Review: Unstoppable:: Unstoppable: A Solo and Two-Player Cooperative Deck-building/Crafting Game. A Review.

by saunders

This review originally appeared in the cooperative board game and card games blog: CO-OP Gestalt. See link below.

https://coopgestalt.com/2025/01/25/unstoppable-a-solo-and-tw...

Unstoppable: A Solo and Two-Player Cooperative Deck-building/Crafting Game. A Review.

Unstoppable is a cooperative deck-building/card-crafting game! This was #4 on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Board and Card Games of 2025! This was on Kickstarter back in June 2024, and delivered to me Saturday January 17th, 2025! I backed it, expecting it to arrive later in 2025, but it actually delivered early! (It originally promised February 2025). Amazing!

This delivered with three playmats, the Tyrant’s End expansion, and the base game: see above.

So what is Unstoppable? The game describes itself as a Roguelike Momentum Deckbuilder … meh, that’s an okay description, but I’d prefer to call it a deck-building/card-crafting boss-battler instead (I think it’s just “hot” to call games “roguelike” at the moment).

Be clear that this game ONLY supports 1 to 2 players before you get too excited; this game reminds me of a more tightly-coupled Astro Knights (see our review of Astro Knights here and here: Unstoppable still has that sci-fi  feel, that deck-building feel, and that boss-battling feel … just like Astro Knights, but it also has some really different ideas.  What do I mean by that? Let’s take a look below!

Unboxing

The Unstoppable base box is actually not that big; see Coke can for perspective above.

This is a deck-building game (and card-crafting: we’ll touch on that in a second) , so there are a ton of cards: See above.

There’s also some money tokens (credits, far right: I mean, this is a deck-building game, so you have to buy SOMETHING to upgrade your deck), hit point tokens (middle: you gotta do damage to take out minions on the way to the big bad boss), and some action point tokens (far left: yes, this game has action points too!).

There’s not THAT much in the base box; mostly cards and tokens and a few larger mats.

Playmats

I can hear some of you asking … “So Rich, why are there three playmats?” An excellent question.

The playmats are double-sided.

One side of the playmat is a single player mat. This is where one player’s cards, play board, threat, tokens, etc. goes. See above.

The other side of the playmat is where the main upgrades (this is a deck-building game, remember?), the core cards, and the big bad boss you battle lives. See above.

The reason there are three playmats is because the game is either 1-player or 2-players! Each player gets a mat (2 mats) and the big bad boss gets a mat (for up to 3 mats). See below for a 2-Player set-up:player 1 on left, player 2 on right, upgrades/boss on top.

So, to be clear, the playmats cost extra money; they don’t come with the game. Were they worth the extra money? So, I paid $100 for the base game, 3 mats, and one expansion. I like how they mats organize the game, but strictly speaking you don’t need them!

The rulebook DOES show how the game sets-up without the mats, so you don’t need them. But I liked them; much like the Aeon’s End: The Descent playmat was so useful,
Unstoppable. But maybe you should see if you like the base game before you go investing all the $$$ for the playmats and expansion … keep reading …

Rulebook

I am a little grumbly with this rulebook. There are about 3 or 4 things that it could have EASILY done to make it SIGNIFICANTLY better.

The good news is that it gets an A- on the Chair Test.

It opens up and sits perfectly well on the chair next to me, making it easy to consult. So, they definitely did that right: see above.

The Components page (on the left above) is “okay”. The first real problem is … how do you set this up? There is a discussion (right side of the page) about “how you set-up and sleeve” the game, but THERE IS NOT A SINGLE PICTURE describing it! I was able to figure it out, but people who have no idea what card-crafting is or even deck-building will be completely lost with these directions (far right side of the page). A single picture might take this game from unplayable to playable for certain people. And a little picture would have made me happy; show me how the decks fit together. Please? I feel like the description above wasn’t quite enough.

The set-up was pretty good: see above.

The next place I had problems was the card anatomy. Here, the Defense and Bonus areas on the Threat Cards were poorly described. The problem is that most Threat Cards use the SKULL symbol, and it’s not clear what that means (the skull on the Threat Cards is a different color and/or outline than the reference card: we discuss more below). A simple example describing one combat would have helped that.

The rest of the rulebook is pretty good.

I also really wanted a game summary on the back; I ended up paging through the gameplay pages over and over as I played; it would have been nice had those been summarized on the back.

This rulebook was … ok. I just wanted a few more examples, a few more discriminators, and a few more pictures in the rulebook to help me get into the game. After a little trek onto BGG (see thread here, I feel like I got my questions answered, but the rulebook could have been better.

It worked. Mostly. Except for set-up. It could have been significantly better with a few extra pictures.

Storybook

There is a storybook for the game.  You don’t need it to play the game.  It’s just flavor text.  I never read it, and I feel bad for not reading it?

