This Saturday-morning-cartoon-styled RPG brings all the strategy and none of the grind

Every now and again, a piece of media enters your life that feels like it's always been there: a song that came out this year but perfectly evokes the grunge era, a teen comedy that feels like it was plucked from the '80s, or maybe an RPG that makes you feel like you're playing a Saturday morning cartoon.

Cut to: Dimensionals, the game that gives you all the best parts of "old school" without the grind. You guide a party of three through a gauntlet of brightly colored turn-based battles, building skill-card combos that culminate in boss battles that can blast you off the screen. Taking elements of roguelikes, deckbuilders, and creature collecting games, Dimensionals is designed to scratch that "strategic team-building" itch.

Stack Cards and Smack Mobs

Like a lot of people, I fell in love with RPGs through the party-based classics of yore, and some of my favorite games involve recruiting a team that's perfectly suited to whatever mission I'm facing, so Dimensionals is right up my alley. It's a single-player card-based roguelike designed to pour over for hours while you tinker with the perfect strategy. 

Other games of this ilk tend to keep you confined to one character per run, but Dimensionals expands that, asking you to construct a three-hero team. You'll navigate a map with stores populated with interesting characters ready to assist for a price, but the meat of this game is the turn-based battles against beautifully realized baddies, like the massive Mashers or the skittering… Skitterer. Each team's unique makeup of skills (more on that later) means every run is different, finishing with a brutal boss battle that tests your skills.

That said, Mino Games kept accessibility in mind when building this game. They didn't want to overload on complexity and turn off the average RPG lover. They wanted to make something challenging for all gamers, whether you're playing for the roguelike gameplay loop or the nostalgic cartoon vibe. The goal is to create an experience where newer gamers can jump right in and play, while more tested players can challenge themselves with Master Raid mode, a hard-core mode testing your adaptability on the way to a final battle against Ragnarath, King of the Specters. 

Heroes From Across the 'Verse

The first characters I got to play with are from four dimensions, each with three heroes. Each dimension has abilities that suit differing play styles. Like to watch your enemies succumb over consecutive rounds of compounding poison damage? The nature-themed Terratory is for you. Want to "death by 1,000 cuts" your opposition? Atlantis's sea folk will chain tons of low-cost attacks together using the Refresh mechanic. 

Your job is to figure out how these abilities work together. Maybe you want to mix one Terratory into a team mostly made of the air-centric defensive specialists from Celestia so you can wall up while watching your enemy's health bar tick down. I had some success mixing Pyropaws, a support type from the heavy-damage-dealing Vulcore, into my duo of Atlanteans. There are plenty of character combinations to discover. And I didn't even have access to the full complement of characters. Dimensionals will launch with 20 heroes to mix and match. Also, with all this talk of a huge cast of characters, I know what you're wondering, so let me go ahead and tell you: no microtransactions. Refreshing, eh?

Brand-New Nostalgia

The style of this game is all-encompassing. It goes full tilt into the Saturday-morning-cartoon aesthetic. The characters are charmingly designed (maybe this isn't the vibe, but Bo from Atlantis looks like a tiny little psycho, and I love her), and the comic book-y cutscenes propel you into each new moment. They're equal parts adorable and adventurous, made with a ton of variety. Honestly, they're made to be toys. Plus, the soundtrack is full of catchy themes composed by animation veteran Brad Breeck.

Go pour yourself a giant bowl of cereal and get ready to dive into Dimensionals. You can wish-list it on Steam now.