It seems like video game developers are treating their craft as an all-you-can-eat buffet more than ever before, mixing different genres together. This can come across as gimmicky, like a musician working in as many musical styles as possible just to show he can. Sometimes, though, when a developer fully understands how different genres interact, the result can be innovative and fun.

Take “Forced Showdown,’’ a game released late in March by BetaDwarf and available for Windows PCs. At first glance, it’s a top-down twin-stick shooter, but it borrows from so many other genres: roguelikes, RPGs, and, most interestingly, deck-building card games.

The premise of “Forced Showdown’’ is that you are participating in a “Galactic Game Show’’ where you enter arenas and try to survive endless waves of enemies interspersed with boss fights (it may be a “galactic’’ game show, but there are plenty of classical medieval RPG elements as well). Along the way you collect different cards, and at the start of each level you draw one.

Similar to games like “Hearthstone,’’ your amount of mana gradually goes up, and different cards cost different amounts. The cards offer various powers — boosts to damage-dealing, improvements to your character’s special abilities, and so on.

“Forced Showdown’’ has a lot of attitude. It carries the TV-show premise all the way through, complete with cameras hovering around your character as you tromp around the arenas, and an over-the-top host promising carnage between campaigns. But none of this gets overbearing; the developers seem to have understood that the focus has to be on the gameplay itself. There’s little room or need for narrative flourishes, and too much of a focus on the outlandish premise itself would be a distraction.

And that gameplay is really tight — the combat is fun, the enemies creative, the powers packing a satisfying punch. Along the way, you unlock more and more stuff — other champions you can unlock, new cards, new levels, and so on. As is often the case in roguelikes, when you die you have to go back a fair distance, but I never found it much of a grind to replay various “episodes’’ — enough gets randomized each time through to keep the experience fresh.

The deck-building worked, for the most part. I liked figuring out which cards to use, and when, and how that became sort of a metagame to fiddle with between rounds in the arenas. I did think there were a fair number of cards that were simply too weak to use, but overall the card element brought with it some interesting challenges.

What I found most enjoyable in “Forced Showdown,’’ though, was the sense of flow. I’d get into a rhythm where I cleared my way effortlessly through a stage, where all the countdown timers on my special abilities seemed to match up perfectly, where I effortlessly evaded the fireballs and other obstacles the levels sometimes threw at me. That’s not to say the gameplay wasn’t often challenging, but “Forced Showdown’’ has a nice way of rewarding players with moments of, “Wow, that was an awesome stretch.’’

Jesse Singal can be reached at jesse.r.singal@gmail.com.