Wildfrost is a cuter, colder Slay the Spire from original Stardew Valley publisher Chucklefish

Wildfrost is a new deck-builder loosely styled after the indie megahit Slay the Spire, and it looks like a deceptively adorable take on endlessly replayable card battles. 

Wildfrost was unveiled as part of today's big Nintenedo Indie showcase. Like Slay the Spire, it seeks to combine the randomness and replayability of rogue-likes with the strategy of deck-builders. You play as one of several leaders, each with their unique stats and skills, on a quest to save the town of Snowdwell from the eternal winter threatened by the titular Wildfrost. You'll assemble a deck of allies from random loot and vendors and lead them in turn-based battles while exploring a branching map dotted with different encounters.

The Wildfrost cards shown so far will feel familiar to fans of modern card games and battlers. Minions have attack and health values as well as passive and active effects, and you can arrange them on a 3x2 board to build your front lines, reserves, and back row. Unique key words like Frontline Smackback, Backline Bombard, Consume, Barrage, Aimless, and plenty more seem to add another layer of planning to building your deck and board. Everything is super cute but important information also feels well conveyed, which was likely a hard balance to strike. 

Wildfrost is the result of a collaboration between Will Lewis of Caveblazers developer Deadpan Games and developer Gaziter, the lead artist and designer on Forager and KnotBot. Chucklefish, the original publisher of Stardew Valley (before creator Eric Barone became independent) and developer of Witchbrook, is backing the project, and says work on it properly began in early 2020 after Lewis and Gaziter poked at a few prototypes. 

Wildfrost is coming to PC and Switch this winter (fittingly enough) with language support for English, Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese.