Inscryption
Played through it twice, the game is the best of it’s kind, rogue like and incredible deck building elements, this game has that “little extra” that games like this need to be successful.
– Real player with 56.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Story Rich Games.
great gameplay, amazing story, just wish you could play against the wizard and necromancer too
– Real player with 55.7 hrs in game
Nadir
Nadir - the point on the celestial sphere directly below an observer. It’s the direct opposite of the zenith… and your destination.
GAME DESCRIPTION: 🔥
Nadir is a dark deckbuilding roguelike adventure, with its artwork burning of infernal fire, and many extraordinary inspirations, the deepest of them coming straight from Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Control powerful, yet extremely blemished teams of characters, each representing one of the deadly sins. Fight using a plethora of unholy cards and try to escape the seemingly endless, multi-layered city.
TWIST ON A TURN SYSTEM 🔥
The Threat Counter shows how powerful the enemy’s attacks will become. There is no limit of played cards, but each of them adds points to the Threat Counter, so you’ll have to manage your risk-taking.
CHARACTER-BASED DECK BUILDING 🔥
Each character on your team contributes to your main deck; find synergies between each Sinner’s cards and build a dream (or nightmare) team.
CONTROL YOUR SINS 🔥
Every Sin has its own group of Sinners, shells that will bring its will to Nadir. As the sinners’ journey progresses, their power will grow, unlocking new abilities to fight even stronger threats. And if they shall fall, the abyss will produce more fools to try.
CHOOSE YOUR OWN APPROACH 🔥
Do you prefer raw damage or a more cunning way of poison? There is a multitude of different card effects to choose from. But remember that the enemy will attack you back, so you better look for cards that will decrease the Threat Counter.
CHALLENGING BOSSES 🔥
Each level of Nadir has its own Floor Guardian that you will have to defeat in order to go deeper into the city. But be careful, each of them has a unique ability!
REACH THE BOTTOM OF NADIR 🔥
This goal seems simple, but considering the characteristics of Sins, will they be able to divide the power between them?
A JOURNEY UNLIKE ANY OTHER 🔥
Watch your back on your way to the bottom of Nadir, taking time to admire its horrific look. It might feel familiar – from the wonders of the Divine Comedy, to desaturated aesthetics of Sin City, to the unforgettable design of Hellboy – yet not comfortable at all.
MODDING SUPPORT 🛠️
Devil’s in the detail and that’s why Nadir offers a built-in, extensive modding support for those who want to expand the world of Nadir and imprint their twisted fantasies onto every inch of the game.
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Hand-drawn Games.
The Monster Within
The Monster Within is a deckbuilding game that oozes atmosphere. The art and music are excellent and do a great job of putting you in the setting.
Admittedly, there are a lot of deckbuilders. So, what does this game bring to the deckbuilder genre other than a fantastic theme? First, the cards you can choose to buy are dictated by your health. The lower your health, the more powerful cards you can buy - but, of course, the closer you are to losing. This mechanism feels really good, especially because the rounds go a little longer than most deckbuilders. Which brings up something else different about The Monster Within - The longer rounds allow you to really build your deck around a theme and capitalize on that theme. The third thing that sets this game apart is that the developer is extremely responsive - seriously. Join the discord and have your bugs taken care of pronto.
– Real player with 17.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Singleplayer Games.
At present i wouldn’t recommend. The progression in the game is based on doing things to unlock stuff (thankfully if you click on the locked stuff, it will tell you what you need to do to unlock it, in theory) sadly in reality, i have beaten the game with the scientist multiple times, it didn’t unlock what it’s supposed to, i beat the game on the blood 1 difficulty again multiple times , again no unlock, so i can’t unlock any more characters, cards or ailments until this is fixed.
What i have played so far has been kind of fun though, so if and or when this gets fixed chances are pretty good i would change my review to recommend.
