Into The Grid

The roguelike deckbuilder has a shape so settled that new entries are judged by how far they bend it. Draft cards, pick a node, fight, repeat. That template is why Into The Grid gets filed next to Slay the Spire with a Cyberpunk 2077 coat of paint. Flatline Studios keeps the card combat recognisable. It goes after the part of the formula most rivals leave alone: the map.

The player is a netrunner breaching the Grid, a neon digital world of guarded corporate fortresses. Runs don’t click through a branching chart of encounters. They unfold across isometric server areas explored in real time, where route planning and resource management decide which loot, upgrades and data a run collects before the next fight. When combat starts, the camera drops into a 3D first-person view. The game becomes a turn-based card battle built on program cards drawn from a deck called the Repo, with enemy intentions shown in advance.

The game entered Steam Early Access on November 10, 2025. The limits are structural: a thin card pool, two playable characters, no integrated story, and cyberpunk jargon that outpaces its explanations.

That split defines its market position. Into The Grid pitches a different structure inside a crowded genre. It sells now on the strength of its systems, and later, if the roadmap delivers, on the strength of its content. Every assessment of it, including ours, applies to the Early Access build rather than a 1.0 release.

• Real-time isometric exploration: Server areas replace the branching node map. Runs are about routing through corporate fortresses and managing resources while hunting loot, upgrades and data.
• First-person 3D card combat: Turn-based battles are shown from a first-person perspective. Program cards attack, defend and buff, and enemy intents are visible ahead of time.
• Virtual Memory (VIM) and Commands: Every card played charges a separate VIM pool, which is spent on special Commands. Weak hands still bank value, and combos can be built across turns.
• Repo and Console progression: Cards are collected and upgraded between fights. The netrunner’s Console takes hardware mods and perks that shape a run outside the hand.
• Two netrunners and a tutorial run: The Early Access build ships with two playable characters, with more planned. A dedicated tutorial run explains the terminology.
• Broad Steam support: Windows, macOS and SteamOS/Linux, with Steam Cloud, Family Sharing and broad language support.

Exploration Replaces the Map

Most deckbuilders use a node map because it reduces strategy to one readable decision: which fight, which shop, which risk. Into The Grid trades that for space. Server areas are explored in real time from an isometric view. The strategic layer becomes route planning and resource management: deciding which corners of a corporate fortress are worth the detour for loot, upgrades or data.

The upside is texture. A branching map is an abstraction, while a server floor is a place. Putting the run inside a navigable environment sells the netrunner fantasy far better than a column of icons. It also gives Flatline Studios a lever the genre rarely pulls. Spatial design can hide rewards, gate them behind risk, and make two runs feel different before a single card is played.

The cost is legibility and tempo. A node map shows every option at once. Exploration makes the player discover options, which makes decisions slower and harder to weigh. Pacing is the obvious risk: a structure built on traversal is where pace leaks. Traversal that adds no decisions is padding. This structure will succeed only if every corridor carries a choice.

Combat and the VIM Economy

Combat follows the genre’s proven grammar. Program cards attack, defend and buff, and enemies telegraph their next move. That visible-intent convention turns each turn into a solvable puzzle rather than a guess. Showing those fights in 3D from a first-person view is the bolder choice. It puts the player face-to-face with corporate security instead of watching a side-on diorama. It also asks more of the interface, which has to keep intents, statuses and hand state readable at a glance.

Virtual Memory (VIM) is the system that earns the game its strongest notices. Every card played adds to a separate VIM pool, which funds special Commands. The design goal is clear and smart. Deckbuilders live and die by draw variance, and a weak hand usually means a wasted turn. VIM converts that weak hand into banked progress. Low-impact cards still feed a future Command, and combo setups can be staged across turns.

That is a meaningful answer to the genre’s oldest frustration, but it also creates a balance pressure point. A resource that rewards card volume favours decks that play many cards per turn. If Commands are strong enough, the best deck shape bends toward feeding the meter rather than playing cards for their own effects. Balance is the obvious concern, and VIM is where most of the tuning work will land.

The Repo and the Console

Between fights, progression runs on two tracks. The Repo, the deck, grows through collected and upgraded cards. The Console, the netrunner’s hardware, takes hardware mods and perks: a relic-style layer that bends a run’s rules outside the hand. Splitting build identity between software and hardware fits the fiction neatly and gives each run two axes of customisation.

The constraint is supply. A thin card pool, the most common complaint, undercuts both tracks. Fewer cards means fewer synergies to chase, and the Console can only diversify runs as far as the deck underneath allows. Limited meta-progression makes this worse. Roguelikes keep players either through deep combinations or a steady drip of unlocks, and Into The Grid is currently thin on both.

Onboarding and Jargon

The fiction is committed. Decks are Repos, the secondary resource is Virtual Memory, special abilities are Commands, and the hardware layer is a Console. Each term fits the world. Together they create real onboarding friction, because a newcomer has to learn genre systems and a custom vocabulary at the same time. The dedicated tutorial run is the right instinct. Still, a one-time explanation isn’t enough; persistent in-context definitions would solve this more reliably than any tutorial.

Early Access Scope

Two playable characters ship now, with more planned. Story and lore aren’t built in yet, so the corporate-fortress premise works as atmosphere rather than narrative. Fiddly menus and pacing are the weak points. These are the kinds of gaps Early Access exists to close. They also define what a purchase buys today: a strong systems prototype with a short content runway.

The art direction leans fully into neon cyberpunk, and the soundtrack matches it. The style is saturated light, corporate architecture, and digital space presented as hostile territory. The dual presentation gives each half of a run its own visual identity, with isometric views for exploration and first-person 3D for combat. The cut into first-person sells the moment of breach.

The UI is the weaker half. Menus are fiddly, and in a deckbuilder the interface is the game. Every extra click between reading a card and playing it, or between inspecting a Console mod and understanding it, is friction repeated on every turn of every run. Combined with the jargon load, menu clarity is the most urgent presentation fix.

On performance, the design suggests moderate demands. Real-time 3D exploration and first-person combat ask more of hardware than a static 2D card game, but the scope is that of a tactical indie title, not an open world. Official SteamOS support suggests handheld-class hardware is an intended target.

Into The Grid is a Steam release, and its listed features apply across all three supported operating systems.

• Operating systems: Windows, macOS and SteamOS/Linux. Native Mac and Linux support is still uncommon enough in the genre to matter to those players.
• Steam Cloud: Progress is tied to the account rather than a single machine.
• Family Sharing: Supported. Households can try an Early Access game without buying a second copy.
• Languages: Broad support. Wide localisation matters more than usual here, since the game’s jargon is already a barrier in any language.
• Input: Pointer-driven card selection and isometric navigation map most naturally to mouse and keyboard. Handheld play on SteamOS depends on how well that interface works with controller input. Given how fiddly the menus are, that is the area to watch.

Into The Grid makes two good design arguments. Moving the strategic layer off the node map and into explorable server space gives the roguelike deckbuilder a sense of place it usually lacks, and VIM tackles the genre’s oldest complaint — the dead draw — with a resource that rewards every play. Those systems are worth watching.

What sits on them is thin. A small card pool, two netrunners, no story, limited meta-progression and jargon the interface doesn’t yet support add up to a structure better than the content filling it. Pacing and balance, especially around a volume-rewarding resource like VIM, are the tuning work that will decide its standing at 1.0.

At $11.99 in Early Access, it is hard to recommend for most people. Genre veterans who value fresh structure over content volume may find the ideas worth the price of admission; everyone else should keep it on the wishlist.