In The Bazaar you use various items, weapons and other objects to put together a wide variety of loadouts for fights against AI and human opponents. But the game deprives you of the satisfaction of taking action yourself: the arguments happen automatically. But this is exactly where the appeal of the game lies, the “one more round” spiral of addiction, the immense satisfaction when a build really works the way you want it to and you sit back and watch the spectacle.
Remembered at first glancestark an. The design is similar to the Blizzard long-running favorite, and just like there, you put together your inventory from cards. However, you don't draw from a lovingly put together deck yourself; instead, your chosen character decides which weapons, skills and items you will potentially be given. This creates a certain thrill that is similar to roguelikes likeremembered. In contrast to Mega Crit's deck builder, you don't just compete against AI-controlled opponents, other players also want to be defeated.
Journey, journey
Every game in The Bazaar starts the same: you first choose a random item. These are weapons, either with effects such as poison or fire. Or you can use items that, for example, slow down your opponents' objects or provide your own cards with bonuses such as more damage or a reduced cooldown. The attacks and other effects of your cards trigger automatically, but only at fixed time intervals.
You also choose your starting ability from random skills. The passive bonuses are essential for your games and have no cooldown. They strengthen your weapons, increase poison damage, reduce cooldowns and turn a rather weak set into a potential winning hand.
After the starting selection, a series of events takes place. The gameplay of The Bazaar is divided into days. The game strings together various events until the big fight against a human opponent takes place at the end. You usually choose your favorite from three events per day. For example, there are various dealers for skills, short-term buffs and normal cards. Or you will come across chests with free weapons and items. If you accompany a caravan of traders, however, money awaits you. Because the vile Mammon is rare in The Bazaar. Your income determines how much coal you receive per day and the amount is usually quite small. Luckily, you can sell cards you no longer need at any time.
Relaxed tactics
You place your cards on the playing field, which only offers limited space and only expands as you level up. You earn the experience points required for this by completing events. Cards come in three sizes, and you also have to be careful how you arrange them. Because it is not uncommon for directly adjacent items and weapons to benefit from their neighbors.
You first check whether your deck is any good in battles against one of three AI opponents, which always take place halfway through a day. These differ in the strength of their respective decks and are not just for practice. You can also get inspiration for your own sets from them. The Bazaar tends to be overwhelming, especially in the first few rounds.
You'll probably reach your limits when you fight against real people for the first time. Because it's not uncommon for opponents to come up with perfectly coordinated decks in the first few fights, which not only bombard your optic nerves with lots of optical effects. They also quickly reduce your life points to zero. If you lose too many matches, the current game ends. The overall goal for you is to achieve ten victories.
Like Backpack Battles, The Bazaar's PvP battles are asynchronous. So you compete against the builds of other players, but you don't have to be online at the same time. This takes a lot of time pressure and possible stress out of the game.
The Bazaar combines roguelike elements with deckbuilding. You can find out more in this trailer.
The Bazaar's options are already very extensive in this very early closed beta. There are builds that will wipe you off the screen with a single attack, or you have the option to win without dealing a single point of damage. How is that supposed to work? By basing your deck entirely on healing you as quickly as possible and making your shield absurdly strong. After a certain amount of time in the fight, a sandstorm activates, causing damage to both opponents until one of them dies.
Conclusion
Even the closed beta of The Bazaar could cost you a few hours
At first glance, The Bazaar may seem like a simple copy of Backpack Battles with a Hearthstone skin. This impression never completely disappears, but the development studio Tempo incorporates enough of its own ideas to clearly stand out from it. The card system as well as the synergies and the clever arrangement of your objects make every new item a potential game changer. However, the developers still have to work hard on the balancing. Poison builds in particular proved to be overpowering in my rounds, but if you rely on pure attack power, you're in for a tough time.
Three characters may not sound like much, but the sheer number of cards easily makes up for this. It's impossible to say how many there are, but even after several hours with the closed beta, I don't even begin to feel like I know them all. The developers promise continuous content updates.
Some of you might not like the in-house launcher, and the fact that you can currently only play by purchasing a Founders Pack is not ideal. However, the full version is available free of charge upon release and is apparently financed by visual gimmicks - so there are currently no worries about shoddy pay-to-win mechanics. The Bazaar will find its permanent place in my game rotation when the versions for Android and iOS tablets are released, but even now I can warmly recommend the title if you have a soft spot for relaxed tactics.