– Real player with 13.4 hrs in game
Sinistrous
Introduction
Discover an ancient dungeon and battle eldritch horrors in this Lovecraftian deck-builder. Play as either the Warrior, the Witch, or the Rogue and enjoy strategic turn-based combat as you carve your way through mind-bending labyrinths. With each new adventure you will face a unique and randomized assortment of mystifying events, phantasmal environments, and perplexing creatures. There are more than 100 unique cards featured in Sinistrous and each class introduces new mechanics and distinct play styles for high replayability. Seek out the Darkness, question your sanity, and uncover the secrets of Carcosa.
Features
-
Play as three cultists with their own unique skill sets while fighting your way through an unpredictable Lovecraftian world.
-
Make critical decisions in an attempt to preserve your sanity, or satiate your lust for lunacy and unlock your cultist’s untapped potential.
-
Customize your deck with over 100 ‘Cards’ and game-changing ‘Runes’ as you strategize against enemies of shapes and sizes unbeknownst to man.
-
Experience events that make you question reality as you explore and unveil the secrets of Carcosa.
-
Enjoy a dark, gritty art style featuring fully animated heroes, enemies, and more.
-
Experience a hauntingly atmospheric soundtrack that fuses orchestra and electronica.
THE SPIRIT LIFT
THE SPIRIT LIFT is a deck-building rogue-like horror adventure set in a haunted hotel.
_Dare to explore a haunted hotel?
Where countless ghosts and monsters dwell?
Danger lurks behind each door
As you ascend to the 13th floor
What secrets shall tonight unveil?
And who will live to tell the tale?_
It’s the 1990s. A magical elevator awakens in an abandoned hotel as several teenagers enter on a dare. They’re about to get the ride of their life, because this place is haunted on so many levels! Make it to the top and fight the boss to learn the hotel’s secrets. And if your team checks out early? Be kind, rewind, and better luck next time…
Gameplay Features:
-
Your starting team determines your strategy, so choose wisely. Each character has a special ability and a custom set of starting cards. They’ll also react differently as the story unfolds.
-
Find more equipment cards by exploring rooms. Use your deck to fight the creatures who prowl each floor.
-
Each run is a unique hotel experience. Different bosses influence battles and events across a randomly generated layout.
(Note that THE SPIRIT LIFT is still in development. Check out our social media links to follow our progress!)
Draft of Darkness
a fantastic blend of card based rogue-like with survival horror elements and atmosphere.
there’s a good amount of content here for the asking price (around 15 hrs+), giving you a great introduction into what this game has to offer, after playing through everything there is currently available I thoroughly enjoyed my experience from beginning to end, any issues/bugs I experienced where minor(and also easily report-able within the game).
these where only things I could find fault with,
the gear can be a bit cumbersome to keep up with(it would be nice if it was a bit more visible what gear was higher level/higher rarity, I understand there is a sort tool but I wish this could be a saved setting instead of resetting each run), the UI is however very good at providing detailed comparisons between what your looking at and what your wearing.
– Real player with 20.1 hrs in game
Very fun and genuinely unique as far as this roguelite deckbuilder genre goes. The atmosphere often reminds me of STALKER in terms its lore and world being enigmatic. If you enjoy digging around for lore and what the hell is going on (at this point with 10 hours in I still can’t confidently claim to know myself what is up.) then you will deeply enjoy this game. It may be early access but has enough content to chew to justify picking it up just to toy around with. The combat is very odd when it comes to timings but you’ll get use to it. My favorite part of this game is the flowchart. While i’m not 100% sure what all it encompasses it basically is just helps paint a better picture of what events lead into what.
– Real player with 20.0 hrs in game
JARS
Though this game still has bugs, especially for Windows machines, it is a fairly interesting game that is sometimes a bit confusing to suss out what is going on. It’s fairly good.
