The Bazaar was once a long-awaited project initially announced back in 2018. Its creator is Andrey “Reynad” Yanyuk, a former Hearthstone pro, popular streamer, and founder of the e-sports team; Tempo Storm.
Reynad wanted to create his very own card game, something unique that could separate itself from the many others that exist within the space.
He also wanted to take full advantage of the digital aspect, allowing the freedom for a ton of exciting possibilities that normally can’t exist within physical games.
Leveraging his successful career, he crowdfunded an Indiegogo campaign which raised over $115,000. In 2020, the game received an additional 3.6M to help it come to fruition.
In late October 2024, The Bazaar launched into its Closed Beta. Everyone who backed its Indiegogo campaign had access, along with anyone who chose to buy one of its “Founders Packs”. Then in March 2025, the game moved into Open Beta, soon followed by its official release in April 2025.
Throughout its many monetization ups and downs, along with its technical hiccups using their own launcher, The Bazaar has now finally been brought to Steam as of August 13th, 2025. This embarks a new era for the game, one where the shackles of free-to-play can finally be lifted.
Our review for The Bazaar was conducted with the PC version on Steam.
Gameplay Summary
The Bazaar is a roguelike strategy autobattler where players select a hero, then adventure to create the strongest build they can before facing off in asynchronous PvP!
You’ll explore hundreds of unique items, collect powerful skills, and imbue game-breaking enchantments that can quickly turn the tide of your journey.
A wide variety of merchants will assist you along the way, offering an assortment of items to strengthen your hero’s board. Items will be bought, sold, and upgraded throughout the run, all while you level up your hero and get stronger.
To explain it simply, the majority of items have an effect that activates on a timed cooldown (in seconds). There are weapons which deal damage, heal and shield items that provide defense, damage-over-time abilities, and unique ways to interact with the opposing board.
While The Bazaar may have strayed far away from its original roots as a “card game”, it’s a fresh take on the autobattler genre and still retains some of its “deckbuilding” feel and identity. Just, y’know, without the actual deck.
Instead, it’s all about finding synergies between the items and skills that are presented to you. Each run can be completely different from the next, helping maintain its novelty as there are countless interactions to explore.
Knowing how much content already exists within the game only makes it more exciting as we look into the future. Much has changed from its original design, but where does the game stand now?
As someone who’s been there since the beginning, allow me to break down the highs and lows, and hopefully help you decide whether it’s worth spending your time in The Bazaar.
The Highs
Diverse Playstyles
The Bazaar continues to stay fresh and exciting no matter how many games you play. While this is often the case for many live service games, The Bazaar’s RNG and core gameplay loop allows each run to be very different, if you want it to be.
If you factor in all the unique enchantments, skills, and items from other heroes, there’s nearly infinite possibilities at your disposal. You can easily spend hundreds of hours playing and still discover new combos that have existed since the very beginning.
Each hero has a ton of depth and intricacies that make them feel very distinct from the others. While much of the macro feels the same, the micro is vastly different. This really brings out the flavor of each character, while rewarding players who strive to master their favorite hero.
Frequent Content Updates
The Bazaar is full of ever-expanding item pools and frequent patches, so if you’re not enjoying a particular meta, there’s always a fresh environment right around the corner. Balance patches usually happen every other week, and the developers are not afraid to make quick hotfixes when they need to.
Every month brings a new season, in which brand new expansions are released. So far we’ve received a minimum of two 10-item expansions each time, and they make sure to alternate between heroes so that everyone eventually gets something new.
Beyond that they’ve also added more unique mechanics, and best of all, brand new heroes! It’s all done in a way that keeps the game exciting, without overwhelming the player or demanding their time. No matter how much or how little you play, The Bazaar always offers a fun and engaging experience.
Great Accessibility
One very unique aspect of The Bazaar is its asynchronous design. This allows players to still get a PvP experience without requiring an active timer. You can freely pause and continue a run at your own leisure, making it easy to pick up and play even when life gets busy.
As a father I definitely appreciate this. It’s great because it allows me to scratch that competitive itch, without forcing my uninterrupted attention. It’s an excellent formula that keeps things fresh without ever feeling overwhelming.
