Shroom and Gloom gets its first patch in Early Access

Some deckbuilders ask you to defeat monsters. Shroom and Gloom asks you to defeat them, cook them, eat them and then wonder why you ever thought this was a normal card game. The bizarre roguelike from Team Lazerbeam and Devolver Digital has just entered Early Access on PC, throwing players into a surreal fungal nightmare where cards, exploration and turn-based combat collide. And it hasn't taken long for the developers to start tinkering with the recipe: the game's first big post-launch patch has already arrived.

Two decks, one very strange adventure

Shroom and Gloom features an unusual twist on the traditional deckbuilding formula. It offers an interesting alternative to recent deckbuiliding games like Slay the Spire 2. Instead of managing a single collection of cards, players have two decks to juggle. Your combat deck is used when things inevitably get hostile. Cards let you attack enemies, apply effects and create combinations capable of turning apparently harmless encounters into increasingly ridiculous battles. Then there's the exploration deck, which takes over when you're wandering through the game's strange environments. Cards can help you dig, open paths and interact with the world, with stamina forcing you to think carefully about how much exploring you can actually afford. Naturally, defeating enemies isn't necessarily the end of the story. Some can become food, allowing you to recover health and adding yet another deliciously weird layer to the game's combat loop.

Early Access currently offers five playable characters, each with their own starting combat and exploration decks and a unique Foresight card. The roster includes Paperboy, Janitor, Lunchlady, Activist and Concerned Parent, which might be one of the strangest collections of roguelike protagonists we've seen in a while. There are also hundreds of cards to discover, alongside quests, enemies, upgrades and synergies designed to encourage repeated runs. The game's different pathways provide their own selection of cards and encounters, giving players plenty of room to experiment with different builds. And considering this is an Early Access game, this is only the beginning.

Shroom and Gloom wastes no time

The game may have only just launched, but Team Lazerbeam has already released its first substantial update. The 0.6.24 patch focuses on bug fixes, balance changes and some adjustments based on those first days of player feedback. A handful of achievement bugs have been squashed, including problems affecting Gloom Slayer and Would You Love Me If I Were a Worm. Loading times have also been improved, while a collection of fixes addresses crashes, sound problems, card interactions, and issues with the deck viewer and card casting.

The update also makes some welcome gameplay adjustments. Three-door Explore rooms have received layout tweaks, the Forgotten Path now has more potential torch spawn locations, and Veterans can properly retain lodged cards when encountering them again. Several food and data items have also been fixed so their permanent copies correctly keep the Endless property.

Naturally, this is only the beginning for a game still finding its feet in Early Access. The developers have already teased the next update, which is set to include balance changes for the Janitor, alongside a fix for the auto-walking issue.

Early Access is only the beginning

Early Access launch is intended to be a long-term development period for Shroom and Gloom rather than a quick stop on the road to version 1.0. The developers expect the game to remain in Early Access for 12 to 24 months, during which they plan to add more content and continue refining the experience. That includes additional pathways, characters, quests and challenges, with player feedback expected to play an important role in deciding where the game goes next. It's an appropriately chaotic approach for a game that already combines deckbuilding, first-person exploration, roguelike progression and turn-based combat into one peculiar package.

If you've been looking for a card game that feels like someone threw a deckbuilder, a dungeon crawler and a particularly questionable mushroom cookbook into a blender, this could be the game for you. To purchase your copy of Shroom and Gloom at the cheapest price and try the game on Early Access, all you need to do is visit our comparator.