Meteorbyte Studios and Mint Gate Games have unveiled Toxic Frontier, a card-based survival strategy game that combines roguelike progression, city-building mechanics and a post-nuclear setting. Revealed during PC Gaming Show Tokyo, the upcoming title challenges players to rebuild civilization one hexagonal tile at a time while navigating radiation, hostile environments and limited resources.
Toxic Frontier Combines Cards, Survival and City-Building
Developed by Oviedo, Spain-based Meteorbyte Studios, Toxic Frontier takes place in a devastated world where survivors are attempting to reclaim a surface transformed by generations of nuclear contamination.
The game uses a traditional hex-grid structure. Players begin with a single tile and gradually expand their settlement into the surrounding wasteland by playing cards on available spaces.
Each card can help purify contaminated terrain while interacting with nearby tiles. These combinations create synergies that can significantly change the course of a run, requiring players to consider both individual card effects and the broader layout of their growing settlement.
Progress is tied to reaching a target score during each level. Players who fail to reach the required threshold before exhausting their available cards will see their run come to an end.
Tile Synergies Drive Each Run
As players venture deeper into the wasteland, they will discover additional cards and tiles with increasingly complex interactions.
Some tiles respond directly to cards, while others are affected by neighboring terrain. Building effective combinations can create powerful bonuses and improve a settlement’s chances of surviving the hazards ahead.
The system gives Toxic Frontier a puzzle-like strategic layer in addition to its city-building elements. Players must decide where to place cards, which combinations to pursue and when to prioritize immediate survival over longer-term expansion.
More than 40 unique cards will be available to unlock and collect, expanding the number of strategies players can use across repeated runs.
Three Biomes Bring New Threats and Mechanics
The journey to rebuild civilization takes survivors across three distinct biomes. Each region features its own narrative elements, quests, gameplay mechanics and environmental dangers.
New challenges are introduced as players move between these areas, forcing them to adjust their strategies rather than relying on the same settlement design throughout an entire run.
The game also leans heavily into its post-apocalyptic setting. Humanity has spent generations underground, turning memories of the surface — including sunlight, grass and fresh air — into stories passed down through oral tradition.
When a group of survivors finally emerges, they discover a wilderness radically different from the world described in those stories.
Players Can Decide How to Reclaim the Wasteland
The narrative centers on a community of nuclear nomads attempting to establish a new future on the surface.
Players will eventually face a broader choice about how their society develops: build a sustainable refuge within the wasteland or embrace the corrupting power found throughout the Toxic Frontier.
That decision contributes to two different story endings, giving the survival campaign an additional narrative element alongside its roguelike structure.
Four Game Modes and Steam Deck Support Planned
Toxic Frontier is designed around replayability, with four game modes planned alongside its two possible story endings.
The developers are also building in full Steam Deck support, allowing players to take the card-based strategy experience beyond a traditional desktop setup.
Across each playthrough, players will need to manage their available cards, discover increasingly powerful tile synergies and respond to new threats introduced by different biomes. The combination of procedural challenges and unlockable cards is intended to make individual runs play differently as players learn more about the game’s systems.
With its retro-inspired visual style, hex-grid settlement mechanics and radioactive survival setting, Toxic Frontier blends elements of deck-building, roguelike strategy and city-building into a single experience. Its PC Gaming Show Tokyo reveal provides the first detailed look at a world where rebuilding civilization depends on carefully playing the cards that survive the fallout.
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