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 Deckbuilding Board Game 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
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
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Aliens Games.
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
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
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Board Game Games.
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
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:
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Deckbuilding before the game, the player builds a deck (example: Magic the Gathering).
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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
Paperback: The Game
I have the physical copy of this and enjoy it - so I got this just for time passing and a bit of practice.
AI is ok and can be a bit of a challenge.
A repeated game lock up issue when dragging cards seems to have been resolved.
This version is helpful as my partner has trouble shuffling and so online is a preferred method of play for us.
Would be nice to have some of the game expansions as options, and also for the music to be longer or more varied. It gets repetitive
– Real player with 48.0 hrs in game
Deck building word game - what a fantastic idea! build words from the letters in your hand and use the score to buy more letters to add to your deck. I’ve looked at the physical version of this for a long time, but most of my family isn’t that interested in word games. This was an easy way to jump into it, and I’m winning them over :) great art, great mechanics, and the AI makes it fun to play solo. Can’t recommend it enough.
– Real player with 27.5 hrs in game
Star Realms
I used to really enjoy the online version of this game. Saddly that is no longer true. While I would HIGHLY reccomend this game for the Campaign Mode, the Online Mode is another matter ENTIRELY!!!! Once you reach level 5, you must win a number of sucsessfull wins to advance onwords, but each loss counts you backwords on that total. THIS, is not a problem. THE PROBLEM, is that many players have found a way to “HACK” either the timeclock, or the game itself! I have found myself ready to acquire a good card, only to have my game freeze. Then reload. Not only do I lose precious time during this reloaded “Glitch”. But often it will undo my card purchases or even worse, my bases will be destroyed or my health slashed in half. All of which being impossible with the card’s the opponet had availible to play. Now, I KNOW I’m not the best player. I admit that freely. But after almost 500 games, I STILL CAN’T GET EVEN HALFWAY THROUGH TO LEVEL 7! This means With the losses counting against me, I have only managed to go up 1 LEVEL in almost 500 games!!!
– Real player with 561.4 hrs in game
I’ve enjoyed Star Realms for many year. It is an entertaining deckbuilder game, which is easy to learn. A huge number of cards have been added to this game over the years, and the core sets (5€) are definitely worth the value, while a lot of the smaller dlc (2-4€) is a bit pricey. Although skill does play a part in winning, I would definitely say that a large part of winning comes down to the luck of the draw. And the expansions increase the luck factor quite a bit. I would still say that it is quite enjoyable, and I take it as a challenge, when my opponent start out quite a bit better off than me. Sadly I will not be giving this game my recommendation, based on the recent addition to this game, in the form of Star Realms Arena, which is a particular nasty way of introducing gambling into a kid friendly game.
– Real player with 516.5 hrs in game
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:
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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))
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deck size/total points locked behind very high rank (you’ll need to play for ~6 months)
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combat is fun enough to overshadow all of the above
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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
Dominus - Multiplayer Sim Turn Based Strategy
Dominus: collect technologies, troops, and heroes with unique abilities as you build up a powerful tribal civilization and out-think your opponents in 4 player simultaneous-turn-based battles.
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Simple and quick to learn, even if you have no experience in turn-based games
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Set in a lush fantasy world of floating islands, savage tribes and raw elemental magic
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You are the warlord of a tribe bent on survival, expansion and ultimate domination
Revolutionary Simultaneous-turns system:
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All players plan their actions at the same time
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Then watch the results unfold in a cinematic action scene
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Skillful play is about predicting enemy moves and actions
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This leads to a lot of suspense, crazy bluffing and mind games!
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Also makes combat highly skill-based and tactical, without being overly complex
We’re currently in beta, keep track of us on Discord and be the first to find out the exciting features we have planned- taking this insanely fun core gameplay and transforming it into a huge multiplayer world of clans, empires and adventure!
We’re racing to deliver the game on steam as quickly as we can, don’t forget to add us to your wishlist to stay updated!
Charterstone: Digital Edition
Pretty darn nice implementation of the board game. I have played the campaign once in real life :) I have finished one campaign with this program against 5 AI opponents. My second campaign got really wonky screwing up rules and end of game choices. I think I might have hit some less major bugs in my first campaign, but I don’t know if I just wasn’t paying enough attention or wasn’t clear on various rules.
Sooo, It is good and it is fun. The developers are already patching the game that was obviously released a bit too soon. But they ARE patching.
– Real player with 94.0 hrs in game
Halfway in the campaign. and while somethings are nice it is a mediocre worker placement game as you are building the worker placement yourself…
this happens by what is available to you and since you can’t choose specific buildings it is a hit or miss.
SO my main issue is that there isn’t a way to build your own custom map. Or at least i can’t find it. That would have been fun tinkering with it and see if you can outdo some of the maps allready in there. Can’t believe the bottom one was approved. that was just no fun. have to test the others.
– Real player with 49.5 hrs in game
The Vaults
Embark on a journey into the new fantasy world of The Vaults! Learn the abilities of powerful scrolls to cast magic spells on your enemies or allies. Fight in battles and upgrade your keepers. Get crystals, dig caves, open rare chests, find weapons and much more. Complete Story Mode to save the world of Alexandria from hostile forces!
THE WORLD:
This adventure begins with light surrounded by pitch darkness. This light is getting bigger and bigger. A large portal opens next to you, a mysterious being emerges from it. He gives you three creatures and a set of powerful scrolls for you to save a world, the world of Alexandria.
Alexandria is an ancient world that was once a utopia. This earth is considered the center of the universe, it is through it that cosmic bridges pass, breathing life into all inhabited worlds. Beings spread out over the universe have learned to use these bridges to travel to Alexandria, to mine ancient resources and scrolls from it, stored in hidden vaults scattered throughout the land.
In addition to Alexandria, there are two other worlds: Gradon and Alevia.
Gradon is a world, the main inhabitants of which are humans and dwarves. They share the world with huge mammoths, insects, snakes and other animals.
Alevia is a world of elves, more than half of the world is covered with mysterious forests called Lorandia . These forests are very dangerous, and rarely has anyone returned from there unharmed. The Kingdom of Hyghbourn is the second part of Alevia. It is controlled by the tyrant Hatus. The Hyghbourn monarchy is known for its brutality and belligerence.
FEATURES:
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Over 40 different powerful scrolls.
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Upgrade the player to level 80. Learn new abilities.
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Over 100 equipable items. Each item has over 40 different characteristics.
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Fight against artificial intelligence or real players.
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Play a gripping storyline and save Alexandria from destruction!
TIPS:
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Choose Wisely. Each turn, your keeper can either attack or collect ethereal, but not both. Choose your attacks wisely.
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Guard. A creature with Guard will help protect your keepers so that the opponent is forced to attack that creature instead. This allows you some time to boost your keeper’s stats.
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Vocations. Find vocation scrolls to train your keepers to a certain vocation. Each have their own specializations.
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4 Main Stats. The main 4 stats you want to know are Health (Heart), Power (sword), Temper (shield), and Cultivation (scythe).
