Game Jams: Shroom and Gloom
Game Jams are a beautiful thing. Sprouting from nothing, in a short (and hopefully crunch-free) amount of time, ingenuity and creativity flow freely into bite-sized chunks of gaming goodness. Shroom and Gloom is one such game, sprouting from the 2021 - 7 Day FPS game jam and developed by Team Lazerbeam in just 16 days. It takes you on a mysterious, fungal filled journey through the squishy depths of some unknown but assuredly damp location, ultimately resulting in a fantastic and engaging experience.
Shroom and Gloom opens up in a dark, trippy colorized flesh-like tunnel. You're given some cards and left to your own devices. It's with these cards that you'll traverse this spongy moisterous cavern. It’s also with these cards that you'll fight for your life. The game is a card-based dungeon crawler, and does the genre so much justice you'll believe this is a fully-developed and polished-priced game.
While you're traversing in-between fights, you'll be using your cards to unlock chests, creating a campfire, or even digging for treasure (cards). Each card has a use limit before it's gone for good, and most have a cost to use so you can't throw every card to work at any given pitstop. Is it more worth it to heal or to maybe find a new, stronger card to play? It's moments like these that keep the strategy of the card game alive throughout, and not just limited to its battles.
To prepare you for how a battle might go, I'd leave you with this brief description of a typical fight: Dark Souls: The Card Game. By that I mean to say every action can carry a very real consequence. Some battles are easy and you just plow right through. Some require serious thought before deciding the order of play with your hand. Be prepared to die a lot.
Shroom and Gloom, like the Souls-like genre, does not hold your hand. It plops you down and lets you know you can exist and play within its world. But for you to come out of it the other end, you're going to have to put in some serious work. That is not to say the game is unforgiving, or too difficult even. You just have to be on your toes and let the game teach you how it's played by dying a few (or more) times.
Within a run, you'll be granted your first hand of cards. Additionally, you can spend a key on a chest, a door, or spare it and save it for later. From that opening refuge, you'll be flung into your first fight - a modest one. Either through design or pure happenstance though, with each subsequent playthrough, you'll discover more and more enemy types. With that, even deeper game tactics as well. For instance, some fungi may buff or shield surrounding fungi, some may negate any and all effects (attacks included) to it for a number of turns. Without giving too much away, you're going to think you have it all figured out, and then you absolutely will not.
This is all to say, Shroom and Gloom is a game worth playing. This game jam title put together in such a short amount of time looks gorgeous and plays fantastically. With continuous updates, Team Lazerbeam has even opened the door on a possible full release one fateful day down the line. But until then, support this small dev and enjoy their beautiful little fungus baby.
Written by Matthew Wright