Lux Deluxe
Lux was first part of the Uncrank’d Game Jam: Winter Edition (still available here) before being expanded into a full Catalog release with some new features. It’s a roguelike deck builder set in a future where humanity made some bad choices and we’re quickly running out of luxmetal, which we need to survive. You have twelve days to dig down into the earth and bring back the material or we’ll all die. No pressure!
You do this by managing resources – each card either adds or subtracts from one of four resource pools, and hit 0% on any one of them to fail that day and return to the surface with nothing. For example: one card will add 10% to your health, while another will reduce your food stat by 20%. You have more negative cards added to your deck each round (you can move 100 meters up or down each level, and the luxmetal is down at 700 meters below the surface), and you can purchase more positive cards if you make it back to the surface at the end of the day with bits of ore that you can collect from certain cards. The trick isn’t just getting down to the lux – it’s getting back up.
Since you have twelve days to spend, your best bet at succeeding is go down a ways, collect some ore, then return to the surface to purchase some more helpful cards to ease the trip down. You can also store a card in your hand like an extra block in Tetris, either to deploy later in the round or just to get it out of the way. It’s a lot of strategy but also a fair amount of luck, like with any good roguelike. Sometimes it’ll feel like the RNG is being really mean to one stat or another, and it’s up to you to keep that one healthy while not letting the others fall too far in the meantime.
Once you get the hang of the ebb and flow card effects on your numbers, it’s a really neat little game, and it’s great for some dopamine hits while you’re waiting for your oil to get changed or wherever else you play your Playdate. Things can go badly quickly once you’re in the -30% cards, but just know you can always abandon your run and try again! The fate of humanity is in your hands.
(Deluxe version – reviewed – released June 24, 2025, on Catalog and Itch. Jam version released February 21, 2025, on Itch. Copy provided by developer.)