Cobalt Core is a stellar roguelike deckbuilder in which you play as cute little space animals caught in a sci-fi time loop. What sets Cobalt Core apart from other Spire-likes is its creative narrative told through unlockable memories. Its sheer volume of customization options for each run - including eight characters each with their own unique decks, and five ships that make use of varying abilities to blast and simultaneously avoid enemy craft - lends the game an impressive amount of replayability.

You start a run by choosing three characters to pilot your ship of choice. After picking one of four difficulty settings, you're thrown back into the timeloop mysteriously set off by a ship called The Cobalt, which your crew used to pilot. As you fight enemies, gain cards and artifacts, and upgrade your abilities through the branching trees of the game's three levels, you work your way back toward The Cobalt, which serves as each loop's final boss.

Once The Cobalt is vanquished, you gain access to a new crew member memory, which you watch in a small cut scene. The story of how the crew got stuck in the time loop - and the answers for how to break out of its sisyphean thrall - is told through these memories. It's a rare and compelling way to make this kind of game about more than just the cards.

Cobalt Core is well-written, its pixel art is gorgeous, and its wide array of enemies and encounters imbues each loop with a sense of uniqueness in spite of a repeated opponent every once and a while. In fact, the game cleverly even makes use of these scenarios, often by having your crewmates address their enemies in a congenial tone with knowledge of their repeated encounters from past loops.

My favorite one of these moments came when, after meeting and defeating a pilot named Spike, my crew met another Spike farther down the line and said his name had to be George instead because "two Spikes is too many." Then, when they saw the original Spike in a future loop, they remembered this saga and told Spike that they had maintained the honor of his name across the galaxy. Moments like these absolutely charmed me and enhanced my experience.

And, while Cobalt Core does struggle at points with its pacing, with successful runs on even the easiest difficulty often taking over two hours, its narrative breadth and cleverness put it right up there with Slay the Spire and Griftlands, my two favorites in this genre. 9/10.

Where it shines:

• Narrative
• Writing
• Memory

Where it fades:

• Pacing (sometimes)