Queue Queen first impressions: Stack ‘em high

The card roguelike genre has exploded in popularity, and based on the demos currently captivating the community on Steam, it’s showing no sign of slowing down anytime soon. Queue Queen’s demo is a great example of a fresh spin on the classic roguelike format. 

If you’ve been wondering whether to pick up the Queue Queen demo or steer clear, you’ll find The Escapist’s first impressions below, looking at everything from the mathematical gameplay loop to the overall quality.

The Escapist recaps

• Queue Queen is an upcoming gambling roguelike, developed and published by Lisisoft. It’s available in demo form on Steam.
• In Queue Queen, you’re tasked with creating a stack of cards from a full deck, using item cards to modify them and score points. Each round has a target number of points, increasing in difficulty each time.
• There are boss rounds thrown into the mix to keep things engaging, each presenting a unique challenge, like a modification to the deck or an alteration to the timer.
• Fans of dice roguelikes and card games will find lots to get excited about with this demo. It’s a fast-paced and engaging style of play, and despite a couple of minor quirks like typos, it feels well-made and charming as a whole. 

Card-stacking goodness

Unlike most card roguelikes, which focus on playing particular hands or trying to score as highly as possible, Queue Queen focuses on stacking cards to hit a target number of points in each round. Cards are pulled from the deck during a round, with the option to stack or skip them.

You can’t just stack them infinitely, though – there’s a limit on how many cards you can put in a stack, meaning you need to plan what the optimal stack will look like. This is dictated by the items that you have in your hand.

Items in Queue Queen are small cards that apply a certain buff or condition during a round. An item card might award a point for a card being divisible by five, for example, or for a card that features a particular suit.

Not only do the target scores for each round get higher, but there are also boss rounds to deal with. These bosses pop up in the form of special tarot cards, which are added to your deck alongside the regular cards.

Boss round cards can have any number of effects; one might start cutting your round timer, giving you less time to react, while another might scrap some of the cards in your deck, giving you fewer tools to work with. They add a deeper level of strategy to the Queue Queen demo.

Fast-paced, strategic gameplay

Timing is a big part of Queue Queen, meaning each round went by pretty quickly. You’ll have just over a minute to sort through your deck and stack your cards, meaning bosses like the “Time Marches On” Hierophant round – cutting five seconds off the clock each time a Hierophant is drawn – can be quite tricky.

The difficulty curve didn’t feel unfair, though. If you’re a fan of games like Balatro or even Dice of Kalma, it’ll feel familiar, with a slow but steady increase in difficulty permeating through each round, balanced out by a strong variety of item cards in the store.

There were plenty of rounds, too, as the Queue Queen demo was fairly generous. The demo offers 32 rounds, and chances are, you won’t get to the very end on your first go.

In terms of quality, Queue Queen ran well and didn’t throw up any major issues. The UI was clean and easy to navigate, and despite its simplicity, the visuals were pleasant and vibrant, making for a fun experience.

The only small quality issue picked up on during the demo session was a typo here and there in item card text; this wasn’t a major issue, though, as it didn’t interfere with the enjoyment of the game. 

If you’ve played through the majority of the gambling roguelikes and card games on Steam already, chances are you’ll fall in love with the Queue Queen demo. It offers a simple yet effective gameplay loop that manages to feel fresh in an admittedly saturated niche, and it has an enjoyable level of difficulty.

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