Sleevening

Like I mentioned in the rulebook section, it was more work than I expected to get this game into playable shape. It took me about an hour or so? Basically, you have to “sleeven” the game and put a bunch of cards into sleeves.

Let’s be clear: the sleeves come with the game! Although this is “mostly” a deck-building game (you can build a deck, add better cards, and cull lesser cards: See our Top 10 Cooperative Deck-Building Games for more discussion of deck-building games), it is also a card-crafting game; this is a term that came into parlance with another of John D Clair’s Games: Mystic Vale (although this is a slightly different flavor of that idea). This game is built for you to put cards inside the sleeves, and have multiple cards together at the same time.

Once the cards get going, they will have two sides: a core side (above right: the GOOD side) and a Threat side (above left: the BAD side). There we actually two cards inside the sleeve! This basically allows the GOOD side and BAD side to vary independently.

The GOOD sides are what the characters can do in the game: deal damage, shield themselves, etc. See above.

The GOOD cards tell you which BAD cards they pair with; see the backs above (well, the intro cards do, once you start playing, you get random BAD cards).

The Threat cards (the other side) will be the bad guys that the players fight during the game. These cards, when defeated, will turn over and flow into the GOOD guys hand on the good side!

You might ask “Why do we have these weird rules and weird backs/fronts?” It’s to support UPGRADES (and allow the fronts and backs to vary independently, but that’s a complex discussion).

Probably the coolest part of Unstoppable is that you can UPGRADE a card: it stays attached to the card … in the sleeve! The reason these cards are so WEIRD-shaped is that the upgrades go into the right part of the card and basically stay attached/stay in the card sleeve so that card is better for the rest of the game!

See above as we try to choose between two UPGRADES: Do I want to making it Repeating or add a 2000w Arc Capacitor? The repeater gives me three separate shots, but the capacitor gives me one big shot!! Which do I want?

I choose the capacitor! See as I slide it in …

… and see as it augments my card! Pretty cool!

This is the core crafting mechanic of the game; this is the cool gimmick.

Gameplay

Each player chooses one character to play: see above.

The back of your card indicates which specialized cards you start with (and a little flavor text).

The player sets-up with their starting deck: three special cards and 7 standard “starting” cards. They set-up on the player side.

Your deck goes on the character mat, with Armor and Hit points being tracked.

You also set-up three Threats you must deal with in your personal space. You start with three cards in hand, three action points, and three Threats to deal with.

To play a card, you need to be able to pay the Action point cost (in the upper right corner).  Playing Strike gives you a simple 1 hit point of damage.

You do damage to one of the three Threats: see above (more of them if they are FAST); if any of these Threats survive to the next round, they will do Damage to you!

If you take out a Threat, the card FLIPS to the GOOD side and comes into your hand! That’s right, you don’t really draw from your deck: the main way to get new cards in your hand is to take out Threats! That’s very interesting!

Of course, this is a deck-building game, so you have to get new cards somehow.  Basically, every turn, you get to choose one of three (you draft) the three cards where the BLUE LEVEL marker is (see above).  There are 6 levels of core cards, with higher levels being obviously better!

Every time you empty your deck, you level up and move the level marker up. (There are also ways to move the level marker up quicker, but only temporarily). Leveling-up is a fun time; you get to CULL a card, move the level marker up, and anticipate some new “better” cards!

This is a boss-battler, so you have to take out the BIG BAD BOSS; depending on which one you choose. See above. Interestingly, you can only do “boss damage” (see it blurred below) when you kill certain threats from your deck. These special threats get added every time you level up (and you usually start with 2 of these “boss threats”: see Below.)

There’s actually quite a bit more to the game, but that’s the basics.

Build a better deck and craft better cards! Take out local Threats on the way to taking out the Big Bad!

Solo Play

So, this game is definitely built for solo (thanks for following Saunders’ Law), with 2-Player being the secondary mode. See above: even the font hints at that disparity (SOLO is all big)!

I ended up playing about 10 games of the solo game in the first few days after I got this game! There are three bosses that come with the game, and I was able to defeat each one … after I lost a few times. (There are ways to up the difficulty, and there are 4 characters to play with to give the game more replayability)

It takes a little while to get into the “flow” of the game. There are a lot of rules, there are a lot sections, but there are a lot of decisions (in a good way) to make too.

For example, there are 4 factions in the game that all play VERY differently! If you have multiple cards of a faction, they can “support” the other cards and make them more powerful! I tended to get the Silver faction (the little diagonal raven) in my first few games. But there is also worth in getting multiple factions, especially with the UNITE keyword which gives you special on how many different factions you have in play/in hand!

My favorite decisions in the game came when I was stuck; it was pretty clear that I was going to die and lose, but if I could upgrade my cards JUST RIGHT before I went into battle, I could stay alive! The UPGRADES, and the fact that you can do them anytime on your turn, really make it so you can pivot and be smart! I really appreciated that I could feel clever. Deck-building games tend to have some randomness in them, bu

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