One Step From Eden is a Great Indie Game

Where Have I Been?

Hello everyone, it has been quite a long time. I didn’t intend to stay away from blogging for this long, but things got super busy at work. Right when I got hired on, things started getting behind and mandatory overtime was put in place in order to get caught back up. It was recently announced that we’re caught back up and overtime is now voluntary. Unfortunately it could return if we get behind again so fingers crossed. Now to get into the post.

Indie Games

One goal that I’ve had is to play more Indie games. It’s so easy to get caught up in all the big releases that you sometimes end up missing some really good games. A perfect example is Hades, published by SuperGiant Games. I had seen people talking about it, but I didn’t pick it up at the time as I was focused on the games I knew I wanted rather than trying new games I hadn’t thought about. I picked it up back in 2021 and I wish that I had picked it up sooner. It is an amazing game that I highly recommend. My point being that I have been trying more Indie games. One such game is One Step from Eden.

When I saw the pictures on its Steam page, it reminded me of the Mega Man Battle Network series. I put it on my wish list and purchased it a couple of months ago. I’ve had a lot of fun with the game. I wasn’t really sure what to expect going into it since I hadn’t watched anyone play it before. It has definitely exceeded my expectations. One Step From Eden was developed by Thomas Moon Kang.

Game Play

Gameplay wise it pretty easy to pick up with several different play styles. You move your chatracert on a 4×4 grid while defeating your enemies on the grid opposite of you. Attacking is done using cards with varying effects as well as a basic attack. The game is a rouguelike so each run is different. You progress by moving through stages within an area. Each stage has different enemies to defeat to progress. As you move through an area you may encounter rest areas to heal or a shop to buy new cards. At the end of each stage you’ll face a boss. The boss you’ll face is randomized.

Fight With Cards

Other than having your basic attack, you gather cards with different effects. Each character starts out with four different cards that do different things. Some cards are support cards that give you a shield, while others give you a specific attack. After completing a battle you can choose a new card. Each card uses mana, with a cost displayed on the card at the top left. Your mana regenerates throughout each battle. A preview of the card being used so that you can see how it’s used before you obtain it. You also don’t have to choose a card if you don’t want to. Simply choose to skip adding a card to your deck if you don’t like what’s being offered.

Each card is added to your deck which gets used in each battle. You can reshuffle your deck to get cards back. Your deck takes a small time to reshuffle so be mindful of when it’s reshuffling. When reshuffling you can only use your basic attack Some cards can only be used once per battle, so read your cards carefully.

You can also obtain passive abilities through leveling up. Experience is gained after each battle and you will be given a choice of three random things on leveling up. These can range from increasing your mana to gaining a passive skill like gaining health at the start of each battle. There are also one time benefits that can be picked such as gaining a health back.

As you progress you can unlock new characters as well as new cards. Each character starts out with different cards, so you’ll have to adjust your play style a bit. Each character also has variants with a different costume and different starting cards. These variants can also be unlocked through doing more runs. You don’t have to complete a full run to earn new cards or variants. You gain experience after your run ends, whether it results in a completion or a death. The more experience you gain, the more stuff you unlock.

Conclusion

I’ve yet to complete a full run, but I definitely recommend the game. It’s fun trying out the different characters and different strategies with different cards. If you want to make things a little easier try to get cards that will work well with each other. One thing I try to do is to use cards that have similar effects that can build off each other.

It’s nice to get back to writing. As always thank you all for reading. If you’d like to keep up with me you can find me on Bluesky.