend? Do I take this hit or spend the energy to stop it?
Shroom and Gloom deletes that entirely. There is no way to prevent incoming damage. What there is instead: season, skewer and roast your enemies, then eat them to restore health. Throw roasted foes in a pot and cook soups that change the run.
A player summarised the consequence precisely: “the lack of any ability to prevent damage before it hits you forces the player to change the way they think about building their deck.”
You can’t turtle. You can’t stall. Every fight is a race between your damage output and your health bar, and your reward for winning quickly is literally eating the problem. It’s a genuinely radical change to a formula that’s had a lot of imitators and very few reinventions.
Mobs of monstrous mushrooms, mountains of mega-combos
“Unlocked CHEF and spent 20 minutes after the final boss died watching triggers happen. 10/10 would CHEF again.”
Shroom and Gloom is a first-person roguelike double-deckbuilder from Team Lazerbeam, published by Devolver Digital. It entered Early Access today at $14.99 and is already sitting at Very Positive across 334 reviews, with concurrent players peaking at launch.
Our verdict: Shroom & Gloom nails the roguelike deckbuilder formula with genuinely creative combo systems and atmospheric first-person exploration that keeps you coming back. It is also, by some distance, the best-looking card game we’ve seen this year.
Two Decks, Doing Different Jobs
🃏 The Combat Deck and the Explore Deck
The other structural idea, and the one the game is named for.
Your combat deck does what you’d expect — it’s what you fight with. Your explore deck is separate, and it handles navigating dungeons, modifying your cards, and unlocking new weapons and abilities.
Crucially, exploring costs turns, and turns cost health. Spend several turns upgrading a card and you’ll arrive at the next fight weaker than you left the last one. One player described learning the rhythm as working out “that you need to spend multiple turns exploring to upgrade cards until the health penalty for another turn isn’t worth it.”
That’s a genuine, recurring decision with teeth — and it pairs beautifully with the no-block rule, because both systems are pushing you to take risks with a health bar you can only refill by killing things.
Card growth is effectively unbounded. You can grow humble starting cards into overpowered attacks, or modify rare cards into what Team Lazerbeam cheerfully call “game-breaking super-weapons.” And you can cut base cards from your deck — by licking a frog, obviously.
⚔️ Combat Deck
Hack, slash and roast your way through the fungal dungeons.
🗺️ Explore Deck
Navigate, modify cards, unlock weapons and abilities — at the cost of health.
🍲 Eat & Cook
Season, skewer, roast and eat foes to heal. Pot them up for run-changing soups.
📈 Infinite Growth
Grow starter cards into monsters, or modify rares into something genuinely broken.
The Art Is Doing Enormous Work
Hand-drawn characters and animations set against dozens of 3D spaces, viewed in first person. Every single review we read mentions it, usually first, usually in capitals. “Eye candy.” “Chef’s kiss.” “Frikkin gorgeous.” One player said the visuals hook you initially and then the gameplay turns out to be there too — which is the right order of discovery for a game that looks like this.
It also gives the game something most deckbuilders struggle with: a sense of place. Because you’re moving through dungeons in first person rather than tapping nodes on a map, the fungal world has physical presence. That’s the “atmospheric first-person exploration” half of the pitch, and it’s why the comparisons reach for Inscryption alongside Slay the Spire.
One consistent note: card art readability needs work. More than one player flagged that the style, gorgeous as it is, can make cards hard to parse at a glance. In a game where you’re managing two decks of several hundred cards, that’s a real usability cost, and an easy thing to iterate on during Early Access.
The Missing Piece Is the World Itself
📖 No Story, No Names, No Reason
This is the most substantive criticism of the game and it was argued carefully enough to deserve repeating in full.
Shroom and Gloom has no story and no stated reason why you’re down there. The protagonist has no personality. And — the detail that lands hardest — the mobs and bosses don’t even have designated names.
The reviewer making the case was emphatic that this isn’t a lack of personality; the art has personality in abundance. It’s a lack of identity. As they put it: giving the world, its creatures and the protagonist some actual identity “could go a long way toward turning this from a damn good game into a truly unforgettable one.”
We’d agree, and we’d add that this is the perfect thing to raise now. Team Lazerbeam have 12 to 24 months of Early Access ahead, they’ve explicitly built their development around community feedback, and naming your bosses is a considerably smaller lift than building a third pathway.
Worth being clear: this doesn’t stop the game being excellent. Plenty of great roguelikes run on pure mechanics. But when everything else is this distinctive, an anonymous world is the one thing holding it back from being memorable rather than merely brilliant.
The Steam Deck Situation
🎮 Marked “Unsupported.” Players Say It Runs Fine.
A genuinely useful discrepancy. Steam lists Shroom and Gloom as Unsupported on Steam Deck — but multiple players report playing it on Deck without encountering any issues at all.
One noted that the developers had been working with a Deck during development specifically to make that the case, which would explain the gap between the official rating and the actual experience.
The real limitation appears to be controller support, which isn’t listed and which players are asking for. On a Deck you’ll be using the trackpads and gyro as a mouse — workable for a turn-based card game, but not ideal.
⚠️ Treat this as encouraging rather than guaranteed. Unsupported means Valve haven’t verified it, and your experience may differ. But if you’d written it off for handheld, it’s worth another look — and proper controller support would change the picture entirely.
