The Last Hex
–-UPDATE—
Several months ago, I reviewed this game and gave a generally negative review mainly because of difficulty. This was before the developer made substantial and significant changes to the game. I am pleased to announce that the developer has made this game much more playable with multiple difficulty modes (which all games should have) and added a lot more content. There is an element of strategy with this game, and by playing it many times, you can pick up on the cards and the gear that you really want to keep that will give you maximum success. After the develop made the necessary changes, I have logged in over 200 hours to this game. If you play on Initiate level, the potions don’t really matter too much until you get to the boss camps and the final boss where you can use as much potions as you want.Thanks to the developer’s earnest in making this game better, there is new content every month. Overall, because of these changes, I do finally recommend this game if you have an hour or two to spare.
– Real player with 312.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Fantasy Games.
Getting close to 20 hours in right now, and unlocked about half of the heroes to play with. So I wouldnt be surprised if this game will amuse me for 40+ hours, which is very good considering its current pricepoint and that its still in early acces. However, i believe the game is 90% complete so it’ll prob leave EA soon.
Anyhow, its a slay-the-spire-like deckbuilder that is easier at some points, and harder at others.
For example, in here you can take your time to build your char before you fight the big boss, no set path to take. You can actually go back to shops to buy specific cards or items.
– Real player with 131.3 hrs in game
Erannorth Reborn
I’ll start with the base game itself and tackle modding later on in the review despite it being my favorite part of the game. While modding is a major focus of the game it’s not what you expect to be paying for right off the bat.
First up, gameplay. There is an open world game mode that I haven’t played much of (yet) and thus won’t be talking about. The core game mode is the rogue-like card-based rpg formula we’re all familiar with by now. There are a great deal of difficulties and game modes such as draft in the base game letting you have your own variety. These game modes will set you on a journey across Folkswave, the area of focus within the setting, where you will hopefully but almost certainly not find success. On this journey you’re certain to make friends, find loot, kill monsters, explore the unexplored, and generally have a great time.
– Real player with 381.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Adventure Games.
TLDR: Thumbs up for a very complex card battle game with rpg-like character customization and alot of depth. Though there is alot to learn from card text and tags, this game is an addictive hidden gem: 9/10.
This review is long because I was frustrated trying to learn about the game when I started. So I wanted to talk about what approach worked best for me.
At first the game felt linear, but there were so many abilities to discover that I didn’t mind it. Monsters are fairly diverse too as you move across stages. Plus there are events that give you choices. Eventually though it started to feel just a little repetitive, but that was only because I didn’t understand all the different game modes. Each mode has 3 tiers of difficulty so it’s easy to get locked into wanting to see how far you can survive through the tiers.
– Real player with 188.1 hrs in game
Deck Hunter
I am a pretty big fan of slay the spire (550+ hours) and I was happy to see another game that is similar, but still has enough differences to not feel like the same game.
The card upgrade system is alright. Cards upgrade based off of how many times you use that specific card. Which is an interesting idea however it obviously encourages you to stall fights so that you can use the cards as many times as you can before fights get harder. I decided not to omega abuse this just because it makes things go so much slower that it isn’t all that much fun.
– Real player with 82.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Adventure Games.
Great game - having a lot of fun with it. Took me about 20 hours to reach the end of the current content, but it’s pretty evident that there’s a good deal more to come. And I’m still looking forward to diving back in to try some new things.
Little more information for those that want it
Much of the criticisms I’ve seen concern: “massive amounts of bugs,” clunky interface, irritating foes, randomness of cards - here’s my take on those:
bugs: 20 hours - from tutorial all the way to the end - and I’ve never seen a single bug. Doesn’t mean they’re not there. But I haven’t seen any - let alone massive numbers of them.
– Real player with 31.7 hrs in game
Dicey Dungeons
Dicey Dungeons is the best card-based roguelike out there.
I love card-based roguelikes, and I love Dicey Dungeons even more than Slay the Spire, heck, even more than Dream Quest. I’ve enjoyed over 200 hours of play (including pre-release versions I helped playtest, for which I received a free copy of the game) and will enjoy plenty more. Why? Depth, replayability, and sense of humor.
Once you’ve completed episode 1 with each character, you’ve barely scratched the surface of what Dicey Dungeons has to offer. Unlike some of Terry Cavanagh’s other games, Dicey Dungeons’s difficulty is pleasantly curvy! Casual players can enjoy the game, starting with the simpler classes. Hardcore players will be challenged by the more complex classes, and episodes 4 and 6 for each class.