The Lows
Inconsistent Balance
Balance is always a huge factor with any live service game, because if you turn the dial ever-so-slightly in the wrong direction, you can make the entire game collapse. And when there are so many individual nobs to adjust, potential positive changes often come with a great risk.
New content can often leave the game in a wild state, completely debilitating what makes the game fun in the first place. What should be a fun and exciting time of exploration, often unfortunately ends up in complete chaos.
Much of this is due to the size of the dev team, as they’ve specifically stated they lack the manpower to appropriately test the game themselves. As such, the players become the testers, making it more about adapting quickly than pushing out a polished product.
Thankfully there’s been improvements to the speed of hotfixes, and they’re also exercising more caution when it comes to buffing or reworking older items. All in all there’s still much work to be done, but at least things are beginning to trend in a positive direction.
Technical Quality
Note: The recent Steam release has definitely made big improvements to its performance.
Let’s not sugarcoat it, The Bazaar’s technical quality can be a bit rough around the edges. It’s pretty common for players to experience at least some degree of lag, and it’s not unusual for various bugs to be present within the game.
Minor display issues are quite common, but even worse is when certain mechanics simply don’t function as intended. While the absolute game-breaking bugs are quickly fixed, smaller ones often remain for some time, and so players just have to live with them.
However, when combined with the ever-common balance issues that plague the start of a new season, these bugs certainly don’t help shine a good light on the game as a whole.
On the plus side, the game is natively available on Mac (of course in addition to PC), which can’t be said for many popular games out there. The eventual mobile release will also be an incredible addition, but let’s hope they iron out all the kinks by the time it all comes together.
Difficult Learning Curve
While the depth The Bazaar offers is a wonderful thing, it’s not exactly that easiest game to pick up for the first time. Despite having a brief tutorial, there’s a lot of relevant information that’s left unknown to discover for yourself.
Not knowing the many nuances that exist can make it tough to understand what’s happening, especially if you aren’t using external resources. Losing encounters, both PvP and PvE, could be frustrating to some since you have no initial knowledge of what you’re up against.
Beyond simply discovering how things interact, it’s tough to have a clear picture when certain mechanics are left hidden. For example, enchantments are a very important part of every build, but you won’t know exactly what they do until you’ve made your selection.
The power disparity between enchantments can be game-changing, so if you don’t have prior knowledge (and don’t look them up), you’ll be at a significant disadvantage. While knowledge checks are a normal part of many games, the difference here is that you’re frequently presented with blind decisions.
There have been some helpful quality of life improvements added over time, however “the unknown” is a big part of what the developers enjoy. Knowing this, it’s tough to say whether or not things will change in the future, but if you’re willing to take the time to learn, you’ll see why they say “The Bazaar is a crazy place!”
Our Score
8/10 (Addicting With Room to Grow)
The Bazaar is an excellent game at its core, but it definitely loses an edge due to its many inconsistencies.
However, its unique mechanics, flavorful themes, and continuously fresh gameplay make it enjoyable to return back each time.
If the devs can smooth out their process while maintaining the current frequency of new content, The Bazaar has great potential to grow into a phenomenal game.
Additional Reviewers Notes
Shugo (Main Reviewer)
The Bazaar has had a great start and has potential to be truly special in the long term. You can clearly see the love and care that’s put into the game with each update, and knowing there’s more on the horizon only makes it all the more exciting.
While the game certainly has its ups and downs, I always find myself returning time and time again. Even during its less exciting periods, I have such a good time seeking out new builds, or discovering ways to consistently recreate previous ones.
Despite its somewhat rocky start, I hope the Steam release will help the game reach solid ground. It’s got so much potential to stand out among others in its space. Only time will tell, but regardless of what happens, I’ll be there every step of the way.
Agilio
This game deserves your attention if you're a fan of autobattlers or roguelikes. It's incredibly addictive with every run feeling fresh and the constant stream of content makes it hard for things to get stagnant.
I've put hundreds of hours into games likeSlay the Spire, Monster Train, Balatro, and Wildfrost, and The Bazaar is what currently has me captured for that slot.Lord have mercy when the mobile version arrives...
