Crafted by (Taiwanese?) StoryCropStudio, deckbuilding roguelite Voice of Belldona arrives looking like it spent a few late nights browsing Warhammer 40,000 art books before wandering into an anime convention and deciding it liked that vibe better. The result is less grimdark cosmic horror and more stylish, as well as sexy, sci-fi, dark(ish) fantasy. Top stuff, but in strict gameplay terms, there are some flaws that urgently need to be fixed if this is to succeed. Here’s a look at the Early Access version to learn all about it.
The protagonist is dropped into a collapsing dreamlike reality where a mysterious, cute and socially awkward deity guides them through shifting layers of the cosmos. They are given control of a puppet/avatar, which can either be the hansom, dressed-for-the-upcoming-mages-conference sorcerer Griza who specialises in summoning and manipulating the battlefield by tactically taking advantage of positioning instead of simply attacking, and the oh-my-god-these-giant-breasts-get-in-the-way-of-all-that-slaughtering swordswoman by the name of Rinsana, whose style is faster and much more aggressive.
Before any of that, however, you’ll need to survive the game’s first boss fight: changing the language from the default Chinese, basically by walking in the dark with your fingers searching for the right button. That’s a small yet telling first impression, and there are some annoying technical issues as well. Menus are sluggish; freezes or crashes to the desktop are rare but they do exist; clicking through the visual novel segments or simply looking at a card can feel slightly laggy; and the loading times are extremely slow. None of these are deal-breakers for a super-low-budget indie project that is in Early Access. The real problem is the user interface.
The UI is of amateur quality, both in terms of look, but mostly in terms of functionality, doing little favours to a title where clarity matters the most. Simply put, it drags the experience down. Severely. Even after two or so hours into the adventure, your eyes will struggle to find where this or that button is hiding, and your brain will melt while trying to digest the overwhelming barrage of numbers and symbols that sit under your character, with the tutorial barely providing a glimpse of the toolset on offer. The good news? Said toolset is genuinely exciting!
Mechanically, Voice of Belldona is surprisingly deep. There are only two characters to play as? Yes, but each one comes with its own separate archetypes (think of them as sub-classes), and there’s a vast assortment of ability cards available that connect to each other in all sorts of ways. Discovering card synergies and pushing builds into powerful directions is easily one of Voice of Belldona’s strongest hooks. Veterans looking for something meatier than the genre’s usual comfort food will find plenty to chew on, while newcomers courageous enough to climb the steep learning curve will eventually uncover something special.
When it comes to content, there’s currently only one mode, with Story likely coming as a full release update. The structure is familiar to anyone versed in the genre. Branching map paths, randomised encounters, elite fights, shops and boss battles that gradually escalate in brutality. There’s nothing special to say about map navigation, but the turn-based card-driven combat segments work quite well. Combat is where this truly shines. Positioning matters. Summons matter. Card sequencing matters. Almost every system feels designed to interact with several others, creating battles that are far more layered than the norm.
The only other major problem besides the UI is the need for some rebalancing. By the time one reaches some tough bosses or tries harder difficulty settings, Voice of Belldona heavily pressures you into focusing on stacking defensive abilities if not in the mood for your otherwise super powerful, offensive-focused character getting one-shotted. Some bosses are also tuned in a way that can feel disproportionately punishing compared to normal encounters, which can lead to losing hours of progress to a single fight, not necessarily due to misunderstanding mechanics, but because certain builds simply cannot reasonably deal with certain challenges.
Visually, Voice of Belldona punches well above its weight class. Armoured knights, mythical beasts, suspiciously attractive nuns, Final Fantasy-flavoured blends of flesh and machine such as cyborg elves; the eye-catching character art and animations are clean and expressive, especially when it comes to Griza, who looks like a Persona character that took a wrong turn, and the busty Rinsana who has a gorgeous vampire warlord kind of aura…while her DLC alternative skin turns her into a dangerously sexy gothic Playboy bunny. Too bad the camera is pulled so far back that it makes everyone look oddly small, whereas a more dynamic and zoomed-in combat view could have made it easier to admire everything.
For all its rough edges, Voice of Belldona has the makings of a genuinely compelling niche strategy title, with an enjoyably complex combat system that demands mastery while allowing lots of experimentation. It is easy to imagine a dedicated cult audience forming around it, particularly among those who feel that many modern deckbuilding roguelites have become too predictable. Whether it turns into a hidden gem or remains a rough curiosity depends largely on what happens during the rest of its development.
Blending a neat sci-fi fantasy aesthetic, finely animated high-polished art, with surprisingly deep and challenging gameplay as the cherry on top, Voice of Belldona is shaping up to be a cult favourite among hardcore tacticians. The foundation is strong; however, technical issues, uneven balance, and especially a confusing, poorly designed UI are holding it back. Fix those problems, and this strange little indie deckbuilder could become something truly memorable.
