• Price: $19.99 USD
• Developer: Mad Mimic
• Publisher: NEOWIZ
• Release Date: September 28, 2021

We mentioned Dandy Ace before in our article on Switch games from Brazil. It’s an action rogue-lite with card-based gameplay, and I was happy to see that there are permanent upgrades for subsequent attempts at beating the game’s villain. I also liked the colorful character designs. It seemed like Dandy Ace being a good game was “in the cards,” so I was more than willing to start the show.

As the story goes, Lele the Green-Eyed Monster Illusionist found himself overshadowed by the titular Dandy Ace, another magician whose talents led to great success. In a fit of jealous rage, Lele decided to sacrifice his soul to a Cursed Mirror in order to trap Dandy Ace inside. (One might say that his actions don’t…reflect…well on him. 😉) Now, you must control Dandy Ace and do your best to escape the Cursed Mirror.

Inside of the Cursed Mirror, a smarmy man called the “Mysterious Guy” who totally doesn’t look like the Green-Eyed Illusionist, what are you talking about says that the world inside of the Cursed Mirror is called the Ever-Changing Palace “for a reason…every time you are defeated, you will restart here and the Palace will rebuild itself.”

Getting started inside of the palace, there are several difficulty levels, but it seems like you can only choose the normal difficulty for your first playthrough. (I don’t think normal mode is too easy, though – it’s pretty challenging!) At the beginning of each run, you get three random skill cards; the pink cards are for normal melee or ranged attacks, yellow cards are some kind of damage/support card, and the blue cards let you quickly move around and dodge enemy attacks. You can equip a second card to each of the cards in the primary slots, which can add more damage or status effects to your abilities. Each card has its own cooldown time, and I preferred the ones that I could quickly use again. You use these abilities with the A/B/X/Y buttons, and can use potions with the L button.

The Ever-Changing Palace has over a dozen stages inside of it, but it’s not possible to see all of them in one run because you have to choose which route you’ll take. There are convenient portals in each area that allow you to travel within that level only, which is a great feature that allows you to quickly get to a shop or healing item. In each stage, you’ll have to take out a bunch of different enemies and stay alive to get to the next area. I really liked the enemy designs – especially the artsy axolotls and the weird little bunnies.

Every kind of enemy has their own movement and attack patterns that you’ll need to learn; some have normal melee attacks, others have ranged attacks, and there are some with a mix of the two. Later enemies will blink out of sight and reappear to attack, so paying attention becomes increasingly important as you progress. You don’t have to defeat all of the enemies in each stage – only the ones that appear in rooms where gates come down and prevent you from leaving. I do recommend that you defeat as many enemies as you can to get more money and shards, but if your HP and healing items are depleted it’s best to just move on.

I believe there are 4 bosses total in the game, but you’ll only confront 3 in each complete run. Bosses are naturally faster and stronger, and I had to keep upgrading things after multiple boss defeats in order to eventually get past them. Traps around the palace will also damage you if you aren’t careful, but they don’t tend to kill you unless your HP was already low. The further you get in the palace, the harder it is to stay alive. And if you are defeated, you have to start over back at the beginning.

I did find myself losing over and over again at first because it took me a while to get used to combat. Regular enemies defeated me a lot in the beginning. When you are defeated, you lose all of your “currency” items from that run. Eventually, I came up with my preferred strategy of using ranged attacks that inflict status ailments plus frequent use of the dodging cards. I think I mainly preferred to use the firework card with the poison card attached to it so I’d cause a lot of damage really quickly. Once I got used to combat and learned the enemies’ patterns, I began to get a lot further in the palace.

Each stage has a shop where you can buy new/better cards to improve your chances of success; if you don’t like the cards on display you can pay to change them out. Treasure chests around the map are another source of cards. The rooms that lock you in until you defeat one or two rounds of enemies provide you with a card once you’ve won. Enemies do not drop cards, but you get card and trinket (equipment) blueprints, the occasional healing cupcake, money, and shards from them.

After you finish a stage, you’ll appear in the next one that you chose based on the path you took. The beginning of each stage after the entrance hall will include shops run by Dandy Ace’s assistants Jolly Jolly and Jenny Jenny. At Jolly Jolly’s shop, you exchange your shards from the last level to unlock new cards, trinkets, and upgrades. (I highly recommend using shards immediately because you’ll lose them if you’re defeated at any point.)

I would have liked more permanent upgrades for Dandy Ace’s HP; there don’t seem to be any other stats to consider, and usually my HP was limited to 500. Healing is extremely limited in Dandy Ace – you start the game with one potion per stage, but you can permanently upgrade the number of potions you can use at Jolly Jolly’s shop. You can choose between refilling your potions or one card in each area after completing the previous level.

Jenny Jenny’s shop offers the trinkets you’ve unlocked with Jolly Jolly. I think you get to equip a new trinket every area or so, and if you want to change out the trinkets you’re using you can pay a fee to do so. There’s also a bunny character who offers card upgrade services, and you can unlock the ability to upgrade your cards within each stage. I thought that the amount of money required to upgrade cards could get a little too expensive sometimes, but I managed.

There isn’t a whole lot of story or interactions with characters like Dandy Ace’s assistants, but what’s there is entertaining. As you make your way through a level, Lele will comment on what you are doing. Dialogue is voiced, and it’s voiced well. I enjoyed hearing Lele’s snarky quips and attempts at distracting Dandy Ace. Whenever an enemy drops a cupcake that would heal you, he’ll say, “That’s a poisonous cupcake – stay away!” I particularly enjoyed the joke about a dog that does a magic trick: “Houndini”! 🤣 It’s just a lot of silly humor that’s fun to experience while playing. I wanted to see more of these characters because I had such a good time with them.

After more than 20 hours across about 45 attempts, I finally defeated Lele the Green-Eyed Illusionist. Most runs seemed to last about 15 minutes until I began to get further into the palace each time, and my final run was about an hour. Once you’ve beaten the game in normal mode, hard mode is unlocked, which increases the amount of shards you can earn by 50%, makes enemy encounters harder, and only allows you to refill your healing potions every two maps instead of one.

If you like to keep track of what you’ve managed to achieve throughout the game, you can view them at the very beginning of the palace before starting a new run. You’ll be able to see a lot of detailed information, such as:

• which cards, trinkets, and upgrades you used the most
• which cards, trinkets, and permanent upgrades you have unlocked and which are still locked
• Stats for all runs
  • # of attempts
  • Deaths
  • Fastest, slowest, and shortest runs
• Stats for individual stages (i.e. best time)
• # of enemies killed
  • Which killed you the most
  • How many of each kind of enemy you killed
    • How many times you were killed by individual enemies
    • How much damage taken from individual enemies

I really felt a sense of accomplishment after beating the game because I’m usually not too good at action-based combat. Sometimes I’d get a little frustrated when I was defeated, but I would keep going and get better at it with each run. It can be challenging but it’s not unmanageable even for someone like me. Being able to see a breakdown of what I did in all of my attempts was pretty cool. Dandy Ace is cute, colorful, and entertaining; if you’re willing to repeat the same stages and experiment with play styles until you make it, you’re in for a…magical…experience. 😉 🪄

8.5/10