This article was originally published in Issue 5 of the ICG Zine, July 2024. It was reformatted in December 2025, but has not been edited further.

Roguelite deck builders feel like a dime a dozen over the past few years. One of the few that’s managed to hold my attention throughout its early access has been Deepest Chamber: Resurrection, a blend of retro-dungeon crawler aesthetics, RPG party building, and the traditional roguelite deck builder (henceforth referred to as “RLDB”) tropes of progressive card unlocks, card modification, and run by-run deck building.

DC:R takes it a step further by tying card sets to individual character classes, with two to three characters forming a deck. RPG mechanics are complete with an inventory and equipment system, though this can often feel more like a lackluster formality than a meaningful addition; a hat that gives a small health bonus feels much less interesting than a staff that increases your card draw. That said, the character system does ultimately set the game apart from its brethren.

The same party composition can play entirely differently from run to run, and with a cast of six characters, the variance in playthroughs expands exponentially. This truly shines when coupled with the game’s distinct “boost” mechanic, playing a card “boosts” the ones adjacent to it in your hand, magnifying its power and granting additional effects.

Deceptively simple, it instantly changes the way one normally approaches the flow of decision making in card games. It also leads to some truly broken combinations, but this is more a positive than a negative; drowning a boss in a never-ending stream of low-damage fireballs or playing a single card for half their health truly allow the game’s systems to shine.

The art is also some of my favorite in recent RPG-based games, feeling almost more like retro-rpg art as ephemera more than an attempt to create a new IP. This is, to be clear, a good thing. Enemies and bosses are tropey but well executed, with a sense of lower resolution, stylized semi realism that leaves it feeling like a hidden PS3 dungeon crawling gem. Character and card art is beautifully rendered, easily worthy of any CCG on the market right now.

It’s absolutely a flawed game, but these are outshined by its quality and the chances it takes. Its boost system is engaging and blending characters into new decks is consistently fun, leaving me wondering about future combos even as I’m starting a new run. In a genre that seems consistently content to simply copy its betters, Deepest Chamber: Resurrection takes some very large risks with the formula that serve to illuminate it in the dimly lit, loot filled corridors of roguelite deck builders like a shining orb that’s about to let me summon a totally rad skeleton army for like 300 damage.