You can find a roguelike deck-builder for just about anything at this point, which is great for fans of the genre. A lot of them tend to stick to the more tried-and-trusted methodology of Slay the Spire, and as much fun as I’ve had with that game, I’ve started to prefer the ones that are doing something meaningfully different, like Mini Tank Mayhem.
Mini Tank Mayhem is a tower defence game where you have set spots you can plonk your tanks, and each tank can do something different. Some have better fire rates, some have status effects to give out, and some even buff their friends. It’s a fairly simple concept, but it gets a lot more interesting the more you play it, because more and more strategies unlock.
That’s mostly because there are not only three different factions to play as, each of which has a general core ethos, but also multiple commanders within them, each of which has a slightly different starting deck and ability. It’s almost akin to how Advance Wars handles its Commanders, if you’re old enough to have played that. It’s fun, basically, and it means that you can start to try to hone in on your specific strategy immediately.
While some of these are just things like “do a lot of fire damage,” there are plenty which are interested in trying to destroy your own tanks for profit, or discard cards to make new ones. It’s a great time trying to lean into different strategies, and while not all of them are as successful consistently, the game does a good job of making them all feel pretty viable as runs go on.
While the build crafting is good, the actual moment-to-moment gameplay is very familiar. You add new cards into your deck when you win, you get artifacts that can alter how some units perform, and you can remove cards at rest spots. You have to choose where you move as you finish levels, with options like mystery event, rest spot, battle, big battle, and so on being available. It’s not doing anything especially new on that front.
The actual fights aren’t all that revolutionary either. You can do elemental and physical damage, and different enemies are better against one than the other. You also get flying enemies who ignore the roads, and have to be able to deal with all of the various threats. The most interesting thing is when there are special spaces to put units in, which might give you energy for putting tanks there, or even duplicate your cards and make them cheaper.
