Dice & Dungeons
Dice & Dungeons is a unique deck builder. You build a DICE deck (dicebuilding)! Explore dungeons, fight enemies with increasingly difficult and get new dice to your deck. A dungeon and it’s challenges are never the same as before.
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Based on dice building board games
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Several different dice to build your “deck”
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RPG elements
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Character classes
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Weapons and other items
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Unique experience of building dice decks
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 Tabletop 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
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
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Medieval Games.
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
Roman Wars: Deck Building Game
In “Roman Wars” we fused elements of deck building board game and strategy together. Build your deck, upgrade your cards, develop your base, and fight different enemies. Try various missions, use bonus cards, and don’t forget about cats!
Features
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Ten different missions: Build your deck of cards and meet multiple criteria to complete the missions
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Ten different enemies: Suppress a riot, make a sortie, fight the enemy stealing your gold and other enemies
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Bonus Cards: Earn experience points and unlock special Bonus Cards which make the missions much easier
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Themes: Choose between the classic Roman theme and Cats theme
Demo
Check out the demo and play first two missions of the game
Evolution Board Game
UPDATE I no longer work for Northstar. This review should be considered to be for the first year of the game.
So up front… I worked on this game. I want to be super clear about that. (In case you can’t tell by me having more hours logged in it than it’s been out in the wild.
So why review. Well obviously I want the game I worked on to do well… but there is more than that.
For those who don’t know, Evolution was a table top board game first and has been for years. It was one of my earliest modern board gaming experiences and I still love to break it out and play it. The constant evolution of strategies and plays with the traits that can be played makes the game very replayable.
– Real player with 967.7 hrs in game
I’m definitely addicted to this one. Good game balance, I never feel like any build is just too powerful. Challenging AI. Cute/Beautiful art. Fun facts. Satisfying sound effects; glad I can turn the music off without turning them off (though the music is good to).
I assume you could unlock brutal mode right away but playing through the campaign on both difficulties has been both an enjoyable difficulty progression and given me plenty of content to consume. Especially with the fun of trying to unlock sketches. But Darwin gets super annoying on the second go through.
– Real player with 99.7 hrs in game
Mystic Vale
It’s a great rendition of my favorite card game, and always a fun play due to the nearly-unique card crafting system (I’ve only seen one other game, which both isn’t in video game format and is a product of the same company). It’s fast-paced and the automatic counting of resources is very nice.
That said, there are a few issues (all minor):
EDIT JAN 28: 1 was asking for clarity in cards remaining (counting on-deck or not). It’s apparent enough after checking once or twice and sticks with you; as of this edit, it’s cards under the on-deck
– Real player with 481.3 hrs in game
I recently downloaded this digital adaptation of the card game Mystic Vale having never played the physical version. I can say I love the game so far, and recommend it to anyone from fans of casual card games to more serious board game geeks. Essentially, It’s a well-balanced deck-building game with a theme of fighting the corruption of a sacred landscape through the cultivation of nature, and in my view is very relaxing, yet mentally stimulating, to play.
Those who have played the card game Dominion or other games of the deck-building genre will recognize the mechanic of purchasing cards from a center tableau, adding them to a deck of initially underwhelming cards, and slowly increasing potential of combos and synergy as the game progresses. However, the mechanic in Mystic Vale of crafting each card by adding components, or “advancements” in in-game terms, to each card’s top, middle, or bottom zones is unlike Dominion or any other game I’ve played. In my opinion, this concept alone sets Mystic Vale apart as an island of true uniqueness in a sea of ripoffs in the board/card game sphere.
– Real player with 81.0 hrs in game
Shards of Infinity
If you like deckbuilders, get this game! Get all your friends to get the game, too.
In terms of graphics, UI and sound, this game isn’t anything too flashy. The artwork is cool and very nice, as you would expect of a game ported over from a physical card game. Being able to watch replays of your own games would be nice, but seems a feature that’s not on the cards, as it were.
With that out of the way, this game manages to pull off something not many games achieve: it comes into an established genre but manages to be new and different.
– Real player with 109.6 hrs in game
Shards of Infinity, by developers Temple Gates Games, is one of the virtual card game contenders looking to carve out a niche for themselves in the realm that Hearthstone built. Shards of Infinity is based off a real card game, though one I haven’t played. I’ll get this clear from the start - Shards did not do a good job explaining its lore to me.
I know we’re not supposed to come to multiplayer card games looking for a plot, but a basic understanding of the universe helps you figure out how cards relate to one another, and without plunging into a user-wiki, there was no real way to make sense of anything of the information being presented to the player. This made the first few hours of trying to play a little alienating.
– Real player with 23.9 hrs in game
Siberian Dawn
The game is good but the interface is not very intuitive making the game hard to play. The developer is still working on the game so they are still hoped that this will be addressed in a coming update.
– Real player with 31.7 hrs in game
I’d very much like to see this game and designer succeed. I discovered Siberian Dawn through the Ios release thread on BGG and decided to give the free trial a go. After a few runthroughs I spent the couple of dollars for the extra missions. It’s well worth it. Designer is helpful and quick to answer questions and is working diligently on the manual and updating and revising content. If you like deep, meaty deck builders look no further. It’s got that Legendary Encounters vibe where one is constantly surprised at how thematic the mechanisms come across essentially through just a bunch of cards. Complex, difficult, rewarding, in that order. Get some.
– Real player with 30.6 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
A Token War
A good game to mellow out to, but also one that will challenge you, especially in the later levels. Excellent art and soundtrack make it feel like a handcrafted wooden board game. Gameplay is something of a cross between Hearthstone and XCOM. I would recommend this game to any fan of turn-based tactical or deck-building games, or a casual gamer looking for a board game-like experience.
– Real player with 57.4 hrs in game
Really fun and challenging game! The roguelike aspect + genuinely difficult strategic levels mean that first time you get knocked back to a checkpoint it can be a blow to your ego, but that’s nothing compared to how good it feels to get past the battle you got stuck on.
The details of the game are great too, the cheeky descriptions make me actually chuckle and I love the cute token drawings. The audio is another highlight - the sound effects perfectly match the tokens and the music is engaging and fun to listen to even when you’re on your third or fourth attempt at a section.
– Real player with 27.1 hrs in game