– Real player with 226.1 hrs in game
tl;dr: If you like tactically tussling with RNG, Dicey Dungeons is easy to get into, but has a lot of surprises in store for you whenever you think you’ve gotten the gist of it. Terry Cavanagh is an excellent developer.
Full review: Great visuals, fantastic music, and quickly becoming one of my favorite indie games yet. Be warned, it’s moderately buggy and could use some small QoL improvements. If you don’t like RNG you probably shouldn’t play this (do I gotta say this?) but it’s not strictly unfair, rewarding on-the-spot thinking a lot. There’s a lot of ways to optimize your gameplay. Be prepared to get dunked on, as enemies can roll well just like you can, but runs are short for a TBS “roguelite”, at 30-45 minutes, so losing isn’t devastating in a vacuum~ This game opens up in unexpected ways as you go. Be prepared for change, and chaos.
– Real player with 162.7 hrs in game
Dream Quest
This game has a nice quality of being enjoyable whether you play it fully engaged or in a casual click-and-see-what-happens way. It’s easy to understand what all the cards do and form strategies.
The depth is there if you want it. These are random, procedurally-generated challenges that have no guarantee of “solvability”. Strategy is found in things like:
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fighting easier monsters first to grind up to better results on harder monsters.
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Planning when to use the different methods of gaining health so they aren’t wasted
– Real player with 439.9 hrs in game
Dream Quest is the game that inspired Monster Slayers, Slay the Spire, and took several key concepts from Desktop Dungeons, among a bunch of other indie games. It’s the ugliest piece of sh*t you’ll ever see, but in spite of, or perhaps because of its nonexistent effort and budget spent on art, the gameplay is phenomenal.
Starting with Monster Slayers (Not the game I am reviewing), you pick from one of four classes, later unlocking four more, plus 4 others through DLC. Those classes are unique and all, but they are grossly outclassed by the choices you have in Dream Quest. As an example, in Dream Quest, the final class you can unlock, called The Professor, allows you to steal cards from monster decks permanently. Monster cards are overpowered in several ways, and no other deckbuilder I’ve played has a mechanic like that. This game invites you to create an overpowered character, then get demolished anyway by the ‘true’ final boss.
– Real player with 57.2 hrs in game
Fuzz Force: Spook Squad
Fuzz Force: Spook Squad is a cute little dice-rolling game. It’s very easy to pick up and play, but there could be more to this game. Let’s explore the ups and downs of the game (+, +/-, -, ?):
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The game looks really nice, shiny and coloful. I like how the characters and enemies move in a limited way.
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Great character design.
! Mecha Peppa is probably my favorite.
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A good selection of weapons, skills, dice, buffs and debuffs*.
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It’s super fast to start playing the game. Everything is super straight forward. Just go and beat ass.
– Real player with 22.4 hrs in game
This game is pretty great, its main feature or whatever is that it’s insanely cute. Adorable. The criticism I have is that the actual gameplay is extremely simplistic, and the replay value is also in turn almost zero, aside just trying out each character once. It’s fun to see the new weapons, but… the gameplay is so simple that I find myself not caring what every weapon does. The game tries to make some replay value with the achievements, like using the mutators/handicaps/ AKA “special missions”, but I just don’t feel compelled to, because the gameplay is so barebones.
– Real player with 10.4 hrs in game
Guild of Dungeoneering Ultimate Edition
GoD is a fun little rogue-like with a lot of character, but not a lot of content.
The card based gameplay is very straight forward compared to a traditional TCG, so the mechanics shouldn’t be a stumbling block for most players for very long. Each of the different character classes (13 in total, I believe) has their own starting decks. These decks are expanded in battle by collecting equipment dropped after each battle. As with most RPGs, the common drops are low quality, only granting you a single card or buff, while the rare and epic loot drops can grant you 5 powerful cards and multiple buffs. You can also equip your Dungeoneer with a special item or blessing before exploring a dungeon, and these can offer advantages like extra hit points, larger starting hand sizes, or increased damage.
– Real player with 137.0 hrs in game
Just finished the game at 15hrs. Interesting game with innovative system. Still, I had to consider really long whether to say I’d recommend this game or not. In the end, the positives won out.
Something very important you should know before buying the game: despite the misleading name and description, gameplay-wise this game is not a dungeon crawler, neither is it a RPG. It is more like a twist on deck-building card game. If you understand that before playing the game would be a lot easier to play.
– Real player with 21.3 hrs in game
Hand of Fate
What drew me towards this game was the aesthethics and atmosphere shown in the trailers, and I was not disappointed.
The game is presented as you, the protagonist, sitting across from the dealer, a mysterious hooded figure, to play game of cards.
Everything in the game has a representation as a playing card.
The playing field is a bunch of cards, laid out in small mazes.
