FuRyu is a company best known for developing mid-tier JRPGs like The Caligula Effect and Crystar, whilst letting bigger publishers like NIS America and XSEED handle the boring distribution-focused side of the business. I don’t think I have ever seen a game published by them, especially here in the West. Originally released for Nintendo Switch last year, to little fanfare, LogiKing is also quite different from their usual JRPG schtick, being a competitive-focused mixture between a traditional Trading Card Game and a logic deduction puzzler. Yep. As weird as it sounds.

This is no exaggeration. It’s actually a pretty neat concept. In LogiKing, each player has a deck containing ten cards, each card containing a number and an effect. The objective is simple: each player selects two cards from their deck, and they need to figure out a way to deduce the numbers chosen by their opponent. You can do this with two actions. First of all, you can play one of your remaining cards per turn, which can grant you an effect, such as your opponent telling if one of their cards is between 0-4 or 5-9, or being able to deduce two numbers per turn. After playing a card, you can then try to deduce one of those cards.

Bear in mind that, by playing one of the cards from your hand, you are also giving the opponent an extra clue. Say, you play card #4 from your hand; the opponent then knows that neither of your hidden cards are #4. This is when the Yu-Gi-Oh part of the game gives way to, well, logic. Figure out both cards and you will win the match. Matches are actually pretty short, not lasting more than four to five minutes, stopping LogiKing from outstaying its welcome. Especially since there is just one song being played during battles (a pretty good one, sure, but still just one), and no polygonal models or any interesting effects. It’s just cards, a playfield, and the very occasional particle effect. Oh, and some delicious broken English.

The overall gameplay loop is actually pretty neat. You can save up to three different decks, earn new cards and cosmetics, all in a fast-paced and replayable match system. The problem is that, while LogiKing does have a solid foundation, it doesn’t have a lot of content. It’s lacking in single-player modes, featuring just a handful of matches against the CPU (the game promises more matches in later patches, but considering this is a port of a Switch game released last year, it’s shocking that said content isn’t available so far), and the supposedly more appealing mode in the package, multiplayer.

Finding a match is pretty difficult. LogiKing‘s highest player count ever since its release has been six players. Matchmaking is pretty much impossible at this point, which is a shame. I want to play more of it, there’s just not enough people, if any, for me to actually engage in matches with.

More than just a review, this is almost a plea. In order for LogiKing to actually showcase its full potential, it needs more players. As it stands, it’s a barren desert built on top of a fantastic foundation. Its combat system is pretty creative, it runs well, it doesn’t do any egregious mistakes. It’s just lacking in single-player content, with nobody else playing it at the moment to populate its barren multiplayer servers.

 

Graphics: 6.5 A basic card game interface with some well-designed cards, a handful of particle effects, and nothing else of notice.	Gameplay: 7.5 Part logical deduction, part Yu-Gi-Oh, the gameplay loop is shockingly easy to learn, even without a proper tutorial, but deep enough to incentivize multiple deck builds and experimentation. The PC control interface isn’t particularly solid, but it’s still good enough.
Sound: 7.0 Not a bad soundtrack, even if it’s repetitive. It manages to sound just epic enough to make you ignore how often you will listen to it. I do love the broken English voice acting included in this package, by the way. Cheesy, dumb, lovely.	Fun Factor: 6.5 It’s an innovative card game with a neat gameplay loop. It is painfully lacking in content at the moment, but playing it every now and then, in short bursts, is decent enough.
Final Verdict: 7.0

LogiKing is available now on PC and Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.

A copy of LogiKing was provided by the publisher.