This promising deckbuilder looks like Slay the Spire with cyberpunk waifus

(Image credit: Archive Games)

Theseus Protocol is a promising deckbuilder that finally adds the one thing that Slay the Spire and its contemporaries have been missing: cyberpunk waifus.

You'll spend your runs in Theseus Protocol working your way through the dystopian Mark City by - you guessed it - engaging in tactical turn-based card duels. You'll do the usual deck management stuff, but you can also turn the tide of the battles through positioning to dodge enemy attacks or forcing them to attack each other. Maybe the most notable gameplay gimmick is the weapon development system, which will have you spending credits between battles in order to upgrade your armament's stats.

But while all the gameplay mechanics seem promising enough, the eye-catching bit of Theseus Protocol is its roster of playable anime girls, each of whom naturally has her own unique abilities and gameplay strategies. Nena, for example, is all about emotions - her mood lowers as you play cards, increasing the cost of playing those cards, while weapon charges bring the mood back up, lowering the cost and adding other bonuses.

The game's currently in beta, and you can sign up to participate in the playtest over on Steam. Theseus Protocol is set to hit Steam Early Access in the first quarter of 2023, and the devs expect to spend about eight months before hitting version 1.0 adding new characters, storylines, and cards while tweaking the game balance based on player feedback.

It's not all about the deckbuilders - dig into our list of the best games like Hearthstone for more card-based action.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.