Clutchtime: Basketball Deckbuilder

I love seeing new twists on genres that we see done in the same way over and over. A lot of the time it is indie developers leading the charge of innovation, and with Clutchtime: Basketball Deckbuilder and developer Bigosaur, that is the case as well. You may have played a basketball sim before, and you may have played a deckbuilding game before, but have you played a basketball deckbuilding game before?

Clutchtime is a novel marriage of the two genres, transforming basketball into something fresh that even non-basketball fans can pick up and play. With that said, there’s an unnecessary grind to its difficulty and progression system that might turn some players off.

The setup is simple: select a team to play as from a list of dozens across multiple continents, or even national teams, then pick one of four game modes to jump into. Each team has a slightly different starting deck of five players, with three cards representing each player’s skillset. So, for instance, your Center may have a block card, a rebound card, and a dunk card to start out. Every card is a basketball action or term, and each card has a different stamina value.

I was pleasantly surprised by the breadth of the cards in Clutchtime. There are dozens of cards covering every basketball term you can probably think of: lob pass, foul, timeout, behind-the-back pass, corner three, crossover dribble, and even one that lets you complain to the referees, which could result in you receiving a technical foul card. Bigosaur thought of everything when it comes to translating basketball actions to playing cards.

Regardless of which team you select, you can manually edit their deck before jumping into a game mode. You can add or remove cards that you’ve unlocked and even edit player names if you choose. From there, you will jump into one of four game modes, though two are locked by progression to start.

Tournament is a single-game elimination format tournament for up to 16 teams. Playoffs is essentially the same thing but adds the NBA-style best-of-seven games format to the mix. Season mode is for up to 10 teams where you play each team once and then have a four-team playoff based on the standings. And finally, there is the Full Season mode, which can be for 18-30 teams, sees you playing each team twice, and has a 16-team playoff, just like the real-life NBA.

Here’s the problem: I haven’t been able to play Full Season mode because it requires finishing a run in Season on the highest difficulty to unlock it, and you must complete each of the six difficulties one by one across a new run of Season to do so. Every mode is like that, requiring you to complete each difficulty in succession before unlocking the next. Here’s the other problem with forcing players to crawl before they sprint down the court: the lower difficulties can be totally mindless and boring to play. Thank the heavens for an autoplay function that lets me set-it-and-forget-it when I get up by 50 or 60 points on the low-difficulty AI.

In other words, let me figure out which difficulty I need to play at. In a game like this, I’ll figure it out quicker than a fastbreak. I get that Clutchtime is embracing some roguelike elements here, but it really stinks that what sounds like the coolest mode is locked behind this much grinding, seemingly just to prolong my time with the game. Which is kind of at odds with Clutchtime’s easily digestible basketball games that take about 10 minutes to play, making it perfect for a quick Steam Deck session before bed or while my infant naps.

Speaking of Steam Deck, Clutchtime is an excellent Steam Deck game. It runs like Hakeem “The Dream” and controls intuitively without having to manipulate any settings. Even the touchscreen controls are great for when I needed to lay the Deck down to rest my old, weary hands. For a Steam Deck-only PC player like me, I have zero complaints in that regard.

Out on the hardwood, the gameplay loop satisfies. Like real basketball, the objective is to outscore your opponent over four 12-minute quarters (sometimes 10-minute). Each time a card is played, 15 seconds tick off the game clock, and there’s also a shot clock to limit the number of cards you can play, although it’s quite generous. More restrictive is the stamina system, which sees you starting each turn with a certain amount of juice, depending on the difficulty. Each card in your deck has a stamina value that hits against your stamina pool each turn, requiring you to think strategically when choosing which cards to play.

You’ll want to consider how much time is on the clock, what defensive cards, if any, your opponent has played (or could play) that may negate your own cards, and what is the most efficient sequence to play your cards.

Depending on how you build your team, you could have a mix of card types, which include shot cards, action cards, defense cards, and team cards. Do you want your deck to include mostly offensive cards to try and overwhelm your opponent with an onslaught of shot cards? Or how about stacking the deck with defense cards and abiding by the old sports adage of “defense wins championships”? It’s totally up to you, though I personally kept a nice mix of every card type on my bench to be prepared for anything.

During games, you get to select a card to add to your deck between quarters and sometimes get to keep one permanently at the end of a game as well. Between games, your assistant coach can upgrade a card for you to give it an extra ability or trait. But on the contrary, a tough film study session could mean that you need to pick a card in your deck and destroy it—or burn the tape, as they say in sports. This adds another layer of deckbuilding strategy, especially after you’ve seen the other team’s deck in action, which allows you to make small adjustments on the fly, just like real basketball.

Contingent upon deck composition, some cards feel OP, like the crossover dribble card. Man, that thing shreds the defense by reducing every shot card in your hand to a zero stamina cost, letting you go on a massive and often devastating run, if timed correctly. Most cards have a trait or ability, sometimes multiple, and is something else to consider when choosing which to play. They might have the unstoppable trait, which scores regardless of the defense, or the instant trait, which takes no time off the clock when played. Then there are abilities that are more card-specific, such as the corner three card’s ability that lowers its stamina cost by one for each successive turn it remains in your hand. So, if you’re patient, after a few turns, you could play the corner three card for no stamina at all.

There are also several cards that have linking effects. Sticking with the corner three card as an example, the skip pass card will add a corner three to your hand immediately when played. Another example of this is the lob pass, which reduces the stamina cost of the next shot card played to zero. You can start to see the type of strategies and synergies you can implement, depending on how you build your deck.

I like a whole lot about Clutchtime: how it translates basketball to a card game, the strategic variety of its playstyles, and the sheer volume of cards on offer. But I take massive exception to it gatekeeping an entire game mode behind a grindy difficulty structure that it forces on you. I don’t need it to artificially prolong my time with the game. If it’s good enough, it will do that on its own.

On the other hand, I understand that it’s a deckbuilder with some roguelike influences, and that’s sort of a staple of the genre. I would argue that it doesn’t have to be and probably isn’t necessary in Clutchtime’s case, though. It’s like being on a two-on-one fastbreak, having an open lane to the hoop for a slam dunk, and yet you decide to do a no-look behind-the-back pass to a teammate for a contested layup instead. Just take the easy bucket, dude.