In all honesty, Toads Of The Bayou could have been several notches less ribbet-ing than its Steam demo ended up being, because its stylised pixel fly-snatchers are just that good. There’s only one of the three characters available in the freebie (one of the others is a toad nun with a shotgun), but he’s got a little cutlass, a flintlock pistol, and a can-do attitude – at least when it comes to either stabbing or shooting things. The game itself is a little bit deckbuilder, a little bit Into The Breach: turn based strategy with perfect information and various tricks you can pull to make enemies hit each other instead of the thing you’re trying to protect. Indulge yourself on the gourmet tray-tray below.
Toads Of The Bayou loves shops, is the first thing I found out about it. There’s four different ones in your home base, where you’ll lead a rebellion against Haitian Vodou figure Baron Samedi. You’ll select missions from a map, gather resources, then spent them on either more combat cards, companions, or single use traps and various other bufo-buffs. You’ve also got your own inventory of consumable items, and your starting toad generates barricades by killing enemies, which you can plonk down on a map – helpful, since most maps have an objective to project.
If you fail an objective, you’ll get ‘curse cards’ put into your deck, which can then show up randomly and ruin your day. Allegedly anyway, I was simply too good to have this happen. Cards cost action points, and there’s a few neat twists even in the small slice I played. Your movement card, for example, is free to play, but loses one movement per card you’ve played before it. So you can attack before moving, but you’ll be less effective. Some cards push enemies into obstacles for extra damage, and some let you switch places with them, which you can use to your advantage since they’ll be locked into their attacks by then.
There’s also permadeath, but it’s the fun kind that gives you upgrades for the next run. It all seems a fair bit more thoughtful and expansive than what I’d originally suspected, which was rote turn-based combat coasting on the back of its very good toads. But it does not coast, and the toads are better for it. It’s also out this month if you like the demo – 19th November.