Every enemy in Shroom and Gloom is edible. You can skewer them, season them, roast them, eat them to recover health, or throw their remains into a cooking pot and turn them into soup. Considering the enemies are enormous mushrooms with teeth, dinner might require a little bravery.
Shroom and Gloom launches into Steam Early Access today, September 10, bringing Team Lazerbeam’s first-person roguelike deckbuilder to more than 200,000 players who have already wishlisted it.
Published by Devolver Digital, the game has come a long way since Team Lazerbeam released its first playable prototype after just three months of development in September 2024. The response helped turn that small project into a full game, and two years later, it’s ready to send everyone into The Gloom.
Two Decks Are Better Than One
Shroom and Gloom calls itself a double-deckbuilder because you’re actually putting together two decks during a run. Your Combat deck handles the dangerous stuff. These are the cards you’ll use when another group of angry mushrooms gets in the way, with attacks that can hack, slash, roast, and eventually prepare your enemies for lunch.
The Explore deck comes out between those battles. Its cards let you interact with the dungeon itself, whether you’re searching, breaking, unlocking, igniting, feeding, or fixing something you’ve discovered underground. It also plays a part in modifying your cards and finding new weapons and abilities.
Both sides come together as you work your way towards the mysterious underground realm known as The Gloom.
That Little Starting Card Can Get Ridiculous
Finding a powerful card is always nice, but Shroom and Gloom also lets you take the rubbish little thing you started with and turn it into something terrifying.
Cards can be grown and modified repeatedly throughout a run, and there isn’t a hard limit on how far that process can go. Starting attacks can eventually become enormously powerful, while already rare cards can be pushed into the sort of game-breaking territory that makes big numbers start appearing all over the screen.
The Early Access version arrives with around 300 Explore and Combat cards for each of its two pathways, with both routes offering their own card pools and characters.
There are five playable characters at launch too including Paperboy, Lunch-lady, Concerned Parent, Janitor, and Activist. Quests can unlock characters and add more cards to their pools, giving you plenty more to chase after once you’ve started getting comfortable underground. Although, comfortable might be pushing it.
From Three Months of Development to 200,000 Wishlists
The road to Early Access has been a pretty remarkable one for Team Lazerbeam. The South African studio first shared Shroom and Gloom as a small prototype in 2024. Players liked it, publishers came calling, and Team Lazerbeam eventually joined forces with Devolver Digital to turn it into something considerably bigger.
An official Steam demo followed in May 2025, with the developers continuing to build the game alongside feedback from the people playing it. By Steam Next Fest in June 2026, Shroom and Gloom had passed 200,000 wishlists.
Early Access will continue that approach. Team Lazerbeam currently expects it to last between 12 and 24 months, with plans for another pathway containing its own Explore and Combat cards, additional character classes, and more quests and challenges. There’s already plenty to dig into before any of that arrives.
Shroom and Gloom launches into Steam Early Access today with hundreds of cards, two separate decks, five playable characters, hand-drawn dungeons, and more mushrooms than any reasonable person should be expected to eat.