SuperTaxCity - ★★★✮☆
Image: soramame-koubou / IndieLoupe
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Developer: soramame-koubou
Publisher: KIC Games
Release: 30 January 2025
Retail Price (Steam): €9,75/$9.99/£8.50
Playtime upon Review: 8.8 hours
As an indie game reviewer, there are a few games from the last few years that I feel I should have played but, for one reason or another, have never got around to. It’s rarely a conscious decision, usually I just didn’t have the time - but there is one exception to that: Balatro. I’ve never played it, and I’m doubtful I ever will.
I know Balatro isn’t a horror game, but that last one of those I went near was 2015’s Until Dawn - I’m just far too jumpy to play them - and Balatro scares me even more than they do. I try my best to avoid learning anything about it, and refuse to even watch someone else play it - the thought being that, if I don’t have time for all those other games now, God help them ever have their cartridges dusted off if they’ve also got a Balatro addiction to contend with.
Perhaps, then, I should have been more careful before I picked up SuperTaxCity from Japanese developer soramame-koubou. Published by KIC Games, it describes itself as a city-building/roguelike crossover. I thought I’d grab it for a quick little game to look at while working on a review for a longer game, and ended up playing it for almost nine hours - a number which is sure to increase. Suffice to say, it has managed to get its little roguelite claws into me: perhaps not to the extent that Balatro might have, but it’s certainly not loosening its grip any time soon.
“I wasn’t expecting the level of depth I found, and thought the replayability might wear off quickly. Now, I can see myself playing it for many more hours.”
We’ll get my main point of contention out of the way first: this game is not a city-builder, in the same way that Euro Truck Simulator is not a racing game. It has far more in common with Luck be a Landlord than even the most minimal of city builders, so if that’s what you’re looking for, this ain’t it. With that said, the Luck be a Landlord comparison is not particularly apt either, as SuperTaxCity operates within a refreshingly unique niche.
The builds available are pretty evident early on, but there’s a good number of them, and they all feel viable. There’s a deceptive amount of strategy involved, and each different city and challenge shakes up the game by establishing new rules which lend themselves better to some methods than others. I’ll admit that there’s a small part of me which wonders if the game wouldn’t benefit from one more card package, but everything feels so well balanced in its current state that adding more buildings might’ve thrown off the consistency of other strategies too much. At the moment, its difficulty feels just right - challenging in the later levels, but not unfairly so. When you don’t win, you usually have a good idea of what went wrong.
The English translation could do with some work in places - even if “convenient store” and “shushi” are quite endearing, there are a couple of moments in the tutorial which could be a little clearer, and one or two buildings which need experimenting with to be 100% sure on what they do. It’s by no means a wide-spread issue, however, and one I suspect might get patched relatively soon.
I obviously didn’t need to play SuperTaxCity for as long as I did to form an opinion on it, but I couldn’t stop going back to it. I have a feeling that, with the roguelite deckbuilder genre being so heavily saturated, SuperTaxCity could end up getting slept on. To look at, I wasn’t expecting the level of depth I found, and thought the replayability might wear off quickly. Now, I can see myself playing it for many, many more hours. If you’re a fan of the genre, I can’t recommend it strongly enough for an experience that feels different to many of its competitors. SuperTaxCity is awarded ★★★✮☆ by IndieLoupe.com.
The reviewed product was purchased by IndieLoupe.com. SuperTaxCity was originally awarded ★★★★☆, but was revised down after a change in our review process.
