Epic Card Game

Epic Card Game

Extremely interesting gameplay, like a mix between Magic the Gathering and chess, that is, more thinky than MtG and more luck-based than chess. The game is a carbon copy of the physical card game with the same name: Epic Card Game.

The app is made by a small group of people, and it is not perfect by any means, but the gameplay is so rewarding that it is well worth it. I have played at least 1000 games during the alpha testing in the last couple of years, and I look forward to 1000 more.

Pros:

-free to play

Real player with 4561.5 hrs in game


Read More: Best Card Game Free to Play Games.


The game itself is very good. I played with the physical cards before trying out the digital game, so I had some familiarity with the game to start.

There are some significant issues with the digital version. The most annoying of these has to be the time limits. Presumably, they exist so that players can’t just run the clock down when they get mad and lose. However, the time limits are prohibitively low. The first time I did a dark draft, I timed out on the drafting process. The first time I played constructed, I timed out during the game. I just timed out of another match that was pretty even and could have lasted a lot longer. This is coming from somebody who has played the game a fair amount. New players will probably find the time limits even more restrictive, and I can’t see them sticking with the game.

Real player with 56.7 hrs in game

Epic Card Game on Steam

Ascension: Deckbuilding Game

Ascension: Deckbuilding Game

TLDR; The game is well worth the $10 at full price, let alone sale price, even though there are a few minor inconveniences.

I’m a huge card game fan. Magic the Gathering, Dominion, Cards Against Humanity, etc. If it has cards, I generally love it. This game is no exception, and stands out in a couple ways over similair card based games that you can get on the PC. Compared to, oh say Magic the Gathering, the file size and resources required to run this game are miniscule. I often have my 12 gigs of ram stretched pretty thin, but never once has the game caused an issue with anything else running or been too much of a burden on system resources.

Real player with 500.9 hrs in game


Read More: Best Card Game Deckbuilding Games.


My favorite deck-building game

Ascension is a very good video game adaptation of one of the best tabletop competitive deck-building games, Ascension: Chronicles of the Godslayer. One player (with AI players) to four players can play locally (hot seat) or online (you must register for a free Asmodee online account), which allows cross-platform play (between Steam and various smartphone implementations).

The game

You start with the now-standard deck-builder set-up - 10 cards - and you draw back up to five cards at the end of each turn. Cards in the base game can be heroes (played once and discarded), constructs (semi-permanent), and monsters (defeat for points). Heroes and constructs generate two of the resources in the game: Runes (money for purchasing cards) and/or Power (fighting strength). Defeated monsters award you Honor (victory) points. You play cards on your turn, which generate Runes and/or Power, and you spend those to acquire or defeat cards that have been dealt from the shuffled “Portal Deck.” In addition to the minimum-six cards in the Portal Deck, there are always at least three other cards available on the side: two inexpensive heroes to buy, and one monster to fight. Heroes and constructs are worth some amount of Honor, while defeating monsters draws Honor points from the Honor pool. The Honor pool works as a timer for the game: at the start of the game, Honor is placed in the pool, and the final round completes when the last Honor points are drawn from the pool. Then the value of the heroes and constructs is added to the Honor points, and the player with the highest total wins.

Real player with 405.7 hrs in game

Ascension: Deckbuilding Game on Steam

Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis

Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis

A very faithful implementation of the original board game, which is a Eurogame by design with a historical ACW theme tagged on it. The game does have a decent AI and can be played solitaire as a result. Statistics on your own profile is available and so you can track your own performance vs. the AI. The only downside is the program still has a bug, freezing the solitaire game play from time to time and it seems Playdek was not aware of the issue. The multiplayer is easy to set up and game with score, measuring how you fare against others. However, there is no world ranking in the game, and different level of AI there is not. You can get notification in email when it is your turn in a game with another. A chat room is available but most of the time it is dormant. There is an alternate mapboard to give the game a variant, non-location look but I doubt people to use such a boring map. The gameplay is abstract and there is no manual inside the game or here on the Steam. You have to download it from the boardgame publisher GMT, as long as you are aware of it. This is absolutely a minor for the newcomer as the game itself is abstract and you are quite probably knowing what you are doing in the first few games. Once you get a hang out of the system, the game is smooth and quick to finish in 10 to 15 minutes. Overall, Fort Sumter is a game of tile-placement competing for control of the areas on the map. Score: 6.5/10.

