You can put a lot of strange things in a deckbuilder before the cards themselves start feeling different. Shroom and Gloom gets there quickly. Its hand-drawn dungeon is full of wonderfully unpleasant creatures, its first-person perspective puts you right among them, and eating the opposition is part of the plan.
I love that the grotesque artwork comes with equally strange design choices. Team Lazerbeam could have put mushrooms on a familiar card game and called it a day. Instead, combat, exploration and survival have been given some genuinely interesting ways to feed into one another.
The Steam Early Access release makes a strong first impression. It also remains an unfinished game, which is why these are impressions with a provisional 8.5/10, rather than a verdict on a completed 1.0 release.
There is already plenty worth getting excited about. We just do not need to pretend the development work is finished to say so.
A dungeon you want to look at
The presentation is immediately distinctive. The hand-drawn art gives Shroom and Gloom a grubby, mischievous personality that would be difficult to mistake for anything else. Its creatures are grotesque without losing their charm, and the first-person framing makes the dungeon feel like somewhere you are entering rather than a board you are observing.
That perspective changes the atmosphere around familiar card-game decisions. The artwork is not a decorative frame sitting politely behind the systems. It contributes to the sense that everything here is slightly hungry and probably not pleased to see you.
It is the sort of visual identity that makes screenshots interesting before you know the rules. Fortunately, the rules have personality as well.
There are practical caveats. First-person movement can be uncomfortable for players susceptible to motion sickness, and the unusual interface will not suit everybody. Neither concern cancels out the presentation’s achievements, but both matter when deciding whether this is a dungeon you want to spend time in.
Style can invite you through the door. Comfort still determines whether you stay.
Two decks with something to say
The combat and exploration decks are the main reason Shroom and Gloom feels more original than its genre label suggests. Having cards involved in both parts of the adventure gives the decisions between fights more weight.
Exploration is not merely the gap before the next proper encounter. It has its own tools and choices, with consequences that sit alongside what the combat deck is trying to achieve. The two-deck structure gives the journey a more connected feel.
Alongside those combat and exploration decks, cards can grow and mutate. There is plenty of room to become attached to an idea and see how far it will go.
Eating enemies is another excellent twist. Rather than treating a conventional stack of block cards as the obvious route to survival, the game makes its appetite part of the combat rhythm. It is an idea with mechanical value as well as a good sense of humour.
It is funny, disgusting and useful. That is a much better combination than being weird for the sake of a trailer.
Card mutation and growth add another layer. There is room to develop combinations that become gloriously unreasonable, and the prospect of pushing a promising card further is a convincing reason to keep experimenting.
Deckbuilders thrive on that curiosity: the feeling that an interesting idea might become something much better if you can find the right companion piece. Shroom and Gloom already has a good grasp of it.
A strong start, not a finished verdict
Early Access is an important qualification here. Content breadth, balance and progression are still developing, and a promising foundation does not automatically tell us how the complete game will hold together.
That works both ways. It would be unfair to judge missing future material as though this were a finished release. It would be equally unhelpful to award credit now for improvements or additions that have not arrived.
Would I recommend paying attention to it now rather than waiting for a distant 1.0 verdict? Absolutely. The current ideas are interesting enough to justify that enthusiasm.
Its identity is strong, the two-deck structure has purpose, and its combat finds a clever use for the disgusting things it draws so well. The unfamiliar interface and potential movement discomfort deserve consideration, while the longer-term balance will need another look as development continues.
For now, the provisional 8.5 reflects a very promising Early Access debut. There is imagination here in the systems as well as the artwork.
A deliciously strange dungeon crawler with an appetite of its own—and one worth keeping on the menu.
An inventive, beautifully grotesque deckbuilder whose two-deck structure and appetite for experimentation already make it worth attention. This provisional 8.5/10 reflects its Early Access form, not a verdict on the finished game.
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