Your equipment is made up of cards like weapons, helms, shields and a plethora of rings.
Your enemies are cards in 4 suites (dust, skulls, scales and plague), each of which is a theme (e.g. the card “2 of dust” is a pair of bandits).
– Real player with 64.2 hrs in game
I’m going to try and be as thorough as I can with this review. I’ve been playing the game since before it was released on steam. I think that now they’ve made it clear the game is almost finished I’m going to explain why this game is FAR from finished.
Let me start out by saying that I’m an old gamer, yeah an old guy still playing games. So, the definition of what was and what is now considered a ROGUE-like are two completely different animals. The old rogue-likes were fun games were you crawled a dungeon in search of treasure and weapons much like the new ones. After that the definition has changed. Old rogue-likes required you to use your wits to advance your character in such a way that you could accomplish your goals as long as you played your cards right “no pun intended”. The new rogue likes are a smorgasbord of take it up the proverbial gluteus without any way to counter/block/prepare or even chance your way out of a situation. This growing trend of masochistic (why people think it is) enjoyment has literally turned rogue like games that could have been great from games that lasted weeks, months, & years into ones that only last a few hours, days, or weeks. That’s if you’re willing to deal with them for that long.
– Real player with 42.0 hrs in game
Nowhere Prophet
Edit - I finally beat the game. Everything I said holds doubly true. This game is perfect in every way. There’s like six different endings. I accidentally taught Skynet about slavery. Feelsbadman. Gonna have to get it right next time.
Usually, I wait until I’ve seen half or three-quarters of the content a game has to offer before I write a review. That won’t be necessary here - I’ve done 4 runs, made it to the last level once, and only unlocked about 10% of the game’s other content, and I already find this game to be stellar in every possible way. Specifically, this game, even more so than Slay the Spire, is a love letter to anyone who enjoys drafting Magic: The Gathering; but by no means is that necessary to love this game. Everything about it, from the tooltips to the alignment system to the gameplay to the music and art directions, is executed flawlessly. While some of the other reviews - particularly the complaints about the VERY generous permadeath system; more on that later - made me wary of purchasing the game, I’m glad that I did.
– Real player with 109.8 hrs in game
Need more time with this title, but deeply impressed with the experience so far. It’s story remains a little shallow (like most games of this ilk) but does better than a lot of it’s genre in being interesting in terms of it’s various road events… my initial hesitations were largely focused on the involvement of strategy game style positioning, which in my experience adds little to games like these while slowing play down considerably… I’m not sure that’s any less true in this game, but the feature is fairly minor and thus easy to only involve as much as you want to (certain decks have mechanics that benefit from using it liberally, while others can all but ignore it). There also seems to be some minor UI issues, such as the fact that I can’t seem to end my turn without exhausting all my units, forcing me to attack or move with units even if I don’t want to… unsure if that’s a bug or by design, but seems like a bizarre choice if the latter. The music is servicable but far from impressive and seems to recycle quite rapidly.
– Real player with 90.3 hrs in game
Spellsword Cards: Origins
So I read through a few of the other reviews and I can see how some may find it negative. No it is NOT flashy and doesn’t have ‘interesting’ characters, but to be honest, it’s kinda refreshing. I’m an old school gamer and I’ve played Many card games, rpgs, whatever and I have to admit I’m addicted to this for some reason. I’m determined to beat the stupid lich with all my characters if possible. That being said, it’s also VERY frustrating and will P1ss you off many times! The cards are a bit unbalanced, for example I’ve reached the lich with no access to mana or healing cards depending on who I choose. This makes it a bit unfair, as well as not being able to meet the boss with a full health. No matter how hard I try to finish the previous battle with as high health as possible, it just doesn’t cut it. There was one game I used to play a lot, had over 400 hours until some new dev, crappy pants, redid the whole thing and made it vegas like…I truly hope these devs Don’t do that to this game at all! It’s a game unto itself and Yes it Does need work but it can be challenging and fun if you know how to use the cards given to you. I noticed the new game from these makers and I wanted to give it a shot thinking it would be similar to this style, but I think they already headed to the slot machines….
– Real player with 170.1 hrs in game
An interesting take on Card Game / RPG / Roguelike hybrid. I like the mechanic of dumping cards to the discard pile to gain extra action points (earned quite a few 1 turn kill combos that way). I do like the card combinations and various synergies thus far, and I due appreciate the card upgrades system as well.
EDIT: Some previously written issues turned out to be user error, and thus deleted that portion of the commentary above. Other than that, the above aforementioned is exactly the same prior to the deleted, and erroneous (on my part again, sigh) critique.
– Real player with 26.8 hrs in game