Real player with 79.0 hrs in game


Read More: Best Card Game Tabletop Games.


I’ve been on the road a ton in the past couple of weeks and played the hell out of this. In about 60 offline games and a half-dozen online games I haven’t noted any gameplay bugs or rules/cards implementation problems as noted in another review. The recent AI bugfix improved the AI, and it’s competent enough in a mechanistic sense, but it' still a bit weak against experienced players, especially as it relates to setting things up in terms of the long game and Final Crisis. To be fair, that’s something the many human players don’t grok until they’ve played a while (which I have as an owner of the board game).

Real player with 51.2 hrs in game

Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis on Steam

Super Auto Pets

Super Auto Pets

One more juice, one more squeeze, and before you know it you have 30 hours in this game and almost enough points to buy the poop hat. Did anyone else mention you get to put hats on your little animal friends? This game pogs me out of my gourd.

Now for the serious part.

Serious Review

This an an auto-battler, which means you draft a team of units with varied stats and abilities, and you get to arrange them in order. That is the full extent of your involvement. Once you have spent all your gold in a turn, you are matched against another player and the animals duke it out without further involvement on your part.

Real player with 287.8 hrs in game

it’s fun, it’s free, but while i would recommend it, i fear there is a heavily addicting element bc it’s super easy to get into, so having picked this up less than 24 hours ago, all my waking hours have essentially been while playing this game. This is not a good thing. (but the game is good, just be wary if you could get addicted to this) There is no monetary danger of addiction, which is a positive! There is DLC, but there is a filter such that F2Ps cannot play with P2Ws unless they change their settings.

Real player with 104.9 hrs in game

Super Auto Pets on Steam

Warhammer Combat Cards

Warhammer Combat Cards

Love the game but….

1 PC is just getting introduced to this game. Mobile has been going for awhile. SO PC people are WAY behind the eight ball.

2 Its all about time. Every 3-8 hours you need to log into the game to open loot boxes ( cards gold ) , get your quests,open timed prize boxes ( more cards ) and do some battles. And if there is an event do the event battles every 8 hours.

3 Grinding levels to be able to have more points to make your decks stronger and /or more cards in your deck.

Real player with 580.1 hrs in game

TL;DR:

  • game full of wonderful mobile game features! (timed loot boxes after a win, clunky UI, noticeable P2W (as in you get more cards, you can level those cards so they’re stronger))

  • deck size/total points locked behind very high rank (you’ll need to play for ~6 months)

  • combat is fun enough to overshadow all of the above

  • suffer through the first day or two - reach Rank 10 to unlock ranked - enjoy one of the best card battlers, IMO

Found the game from Warhammer promotion, decided to give it a try.

Real player with 182.8 hrs in game

Warhammer Combat Cards on Steam

Concordia: Digital Edition

Concordia: Digital Edition

Great electronic version of the game. There are options that make scoring easier to visualize during the game. The UI allows take-backs before finalizing an action, which is also very helpful. Realtime games would be a great update.

Real player with 43.6 hrs in game

It’s really addicting. I only play vs AI but it’s just a joy and with my novice experience every game feels close. I would recommend turning off visible scoring to mimic the board game and not make bad decisions looking at short vs long game.

UI could be improved a little bit for me to easily see what I have (housing resource count) at a glance, the various overlays don’t quite do it for me. Maybe there is a better way and I’m just too new.

Music is great though I wish there were some more varied tracks instead of what feels like the long “one” song built in.

Real player with 37.2 hrs in game

Concordia: Digital Edition on Steam

Dominion

Dominion

Always heard about the boardgame but never had the chance to play it and now that i did I can see why it’s so popular!

The DA is very well done: plays smooth, good sfx, AI feels solid (haven’t tried Hard yet though). The game has already -I think?- all of the the expansions available that can be played in a 1v1 against AI or with another player online.

I must say this is very polished already for being EA for less than two weeks!

As per how stability goes, ​I played 3 games with a friend yesterday and we only got two freezes/crashes but we could keep playing by simply restarting the game: no game-breaking bugs found yet.

