Fogpiercer Review — Battle Train

Snowpiercer is a 2013 post-apocalyptic drama about the remnants of humanity struggling to survive together on a constantly moving train that serves as the last bastion of civilization after a global climate catastrophe. While the film and the novel it’s based on serve as clear inspiration for Fogpiercer, this deckbuilding roguelike focuses less on the themes of survival and socio-economic disparity and more on blowing people up with well-placed artillery shots. Perhaps there’s a little bit of Mad Max in there, too.

It was actually a surprise to me that a game with such apocalyptic themes focused less on narrative and survival, and instead played out very similarly to your typical deckbuilding roguelike. If you’ve ever played one, you know what to expect from Fogpiercer: post-run rewards and permanent upgrades help you face off against a series of battles fueled by the cards you collect in a procedurally generated path. That isn’t to say that the game lacks any originality, as, aside from the art direction and unique theme, the main gameplay mechanics are fairly unique compared to other titles inspired by the likes of Slay the Spire.

A surprising amount of strategic depth is found in the game’s combat, not directly, but in how you manipulate the space you and the attacking cars around you fill up. Obstacles are often telegraphed one turn ahead and are avoided by enemies, enemy attacks target the square they chose the turn before even if you aren’t there (or an enemy unit suddenly is), and depleting an enemy’s health bar will always send their car careening backward to slam into any vehicles behind them.

It quickly becomes obvious that manipulating the terrain, particularly the movement of your train (which is confined to one part of the map, obviously, as trains on tracks are), is the core of the game’s mechanical loop. Manipulating the position of your enemies is so important that attack cards, namely your artillery, are better used on empty spaces to reposition foes than they are when attacking directly.

Considering, once again, that your train is locked into one part of the game and is very limited in movement, the positional strategy elements feel very intentionally designed to play around the game’s train-bound themes. I began to really appreciate the game’s depth as I found myself going from firing artillery aimlessly at any enemy vehicle I could hit, to wiping out entire encounters in one turn by forcing them to crash into each other.

That being said, I found the game getting pretty repetitive before I got very deep into my playthrough. The addition of more train cars and unlocking new cards is exciting, but it doesn’t do too much to change the fact that many of the combat encounters are very limited in variety. Even boss fights feel pretty familiar, lacking super-identifiable boss enemies or mechanics that switch things up too drastically from what you’re already familiar with. It only took me about two to three runs before I started to feel like the combat encounters were won by me essentially doing the same thing each time, with slight variations here or there.

What really could have helped to keep my attention between these encounters would have been more narrative or character exploration. The former, in particular, would have excited me, as the game presents some fairly interesting-looking characters to you right off the bat: our starting captain, a woman who clearly has some kind of ice powers, would have been someone I was especially interested in learning about. Sprinkling more about her or other characters from location to location would have gone a long way toward capturing my attention as the strategies I employed in the game’s many battles began to feel more and more repetitive.

Unfortunately, there is little to no narrative or character exploration in the game, with these segments relegated to short blurbs at the character selection screen or quick, two-sentence statements at the start of boss battles. While I know not every player is going to be as concerned about this as I was, I found myself particularly disappointed when I realized that there wasn’t going to be much more to learn about these characters.

The combat in Fogpiercer is fast-paced, satisfying, and surprisingly in-depth when you start to figure out how important positional strategy is to the equation. Customizing your train is satisfying, and things become a bit more complicated as you add on to your train with new cards and expand upon your deck with more cards. That being said, the gameplay loop quickly becomes repetitive, as you start to employ the same strategies against the same enemies in constant back-to-back fights that simply lack enough content to make things feel different.

While the game presents some really interesting-looking characters and has a premise that could lead to some exciting narrative, it fails to deliver on both, leaving a sort of empty space where the player could have taken a break from the repetitive gameplay to recharge and immerse themselves in the setting. Honestly, this is my biggest complaint about the game, as I feel like more focus on the characters (particularly my captains) could have served as a refreshing break from the core gameplay, which revealed its repetitiveness much quicker given just how back-to-back the combat segments were.

All that being said, Fogpiercer is not what I would call a bad game. The gameplay serves a very niche strategic itch, and the setting is unique and appeals to any player who loves the idea of running a battle train. It simply could have used more than it currently provides, and it’s a shame that I feel like the developers were very capable of delivering it, but either could not or chose not to.

Try Hard Guides was provided with a Steam code for this PC review of Fogpiercer. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Fogpiercer is available on Steam.