"Cliff-throwing tactics that outshine their own card decks"
About
Fogpiercer is a sci-fi roguelike deckbuilder built around a train crawling through a hostile fog, its carriages doubling as your arsenal. Each carriage is a weapon or tool: a crane to lift enemies, artillery, a machine gun, a shield, a harpoon, a sword. Combat plays out on a grid where your train only moves forward and back while enemies roam in four directions, so victory leans on positioning, knockback (the skid mechanic) and setting off chain reactions using cliffs and hazards. Runs follow a three-boss roguelite structure across escalating fog tiers, with drivers and conductors unlocked over time and limited turn resets at higher difficulties. The puzzle-combat design draws open comparison to Into the Breach.
Verdict
Fogpiercer nails the part it cares about most: reading a grid, lining up a skid, and watching a boss tumble off a cliff feels smart every time. The presentation backs it up, from the wreckage audio to the driver-linked soundtrack. What holds it back is the deckbuilder half, where cards barely talk to each other, and a difficulty curve that can lurch into unfair territory with no undo to bail you out. It's a confident, well-built tactics puzzler that's easier to recommend to the Into the Breach crowd than to anyone chasing synergy-driven runs.
You'll like it if …
- +you approach each fight as a board to solve rather than a fight to win
- +you enjoy engineering environmental kills over stacking card synergies
- +you don't mind grinding unlocks before the good options open up
You'll dislike it if …
- −you want deck synergy and card combos at the heart of your deckbuilder
- −sudden difficulty jumps with no way to recover from one bad turn frustrate you
- −you play mostly on Steam Deck
Breakdown
- +Knockback and environmental kills carry the whole loop: shoving a boss off a cliff with the crane feels earned, not cheap
- +Multi-turn planning around the skid mechanic gives each fight the shape of a solvable puzzle rather than a numbers trade
- +Chain reactions resolve with real payoff, and the carriage-as-weapon idea reads instantly
- −The jump from two enemies to six within a six-turn window arrives with no ramp, and some spikes offer no counterplay
- −The train's forward-and-back-only movement against free-roaming enemies splits players on whether the asymmetry is fair or just punishing
- −Low train HP means one misread turn can end a run outright
- +Carriage combinations open genuine tactical variety, and the driver and conductor unlocks reshape how a run plays
- +Puzzle-minded players find several viable ways through most encounters
- −Card synergies are widely called weak, with several reviewers saying the cards barely connect to each other
- −Meta-progression grinds against a thin early unlock pool, so opening runs feel samey
- −Once the puzzle logic clicks, some runs stop surprising
- +The post-apocalyptic fog and Mad Max train aesthetic give the runs a clear identity
- −Story, characters and world-building are essentially absent; the theme is flavour, not a reason to play
- +Destruction audio and the crash-and-crunch sound design land hard
- +The soundtrack swaps instruments with your chosen driver, a small touch that reviewers noticed and liked
- +Art direction is clean and consistent
- −Crashes, freezes and navigation glitches turn up on Steam Deck specifically, denting an otherwise sharp package
- +UI is clean and onboarding works without hand-holding, and no game-breaking bugs surfaced
- +Developers patch balance feedback quickly
- −Turn undo is capped at higher difficulties, so a single fat-fingered move sticks
- −No restart-battle button; the only way out of a bad fight is closing the game
- −Performance stutters on lower-end hardware
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