Things to Know Going In
📋 Setting Expectations
• $14.99, and Team Lazerbeam say the price won’t rise when it leaves Early Access
• Very Positive across 334 reviews on launch day, with concurrents peaking as we write. A genuinely strong opening
• It’s Early Access and it shows. Players report graphical bugs, balance that needs tweaking, and — memorably — that “frogs are pretty op”
• It doesn’t hold your hand. The game drops you in and lets you work things out. Several players found that refreshing; one only worked out how unlocks functioned through genre familiarity. Expect to lose a couple of runs learning
• Unlock pace feels slow to some — worth knowing if steady progression is what keeps you playing
• Music is the weakest element. One player specifically wished for something more memorable, and it’s the only part of the presentation nobody raves about
• No controller support currently, and English and Simplified Chinese are the only supported languages
• There’s a free demo, and one player logged over 100 hours in the demo and beta before launch — which tells you plenty
• Runs on modest hardware: a GTX 960 minimum, 13 GB install, and there’s a macOS build
• Comparisons players reach for: Slay the Spire, Inscryption, and one suggesting it has Binding of Isaac potential
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
| The Good |
The Bad |
The Ugly |
| No Block Button, and It Changes EverythingRemoving damage prevention entirely forces a complete rethink of deckbuilding. You can’t turtle or stall — every fight is a race between your output and your health bar, and healing means killing fast enough to eat what you killed. A real reinvention in a genre full of imitators. |
Card Art ReadabilityThe style is gorgeous and occasionally hard to parse at a glance. Across two decks and several hundred cards, that’s a genuine usability cost — and an easy Early Access fix. |
An Anonymous WorldNo story, no stated reason you’re down there, no personality for the protagonist — and the mobs and bosses don’t even have names. The art has character in abundance; the world has no identity. It’s the one thing keeping this from unforgettable. |
| The Explore Deck Has Real TeethA second deck for navigation, card modification and unlocks — where every turn spent exploring costs health. It pairs perfectly with the no-block rule, pushing you to gamble with a resource you can only refill by winning fights. |
Forgettable MusicThe only part of the presentation nobody raves about. In a game where the art draws this much praise, a soundtrack that doesn’t match is a noticeable gap. |
Early Access Bugs and BalanceGraphical bugs, balance that needs tuning, and one player’s blunt summary: “so many bugs but so addictive.” Expected at this stage and openly acknowledged, but it’s what you’re buying into today. |
| Genuinely GorgeousHand-drawn art and animation across dozens of 3D spaces, in first person. Every review mentions it, usually first and usually in capitals — and moving through the dungeons physically gives it a sense of place most deckbuilders never achieve. |
Slow Unlock PaceSeveral players found progression sluggish, and one only worked out how unlocks functioned through genre familiarity rather than in-game explanation. The lack of handholding is mostly a virtue; here it tips over. |
No Controller SupportAnd it’s listed Unsupported on Steam Deck despite players reporting it works fine. A turn-based card game is a natural handheld fit — this is the gap most worth closing. |
| Fifteen Dollars, and the Price Won’t RiseTwo pathways, around 300 cards each, with a third pathway and new classes still to come — and Team Lazerbeam have committed to holding the price through 1.0. Buying now genuinely costs nothing extra. |
English and Simplified Chinese OnlyTwo supported languages for a text-heavy card game with several hundred cards to read. Limiting for a title with this much international appeal. |
It Won’t Explain ItselfThe game drops you in with no tutorial scaffolding. Refreshing for veterans, genuinely opaque for newcomers — expect to lose runs learning rules nobody told you. |
The Verdict
Shroom and Gloom is the rarest thing in a crowded genre: a deckbuilder that changed something fundamental and got it right. Deleting block isn’t a tweak, it’s a structural rewrite — and pairing it with an explore deck that charges you health for every upgrade turn creates a run where you are permanently, deliberately overextended. You survive by being aggressive enough to eat what’s trying to kill you. That’s a complete loop and it’s genuinely new.
Everything around it is in excellent shape too. The hand-drawn art is the best-looking presentation we’ve seen on a card game this year, the first-person movement gives the world real physical presence, and players are reporting a level of technical polish unusual for an Early Access launch. Very Positive across 334 reviews on day one, with concurrents still climbing, is not an accident.
The gap is identity. A gorgeous world with no story, no context and bosses without names is the one thing separating this from something people will still be talking about in five years — and with 12 to 24 months of Early Access ahead and a developer who has built their whole process around community feedback, now is exactly the right moment to say so.
The honest read: buy it. Fifteen dollars, the price won’t go up, and there’s a free demo if you want to check first. Accept that it’s Early Access — there are bugs, the balance isn’t settled, and frogs are apparently overpowered — but the foundation underneath is excellent and the team are clearly listening.
If you’ve been waiting for a deckbuilder that isn’t just Slay the Spire with a new coat of paint, this is it. Go and eat some mushrooms.
For more game reviews, check out our full reviews section.
Score Breakdown
Art & Visual Design9.5/10
Core Mechanics (Double-Deck)9.0/10
Combat Design (No Block)9.0/10
Card Variety & Depth9.0/10
Technical Polish at Launch8.0/10
Progression & Unlocks7.0/10
Card Art Readability6.0/10
Controller & Deck Support4.0/10
Narrative & World Identity3.5/10
Final Score — Early Access
8.5/10
Shroom and Gloom — Team Lazerbeam
Deleted the block button and built something new in the space
Related
