Filiokus Launches Demo of Roguelite Deckbuilder with a Mouse!

April 29, 2026 | Independent Norwegian studio Filiokus today launched the free public demo for Talystro. This roguelite deckbuilder challenges players to think differently about combat by turning mathematics into its core weapon. Talystro combines dice rolls, cards, and creative arithmetic, casting players as the unlikely Math Mouse standing against the evil Necrodicer and an army of corrupted numbers brought to life.

In Talystro, combat isn’t about slowly chipping away at enemy health. Instead, players must match the exact value of their enemies to defeat them instantly. Each card contains unfinished calculations, variables and modifiers, while dice rolls dynamically shape the possibilities available each turn. Success depends on understanding the order of operations, adapting to shifting probabilities and making strategic decisions as each encounter unfolds.

The demo drops players straight into the Wildlands, the first act of Talystro’s world, for a complete run of seven levels, culminating in a boss fight that puts everything learned to the test. Including two modes playing on Normal or Expert, a full run takes around 45 minutes, packed with decisions, dice rolls and the satisfying click of a perfectly matched calculation.

The studio’s signature hand-drawn, frame-by-frame animation style has expanded throughout the experience, with new animations woven into the moment-to-moment flow of play. Music and full sound design are now part of the game, adding a layer of personality and charm that brings the world of Talystro to life in a way the closed build only hinted at.

“Talystro is built on our belief that mathematics is fundamentally creative,” said Martin Lothe Sæterdal of Filiokus. “With this demo, we’re inviting players to experiment, adapt, and discover the beauty of problem-solving through play. The best feedback we’ve received so far? ‘This is the most fun I have ever had doing math.’”

What’s in the Demo

• A complete first act run through the Wildlands, across seven levels, including a boss fight
• Around 45 minutes of play per run, with Normal and Expert modes available from the start
• Dice and card combat where creativity and arithmetic are your only weapons
• A growing collection of cards, upgrades and artifacts to discover across each run
• New unlocks that carry over between runs, rewarding continued play
• Hand-drawn, frame-by-frame animations and full music and sound design throughout
• Accessible by design, no time pressure, no camera movement, built for thoughtful play 

Availability

The Talystro free demo is available now on Steam for PC. The full game is in development with a release planned for later in 2026.

Download the demo and wishlist the full game at: store.steampowered.com/app/3524740/Talystro

About Filiokus

Filiokus is a Norwegian game studio on a mission to rethink what educational games can be. Viewing games as artistic systems driven by mathematics, the studio focuses on highlighting the creative, strategic, and expressive sides of math through interactive experiences. Talystro is the team’s second title, continuing their exploration of how probability, arithmetic, and play can come together to create something both meaningful and fun.

Article by: Susan N.

Read More

Algo Bot - PC Review

If you're a part of the admittedly small group of people that is attracted to the idea of a "programming-puzzle" game, leave your expectations at the door. All done? Good, let us proceed.

AlgoBot is a charming and quirky puzzle game that puts you in control of a fairly basic robotic AI in charge of menial tasks related to ship labour. All of the humans are frozen for deep-space transport, and it is your job to… essentially fix the problems that you created to begin with. It's not much of a story, but it is a basic premise to get you started, and it's generic enough to let you fill in as much as you need to tackle the scores of puzzles that are to be arrayed before you.

While the idea is that you solve these problems with 'programming', the reality is that you aren't truly programming anything. Imagine playing through a level of Mario Bros where you have to put all of your button-presses in at the beginning of the level, then hit play and watch it play out before your eyes. If you did it correctly, you advance… and if not, then you restart and adjust your command queue with no penalty. It's rather much the same premise as the old DOS and early-windows era game series; The Incredible Machine, if your hand was stuck to a certain track.

The difficulty is easy if you're a procedural-minded person, and fair if you're just a puzzle nut, with added complexity and maneuvers thrown in just when you feel like you've attained 'mastery' with the last command put in. The commands are varied to let you do things like advance forward, turn 90 degrees, turn 180 degrees, press a button, pick something up, drop something, Wrapping this all up into a visual package is a fairly simple UI. It doesn't need to be complex, and it's all done in a way that uses images instead of words to transcend language-barriers.

The music and sound effects are spot-on, but for a puzzle game, that really doesn't really say all that much, and they're both fairly forgettable… but we all have different music preferences, and we all have different things that help put us in the puzzlin' mindset.

Now what isn't forgettable about this game isn't the story, or the gameplay, or even the music. No, it's the dialogue. The narrator/guide of the story, a smarmy robot that goes by PAL. PAL has a dry sarcasm that took me off guard when I first played, and I enjoyed every single interaction with the pest, even when he was telling me how I had messed up my command-queue.

In short, this is a fun game, and it's easily worth what they're asking for it. Just don't expect any programming.

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Fishing Cactus
Publisher(s):
Fishing Cactus
Plug in Digital
Genre(s):
Puzzle
Programming
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
NA

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Marc H.

Read More