A 1-2 player deck builder where you add powerful cards to your deck…

…which become the very enemies trying to kill you.

Gather your allies and sharpen your skills, for the darkest days are yet to come.

Unstoppable Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

In Unstoppable, you’re working through waves of threats, building up your deck, and trying to defeat a boss before your health runs out or the danger track expires.

The central theme is that every card in the game is double-sided, sleeved together with a threat on one side and a player card on the other.

At the start of each turn, you draft a card from one of six level decks and pair it face-down with a threat card, creating a new double-sided card that enters your deck.

When enemies appear from your deck, and you defeat them, you flip them over and add them straight to your hand to play immediately. Your deck is therefore both your resource and your enemy roster.

Cards come in two types: tactics, which are one-shot effects that discard after use, and allies, which stay in play and provide ongoing abilities each turn.

How do you win?

Defeat the boss scenario before you run out of health, or the danger track reaches the end.

The game comes with three bosses, each with different mechanisms.

Main Mechanisms

Deck building, card crafting, hand management, and boss battling. There’s no traditional card draw; you draft fresh cards each turn from level piles, which means you’re always improving but also always escalating the threats you’ll face.

USP

Cards in your deck being the enemies you fight is very clever. Every defeated threat flips into a playable card you immediately put to use, which means defeating enemies rewards you twice. Once for the damage, once for the card.

Theme

The character variety gives the game some personality, and the card art is good. The theming on the bosses is thinner than it should.

Setup

Setup involves sleeving cards together, which is part of the game’s identity, but it does mean your first setup will take a while. As does tear down.

Components & Artwork

Mostly cards and tokens, with playmats that are double-sided for solo or two-player games. The components are ok but the card art is good.

The double-sided cards are clever, but fiddly, especially getting them in and out of sleeves. You also need to keep track of orientation, and flipping them is more of a faff than it needs to be.

Ease of Teaching

The core concept of double-sided cards, plus the various resource icons and actions, takes a moment to learn.

Once it does, it’s not complicated, but the timing and momentum management are more difficult than they should be.

Similar Games

Thunderstone Quest covers similar ground with deck building against escalating dungeon threats, but with more players and more variety.

Marvel Champions is the other comparison. Hero-driven hand management against a boss with a danger clock ticking.

Both are better overall.

Unstoppable Review

Positives

The double-sided card mechanism is genuinely good.

The game loop is quick and easy once you get going.

Negatives

Two players is the ceiling, and BGG suggests it’s best solo, so it’s less co-op than it could be.

The free turn order in the two-player mode sounds cool, but it just slows the game down between rounds.

The double-sided cards, for as good and fun as they are, are too awkward.

Summary

Unstoppable is a fun deck builder with an original concept. But the player count cap, the two-player turn order issue, the amount of sumbology, and the physical mess of the cards drag it down.

Jesta ThaRogue