When I first heard about this card-based roguelike city builder, I was confused. Then I played a round. And another. And another. And another. And before I knew it far too much time had passed and I was absolutely hooked. That game is Toxic Frontier, and we just revealed it at the PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct.
Toxic Frontier plays on a hexagonal grid that makes it feel a bit like Settlers of Catan, only I’m not screaming at my housemates because they won’t accept my very reasonable trade offers. You draw cards such as villages, forests, sheep, mountains, lakes, and more, and try to find the synergies while expanding into the titular toxic wasteland.
Wishlist Toxic Frontier on Steam
Release date: TBA
Rebuild amongst the fog and ruin of a radioactive wasteland in Toxic Frontier. It doesn’t have a release date yet, so wishlist it on Steam to stay up-to-date with all the news.
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You don’t combine cards just by stacking them on top of each other. Some you do, but it often gets more complicated than that. Surround a village with other villages, for example, and the central one becomes a town. Repeat the process and you get a city.
That process is hampered by the terrain you discover as you slowly push back the fog. By building up your settlements and expanding the land, you’ll push deeper into the toxic mists, often unearthing nasty horrors like wandering mutants that will raid your lumberjack homes, or polluted wastelands that have to be cleansed.
But where does the roguelike element come into it? Well, each level has a semi-randomised set of objectives and you only have a limited number of cards to complete them. Each card you place also rewards you with points that you need to unlock more cards. Bigger and more complex combos give more points, so you’ve got to experiment and try to make the most out of what you’ve got.
I learned the hard way that not all the combos are easy to do, so expect to lose a lot when the game comes out. When that is, we don’t know. For now, all you can do is wishlist Toxic Frontier on Steam.
Check out our Steam page with all the games, updates, and DLC featured in the show. You can also read our roundup article which includes every announcement from the show in the order it aired.
