Titanium Court review: "Balatro meets Blue Prince in this roguelike match-three RTS that's been massaging my brain for countless hours already"

In Titanium Court, even as the battlefield is filled with centaur enemies, and my resources dwindle to the point where I know I'll be hard-pressed to summon my fairies to my defense, I'm full of confidence. I've carefully nudged my base to be surrounded by river and mountain tiles which centaurs can't traverse, and with no flying foes in sight I'll be completely untouchable. Then, spotting some fields to harvest much-needed food I match-three, popping them out of existence… then chain-reacting more matches until my river defence also melts away. Oh dear.

Titanium Court smashes together gaming genres, visual aesthetics, and modes of storytelling to create a truly unique roguelike puzzler RTS hybrid that manages to feel intuitive rather than overwhelming. Somehow sucked into a theatrical world of fairies that riffs on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, you have been named the titular court's queen by the meddling, wine-drunk Puck. Feasting! Rejoicing! …War? Every day the court must enter the battlefield after breakfast, eventually coming apart at the seams even after victory – until it all happens again. All the while, a curse on the court slowly erodes its magical protections, and you seem to be unable to leave for home.

Slide to the left

The reset means that Titanium Court has a roguelike structure, the daily war book-ended by allowing you to explore the court by clicking around its lo-fi pixel art, stick-figure-like environment. Plenty of events teach you about this strange meta-world, ease you into battle with early resource boosts and a thermostat-driven strife/comfort system that can make action tougher or easier, and move the plot forwards on your quest to unravel curses and recover your lost keys.

War in Titanium Court has your base, represented as a tile, moving upwards through a series of battlefields, having a choice of three routes to take, each favoring certain tile types, and coming with their own enemy types and events to stumble upon. Which you tackle may depend on your court's job type, which resources you need, and how confident you are against certain threats. The roguelike battling is fast-paced, silly, and constantly makes me want to have one more go to try some new, strange playstyle, or see what I'll encounter next. Not since Balatro have I found it so hard to put down a new roguelike puzzler.

Low on money? You might want to focus on tackling battlefields that can spawn in chests. Or, you might want to try to find a shop tile if you've got coin to spare and need to expand your five-possible unit types. Likewise, you may not want to risk encountering boat enemy types in a battlefield thick with water tiles, and might prefer to go up against rock-hurling catapults if you're confident in being able to put mountains between you and their ammunition. Unlockable court 'jobs' can really vary your skillsets, and which battlefield types you'll want to move through.

During High Tide once you're in a battlefield, Titanium Court has you sliding tiles around trying to match three or more of the same type – like in Candy Crush or Bejeweled – in order to gather resources. Enemy bases can even be matched to eliminate them as an oncoming threat, with your remaining tile-matching energy on a timeline on the side of the grid also showing when enemies will be spawning in, and how many units you can expect to have to face.

It's perfectly possible to completely eliminate all opponent bases to have a completely unthreatened round – perfect for forgoing spawning in your own soldiers and instead having resource gatherer units scuttle around to build up your stores in preparation for tougher rounds.

The shifting battlefield is, however, still that – a battlefield. As mentioned in my disastrous introduction, the terrain around you can spell safety or doom. Water might provide a barrier against standard enemy soldiers, or a direct path to your base for foes that move through water. Likewise, bonuses like chests, shops, markets, or hospitals are always attached to tiles, and will be destroyed if you match and clear them (actually shifting stock for shops for when they drop back onto screen again if you want to force a refresh).

Use all your shifting energy and you'll enter Low Tide – locking in the tiles. Resources can be spent on creating units ready to deploy when battle begins, or you can use last minute potions and spells to try to get in a better position such as raising defensive walls, flooding areas of the map, or throwing out distractions. You can't interfere once the battle kicks off, but all rounds in Titanium Court are incredibly snappy even without fast-forwarding them, so you don't have to survive for that long. But, equally, once set upon from all sides, the court's health will disappear fast

Different court jobs come with different starting units and cards, and different ways of earning money. The standard job, for instance, simply rewards you with currency for having your own units destroy enemy bases, but others can be more complex – from earning when your own barriers are flattened by foes, to a particularly risky one that rewards for actually placing additional enemy unit bases on the map yourself. All of these playstyles have their own strengths and weaknesses, excelling in certain setups while being particularly vulnerable in others.

Criss cross

Each war is presided over by a different boss enemy you'll eventually face down, with wildly different battle considerations and possible counters for each. All of them can even be beaten in one of three ways to earn either an offensive, defensive, or economic victory.

Some of these are more obvious than others, but it keeps Titanium Court fast-paced. Survive three rounds against any foe and you'll likely earn a defensive victory, but how you buy your way out of dicier situations can vary a lot from map to map. A sequence of three Billy Goat tollbooths, for instance, can be paid off during several smaller encounters during a run, avoiding having to face them all down in one big go at the end. These boss fights even have additional, secret, plot-related possible endings that can then lead to divergent playthroughs that play with the pre-established rules in fun and unique ways.

I love how some of the side-activities outside of the war also play with the game's match-free mechanics in unique ways. A daily hint-giving shower takes the form of having shower thoughts, having you idly and risk-free match things like soap in a small grid as the hints for the day progress at the bottom of the screen. Another quest inverts this, having you try to assemble a ladder out of blocks without having them disappear.

Titanium Court's vibe is impeccable. Its boxy, lo-fi design calls back to older computer user-interfaces while simultaneously feeling slick and modern. An easy-listening, jazzy soundtrack accompanies each battle to give the whole game a really unique, non-violent tone – this is magical realism awash in, oddly, corporate-core aesthetics, from the cult of MARKET, to constant motivational-style images of out-of-context characters shaking hands and providing reports. Similarly, moments of victory mid-battle are accompanied by pop-up box images like baseball batters hitting home runs, or cats about to push bottles off of table edges. It's kitsch, but it just works – selling Titanium Court's wry, meta sense of humor while still making wins have impact.

Already well into my double-digit playtime, there's always something new in Titanium Court to get its hooks in me whether I've just had a win or a loss. Outside of the roguelike war, unravelling the mysteries of the court rewards curiosity and poking around during your moments of free exploration – some of the ways to lift curses reminding me of how enigmatic Blue Prince could be, offering a simple sounding goal then perplexing you with how to achieve it.

Likewise, though some tasks can be taxing, there are plenty of ways to progress, so you don't always have to butt your head against any one mystery (and some characters will straight up explain to you how to do certain things). In fact, Titanium Court is committed to keeping the broader narrative constantly progressing no matter what, to the point where at times I wish I could be left to flounder just a bit more. Though, the pace certainly ensures I remain engaged.

But, with so many threads to pull at, and difficult challenges to overcome even if all I'm chasing is my own satisfaction, there's still plenty more reasons to return to the strange, corpcore war of the fairies – even if it's just to hear that jazzy soundtrack one more time, and to see a cut-in pop-up of a sweet basketball dunk when I turn an enemy base into rubble. I can see this being a puzzle mainstay I'll be coming back to for a long time to come – Titanium Court is just so uniquely weird that I'm not sure I could scratch this itch with anything else.

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