To be more specific it's a card battling game. Set on weird alien planet that randomly generates levels and then monsters that dwell on them. You must power up yourself, loot their cards and become more powerful. To be more complex every move on the board takes up a turn or in the "story" time of day. So many turns make it change from night to day. You attack the monsters when their shields are up, based on the time of day, so they don't attack, because if not, they'll straight up attack you.
These aren't Pokemon, they aren't Dragon Quest monsters, they're just weird looking monsters out of a designer toy catalog. These things making you want to laugh at them or just ponder what the Hell they are. Their design, like the rest of the game, adds to the reason of coming back. To just see how weird they move and look. If one manages to kill you, they loot you.
The story is set around you having to fix a resort by terra-forming it, the cards are actually suppose to be used to fix any sort of broken equipment, so there like mini-putters and swim trunks. You're fighting monsters and robots with golf balls, though you don't see those visuals, just a simple attack animation. The main monster likes you destroying the monsters, it wants you to come pick up your lost robot head and then it wants to go home with you...which would probably bad as it's all kinds of wrong, powerful and is actually outside of our normal dimension.
Let's make it more complicated.
The game would be much more fun or even playable on the phone if it wasn't 1980's hard. If you die, you lose all your cards and start all over again. Your brought back by none other than the end boss itself. I haven't been able to get past level three and barely get there and it seems everyone else on Steam discussions isn't fairing much better.
On other complications, cards switch between being defense and attack and you only have 10 spaces. You have to choose wisely and the cards can have weird bonus or negative effects on where they're placed in your deck
Enemies seem to randomly range to high numbers on boards out of no place. It's usually five hits and your dead adding to how hard it is to progress in this game.
You do have the chance at help, holograms of other players whose cards are stolen can help you...or hate you. See if you find a stolen card, you can be nice and return it to that player, so in another person's game they'll get their card back. If you kept it, well then, that player's hologram wants you dead.
Loot Rascals captured my attention at the PlayStation Experience with look alone. It's like an early attempt from a game company that can make a great looking game if they only tweaked down how hard it was to progress. Loot Rascals is a loony game that I would like to love, but how painfully hard to progress just takes it away from how great it could be.
Available on PC and PS4
Game provided by publisher for review purposes.
