Zoeti Review Summary

Engaging and strategic gameplay: The gameplay is described as engaging, enjoyable, and strategically deep. Players appreciate the balance between strategy and luck, as well as the variety of strategic options available.

Unique and varied character abilities: The game offers a variety of characters, each with unique abilities and playstyles. This diversity encourages players to experiment with different strategies and builds.

Vibrant and appealing art style: The game features a vibrant and charming art style that is often compared to high-quality animated cartoons. Many players appreciate the colorful and hand-drawn 2D graphics, which add a unique visual appeal to the game.

Unique poker-based combat system: The game introduces a unique combat system that blends poker-style card combos with traditional roguelike deckbuilding. This mechanic is praised for its originality and strategic depth.

Interesting story and worldbuilding: The game features an interesting story and worldbuilding, which adds depth to the gameplay experience. Players appreciate the narrative and the use of myths and legends.

Poor story and dialogue: The storyline and character dialogues are frequently described as nonsensical, poorly written, and boring. Many players find the narrative confusing and unengaging, leading to a lack of interest in the game's plot.

Numerous bugs and crashes: The game is plagued with numerous bugs, including crashes during boss fights and progress loss. These issues significantly hinder the gameplay experience and frustrate players.

Unintuitive UI: The user interface is widely criticized for being unintuitive and frustrating. Players report that UI elements do not behave as expected, making the game difficult to navigate and enjoy.

Unbalanced gameplay: The game suffers from significant balance issues, with characters and classes being unbalanced. Players report that the difficulty spikes and overall gameplay feel poorly balanced.

Slow progression and loading times: Players report that the progression in the game is too slow and the loading times between scenes are excessively long. This leads to a frustrating and tedious gaming experience.

Poker mechanics in card battles: The game introduces a unique twist to card battles by incorporating poker mechanics. Players need to form poker hands to deal damage and activate skills, which adds a layer of strategy beyond simple card accumulation.

Combat system and mechanics: The combat system is turn-based and revolves around using poker-style card combinations to deal damage and activate skills. The core strategy involves increasing hand size and draw chances to form better poker hands.

Roguelike deckbuilding elements: The game features traditional roguelike deckbuilding mechanics, where players advance through encounters, optimize decisions, and improve their deck to survive the classic 'one more turn' cycle.

Character variety and synergy: The game offers a variety of playable characters, each with unique abilities. Players need to equip skills that synergize well with different poker hands to maximize effectiveness in combat.

Difficulty and enemy mechanics: The game features different difficulty levels and enemy mechanics that can be challenging. Some enemies have mechanics like evasion and stacking, which can make combat difficult.

Frequent game crashes: The game often crashes to desktop or experiences game-ending bugs, significantly disrupting gameplay.

Bugs affecting gameplay: Various bugs, including issues with buffs not working as intended and occasional game-freezing bugs, detract from the overall experience.

Long loading times: Players report slow and frequent loading screens between scenes, causing delays and affecting the gaming experience.

Steam Deck compatibility issues: There are specific issues related to playing the game on Steam Deck, including resolution and performance problems.

Performance and optimization issues: The game suffers from performance issues, including poor optimization, GPU performance problems, and general instability.

Only recommended at a discount: Many players suggest that the game is only worth purchasing if it is on sale or at a discounted price, indicating that the full price may not be justified.

Recommendations for similar games: Players recommend trying similar games like Aces & Adventures, Cobalt Core, Black Book, Gordian Quest, and Neoverse for a better or different experience.

Recommended with reservations: The game is recommended but with some reservations. Players appreciate the style and strategy but note issues with community size and comfort.

Recommended for specific audiences: The game is still recommended for the right audience, particularly those who enjoy card games and similar genres.

Niche appeal for roguelite fans: The game is recommended mainly for hardcore fans of the roguelite genre. There are better alternatives available like Slay the Spire and Inscryption.

Community fair range: $5.00 - $10.00.

Game completion: 25.0h.

Story completion: 5.0h.

Session length: 1.5h.

Endgame: 20.0h.

The game Zoeti has a slow start and takes time to build up fun, with the late game around stage 3 being where it becomes enjoyable. Players find it fun for a couple of hours before it gets repetitive and boring.

Reported time to anchor: 1h 30m.

Deckbuilding Roguelike Enthusiast: Focuses on trying out different abilities and strategies within the deckbuilding and roguelike framework. Motivation: Enjoyment of deckbuilding and roguelike gameplay loops. Stance: sale.

Story-Driven Escapist: Prefers to engage with the story and lore, possibly skipping gameplay sections to focus on narrative. Motivation: Engagement with the game's story and lore. Stance: deep sale.

Experienced Comparator: Compares new games to their favorite titles and enjoys games that offer a similar or better experience. Motivation: Finding games that meet or exceed the quality of their favorite titles. Stance: sale.

Steam Deck: The analysis of user feedback for Zoeti on the Steam Deck reveals several significant issues impacting the overall experience. Key problems include aspect ratio issues leading to cut-off information, poor controller support requiring additional input methods, frequent crashes during gameplay, long and frequent loading times, and a misleading 'Steam Deck Verified' status. These issues collectively contribute to a subpar user experience, with high severity problems such as aspect ratio issues, controller support, and frequent crashes being the most impactful.

Mentions Humble Choice bundle: Players mentioned the Humble Choice bundle, indicating that the game might have been part of this bundle or that players acquired it through this means.