– Real player with 17.9 hrs in game
More interesting reviews on Fenol Baron Approves Curator Page
Nice little puzzle game that combines tower defense gameplay, Tim Burton’s humorous grotesque style and easy-to-use game mechanics. With the help of his insects and animals, the boy Victor will have to uncover the secrets of the dark nooks and crannies of his house, entering into a confrontation with annoying pests. You can use from 1 to 3 types of units, depending on the type of mission to be completed and the conditions for its implementation. Each species has its own peculiarity, there are powerful punching bumblebees, and small mosquitoes, prickly hedgehogs to protect confined spaces and other specimens. The set of tactics, albeit not huge, is quite sufficient for a fun game, and various types of equipment allow you to create interesting options for defense and attack. I did not like the fact that some missions had to be completed exclusively in the way the developers intended (most often this concerned missions with one single ward). And the most unpleasant thing was the moment when a prerequisite for starting a mission was the presence in my squad of a certain unit, which can only be bought in a junk shop. It is very expensive and if there is no money for it (and I did not have it), then the only option was to start a boring grind of currency in previous missions, and in the local endless mode. This is a strange idea, to be honest. In all other respects, this is such a solid good puzzle, which is very pleasant to play in the evening, quite sincere and dynamic.
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Library Of Ruina
This game taught me that if something an enemy uses seems cheesy, simply use it as well and turn the dial to 11. Exploit or die. Use Gebura and Myo’s effect and leave all your worries behind, until Xiao ends you. Coming off of Lobotomy Corp made me predestined to love this game.
10/10, makes me feel like my IQ is room temperature, in Celsius
– Real player with 176.7 hrs in game
THE BOTTOM LINE
Library of Ruina is a bookstore the size of a city block–you’ll get lost in it for hours at a time, exploring a bottomless well of new and interesting stories to experience and share.
Review as follows:
I spent 160 hours with this game, but it’s lived rent-free in my head for so much longer. The world and story are evocative, unique, and at times disturbing. But the gameplay is just as unique, you’d be surprised how much changes when you strip the “roguelike” from “roguelike deckbuilder”. There’s depths to this game, and thanks to being singleplayer, it’s an ocean of archetypes and strategies that don’t centralize around a defined “meta” you might find in something like YuGiOh or Hearthstone. It’s all the joy of first discovering Magic the Gathering with friends, except in this case you don’t even need friends!
– Real player with 160.0 hrs in game
Malice & Greed
I’ve currently put around 200 hours into the alpha version of Malice while playtesting it before the early access launch, and it’s a MASSIVE recommendation. I feel like I’ve learned so much about the game, but that just makes me realise how much left there still is to discover.
Malice is quite a fresh take on the Roguelite genre with a progression system that surprisingly manages to sit in the middle of Hades & Dark Souls in a way that clicks. The number of possible builds with distinctly different playstyles is actually wild, and the emergent interactions scale in a way where there is always another thing to learn or consider, even if you think you’ve learned it all. Each time you have another ‘aha’ moment and understand how you can combine the systems together in a new way, the game reveals a whole new world of what you are able to do with those systems, things you would have never even considered but make so much sense once you know it’s possible.
– Real player with 153.7 hrs in game
You know how Early Access games usually build on top of itself like a tower but without expanding itself, so you generally want to wait until it’s actually full release so you don’t get bored or worse, done with the game completely? Somehow this game doesn’t feel like that. Each major update feels like its own little game, and replaying them doesn’t feel boring at all. It does help that if you don’t know what you’re doing you will get wrecked super hard, and even if you do know what’s going on you’re probably still going to get wrecked by some very poor decision-making.
– Real player with 74.0 hrs in game
October Night Games
This is a nice little puzzle-like game, and it’s more complex than meets the eye at first time. I enjoyed it more and more, when exploring how things worked out.
I found the hunt for manage the achievements fun, and I have collected 21 of 23. Coming Halloween I will reach 22, but to get the last we all have to wait until 2039! (Playing during Halloween, beneath full moon)
But … after 98 hours playing the “Halloween” campaign I have reached my goals, more or less. Will I play the game again? There is a second campaign “Freezing Moon”. I didn’t see anything that interested me there. The only effect I could see was that you take injuries by the freezing cold. I will check it out again … but I don’t see it as that fun.
– Real player with 102.1 hrs in game
Been having a really fun time playing this one and I’m not the most active board game player, love the setting and it’s inspirations. The developers have been releasing patches since the launch of the game making it better and correcting some bugs, there’s a lot of fun to be had here, even if you just play againts bots.
– Real player with 22.8 hrs in game