Shroom and Gloom turns deckbuilding into a hand-drawn descent

Deckbuilders remain plentiful, but Shroom and Gloom takes a decidedly different route. Team Lazerbeam combines card-driven roguelike progression, first-person action and a punk-cartoon art style inside a fire-lit dungeon filled with mycelium.

The game enters Early Access on 10 September 2026. Players carry two decks: one for navigating winding underground tunnels and another for fighting the creatures waiting within. Reaching the Gloom unlocks characters, cards and further artwork.

Team Lazerbeam describes itself as a video-game band focused on making games that feel more adventurous and lively. Its Cape Town development community also played an important role, with local meetups providing feedback throughout production.

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Two decks, one first-person dungeon

The team began with a clear central idea: a first-person deckbuilder in which cards feel as though they are held in the player’s hand and cast directly into the world. The developers were inspired by influential deckbuilders, but deliberately wanted their own structure rather than a conventional imitation.

The guiding principle was simple: if something could become a card, it should become a card. That thinking led to the two-deck system, while smaller design decisions continued to change during development.

From game jam to full game

Shroom and Gloom began during a seven-day first-person game jam. A month-long art test followed, exploring how far the visual style could be pushed. Two years before the Early Access release, a three-month prototype combined those lessons and tested whether the concept had enough substance to continue.

Player feedback changed the project’s scale. The original plan was more pared back, but players wanted additional depth, including characters and more lore. Feedback from Cape Town’s active local game-development scene repeatedly helped the team solve design problems and choose a direction.

Hand-drawn, three-dimensional and slightly grotesque

The visual identity grows from Team Lazerbeam’s established interests: hand-drawn imagery that is cute, funny, punk-inspired and a little gross. Earlier work had explored two-dimensional drawings inside three-dimensional spaces, while the game jam pushed that approach into a first-person 3D deckbuilder.

The team spent a month testing how to sustain that style across a complete game and how to place hand-drawn assets inside a large world. It was both an artistic and technical challenge. The drawings use only white, black and grey; lighting supplies colour, atmosphere and variation. The developers remain committed to drawing everything by hand.

Building the creatures

The graycaps were developed through experiments with social hierarchy, cultural roles, body textures, movement and variations in line weight. Animation styles were tested before the team settled on shared guidelines that still allowed each monster to have a distinct personality.

Creatures were also designed for particular biomes and levels, with forms suited to the environments in which they live. Physical clay models helped make the designs believable. Early sketches produced monsters that would topple over in the real world, so sculpting clarified proportions, gravity and balance. The models also became useful references for shading and depth in the final 2D artwork.

second batch of sculpts inspired by grown mushies

Real mushrooms behind the fantasy

The team’s interest in nature extended beyond the screen. Members photographed mushrooms they encountered outdoors, grew their own using kits, added mycology books to their library and closely observed fungi used as food. That research helped give the game’s mushroom life a grounded starting point.

Art that pulls players in

Team Lazerbeam’s view is that the artwork attracts players while the gameplay keeps them engaged. With backgrounds in animation, music and visual art across the team, the developers begin by establishing a mood and then build systems that support it.

That relationship is central to Shroom and Gloom: vivid hand-drawn creatures make the subterranean world inviting, while the two-deck structure gives each expedition its strategic identity.