Shogun Showdown is a roguelike deckbuilder that combines turn-based combat with card mechanics. Like many games in the genre, a big part of what makes it addicting is unpredictability.
One way it creates that: cloud.
The rest of the map is hidden behind cloud. You don’t know what’s after your next stop. Each location ends with an upgrade and a shop (in the screenshot are icons like X, O, L,… that tell you which type the shop or upgrade is), but beyond that you’re blind.
So every route choice is a small gamble. You pick a path hoping after that it will lead somewhere good, and when the cloud lifts, you get that little hit of reveal: “oh nice, exactly what I needed” or “well, that’s not what I wanted”. The partial information is enough for you to have preferences, but not enough to plan far ahead.
Shogun Showdown needs this because its possibility space is relatively small. There aren’t that many cards or artifacts, so if you could see the full map, runs would feel predictable fast. Cloud is a clever solution to create uncertainty.
Compared with Slay the Spire
This game shows you the full map. But in this case, it doesn't need fog because the uncertainty lives elsewhere. "?" rooms can mean anything from a shop to an enemy to a special event. And the combination is massive: ~75 cards per character (plus 30+ shared cards any character can access), 9–11 unique relics per character, and 100+ shared relics. You can't predict what you'll get because there's just too much.