A la Card puts you behind the counter of a food truck, hands you a deck full of ingredients, and starts sending hungry customers your way. You’ll make burgers, tacos, fries, and other dishes, but keeping everyone fed is only part of the job.
Developed by two-person Canadian studio Shook Loose, A la Card is a roguelike deckbuilder where you can pull cards apart and rebuild them. Effects can be moved from one food to another, triggers changed, stats swapped, and flavors inherited. By the end of a good run, the cards you started with can look completely different.
Released in December 2025, A la Card has managed to stay well under the radar. It currently has fewer than 100 Steam reviews, despite 97% of them being positive.
Get the Orders Out
Customers arrive hungry, and your job is to serve enough calories to keep them happy. Each card represents a different food or ingredient, complete with its own calorie value and effects. Playing cards in particular sequences can trigger bonuses, while combining the right ingredients lets you complete recipes and turn several cards into a single dish.
Recipes also free up valuable space in your hand. That becomes increasingly important as you try to squeeze more calories out of each turn and build combinations that can handle tougher customers. Before long, you’re less concerned about making a sensible meal and more interested in how many calories you can force through that serving window.
Rip Your Cards Apart
This is where A la Card shines. Events throughout each run let you physically change how your cards work. Take an effect you like from one food and move it somewhere better. Change the condition that triggers an ability, swap stats between cards, and alter their colors, flavors, and calories. It gives you much more control over your deck than simply choosing cards and upgrading them.
Find an effect that would work perfectly with another card and you can make that combination happen yourself. A fairly useless ingredient can become an important part of your build once you’ve stripped away what you don’t want and replaced it with something better.
There are hundreds of cards to find, alongside dozens of events and upgrades, so there are plenty of ways to mess with the menu.
Bosses Aren’t Ordering Normally
Each area ends with a boss, and they’re not interested in simply ordering a bigger meal. Bosses introduce their own rules. One might give you a specific card and refuse to leave until you serve it back. Another fills your serving window with half-eaten scraps, taking up space you’d rather use for something considerably more useful.
Suddenly, that perfectly tuned calorie machine you’ve spent the run creating has another problem to solve. It stops you relying entirely on one trick. You still need enough flexibility in your deck to deal with whatever gets pushed across the counter.
Keep Building the Menu
Completing runs unlocks new starting decks, trinkets, and additional cards for future attempts. Each starting deck also has its own trinket that changes how it plays, giving you different foundations to build around. More trinkets can be picked up during runs, adding another layer of effects to combine with your increasingly mangled cards.
There are also challenges attached to the different decks, giving you something else to chase once you’ve found a setup you enjoy. A la Card has the familiar ingredients of a roguelike deckbuilder, but being able to tear cards apart is what makes it stand out. You’re not waiting for the perfect card to appear. You can take the parts you want and try to build it yourself.
If spending a run dismantling burgers, stealing effects from fries, and creating a completely broken food truck deck sounds good, A la Card deserves a spot on the menu.