Real player with 33.0 hrs in game

A very faithful adaptation of the famous evolutionary card game. The first one that found the concept of deckbuilding during the game. Many other games followed this inspiration, such as Star Realms, Ascension, War of Omens, for the main ones. If you know of any others, please respond.

This is a concept not to be confused with these two:

  • Deckbuilding before the game, the player builds a deck (example: Magic the Gathering).

  • Deckbuilding during the game, without being able to swap cards, during a quest (example: Slay the spire).

Real player with 14.6 hrs in game

Dominion on Steam

Heroes of Normandie

Heroes of Normandie

Heroes of Normandie is a theme fest with a decent game behind it, and if you buy the theme, it works really well. Addictingly well. Slitherine has added just enough tactical meat to the comic book meets classic Hollywood war flick mix to make it good grognard candy. If you like fun, light thematic war games, HoN is all that.

I can’t say if it’s as good, worse or better than the boardgame implementation, but it stands alone, as is. If the promised content is added, I expect it to get better, and it might hit that sweet spot between depth and complexity that allows for a title to get attention from gamers who wouldn’t look twice at a traditional hex and counter tactical game, even a fairly light one.

Real player with 80.2 hrs in game

This game needs more recent reviews. So….

I bought it yesterday while on sale after they released the new action cards.

I’m happy with it. I’ve played board war games for years and even have many from “back in the day”. This is different in that you are not simulating a real battle but solving a tactical challenge. Other reviews mention that and it helped me adjust to the game and enjoy it more.

Based on the other reviews a LOT has changed. I’ve monitored the forums for weeks and noticed the devs are responsive and receptive. Players can be pretty demanding and impatient. The devs seem to take it all in stride.

Real player with 69.7 hrs in game

Heroes of Normandie on Steam

Space Food Truck

Space Food Truck

Mainly writing this because I disagree with what the majority of the negative reviews are saying, as someone who cranked out 40 hours of gameplay (split quite evenly between online and offline play) and who completed games on the hardest difficulty level. While I have ideas on what should contribute to a negative review, which will come later in the review, but let’s start by tackling the points I disagree with in the negative reviews.

I believe RNG gets the majority of the blame because a random event occurs at the beginning of every turn, and at every new planet, so it’s pretty much in your face all the time.

Real player with 102.9 hrs in game

This game has the potential to be very fun. Myself and a few friends brought it and really enjoyed the game initially. But we quickly realised that this game is too hard, and not even hard in way that challenges you properly. We have been playing on mild difficulty, since the upper difficulty was seemingly impossilbe.

The game is hard beyond the player’s control, since much of the game mechanics are the result RNG. 90% of the RNG is bad! You receive negative effects that can see you wiped out very quickly. For example, we upgraded our shields to the max very early on, but in response, we started taking much more damage from RNG events.

Real player with 44.7 hrs in game

Space Food Truck on Steam

Wingspan

Wingspan

First, I love this game. I love the cardboard version, and I love playing the digital one.

Second, the visuals are just lovely, though I don’t really understand some of the design choices (why would anyone choose to view just their Forest?), and I’d like to be able to watch the other players or AIs take their turns.

That doesn’t mean this version isn’t without it’s problems, which isn’t surprising so shortly after launch. I’m not sure what the rationale was for giving so many viewing options, but I only use the “full board” view (rather than viewing each of the environments), which requires a click to view powers of birds that have been played. The interface is very click-heavy to avoid making mistakes and to fix misclicks, which I appreciate, but if you have more than a couple birds in your hand (say 5+ total cards), selecting and playing birds from your hand is SUPER clunky and finicky. Since the game is a bit pricey, none in my gaming group have bought it yet, so I’ve only played the AI, which is pretty easy (no Hard AI has been implemented yet), but still very fun. In my last game I won 115-71-61-51, so it was a rout against the regular AI, but that was my biggest win to date.

Real player with 3321.3 hrs in game

I am a big fan of Wingspan. I’ve been playing the physical board game for a couple of years and the digital version for about a year. I currently have 158.4 hours into the digital version of it as of this writing.

There are plenty of videos out there showcasing what Wingspan is. I recommend you check them out. I will spare everyone the details here and focus more on my own pros/cons.

The big pros of the digital version for me:

-It eliminates all of the set up and tear down of the physical version. My wife only wants to play digitally now for this reason alone.

Real player with 214.1 hrs in game

Wingspan on Steam