Frost
Frost: A solo deck-building PC game
(This was originally posted on my blog, GoPlayListen . It is largely aimed at tabletop gamers, but hopefully others will find the review useful too)
I’m pretty wary of computer games that mimic ideas from the board and card game world. It’s very rare they manage to capture the subtlety required to make a truly great tactical or strategic game, focusing more on visual bells and whistles and (usually) adding too many luck elements to hold the interest for long. Unless they’re a direct port from an existing tabletop game, they rarely seem designed for gamers.
– Real player with 17.2 hrs in game
Certainly not a game for everyone, but if you’re intrigued by the theme or the thought of pushing your luck in a hostile card-driven affair, then Frost is a pretty cool pick.
Aside from being chromatically challenged, Frost is notable for being a solitaire experience inspired by real world deck-building card games such as Dominion and its subsequent imitators including World of Tanks: Rush and Resident Evil.
The action, such as it is, takes place in the sort of post-apocalyptic setting that author Kurt Vonnegut made popular in his seminal novel Cat’s Cradle; a freezing world where tribes must now band together for their very survival. In the game’s ‘Classic’ mode you become a leader who must collect the resources needed to traverse the land in search of a mythical place called the “Refuge” whilst also trying your best to outrun the titular snow storm that threatens to consume all.
– Real player with 16.3 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
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Turn-Based Tactics Games.
IMC
A realtime, roguelike, card game. Traverse planets, build decks and earn riches while battling to the extraction point. Some will make it, most will die…
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Action 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
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
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
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
Dwarven Skykeep
Dwarven Skykeep is a building strategy RPG where you’re a mage building a magical tower. Goblins will burn your books and break your rooms while rain will flood your basement. Tune your deck to cast spells, improve your tower and solve all the hitches.
Build, Improve and Protect Your towers
Draw your cards and put into play your building tactics in real-time. Create rooms and generate resources, plan your strategy and solve all the hitches, craft Spells and defeat Goblins, then repair what they’ve destroyed. And don’t forget to give beer to Dwarves!
Tune Your Deck Wisely
Build your deck to face up all the challenges. Choose cards from Blocks, Rooms, Tools, Improvements, Combat Spells, Support Spells and Creatures to create and defend your magical towers based on situations.
Dive into the City and Live Its stories
Visit Dwarven City in between levels, then listen to folk’s stories to unlock new quests and world’s areas of which discover the lore behind. Collect cards, awards and items by going deeper into the story to improve your skills and increase strategies at your disposal.
Weight Up Your Choices
Oh no, your basement is flooding! Will you pump out the water, pour it out with smart digging or use fire to evaporate it? Which will be the consequences? There are multiple solutions for every problem and no obvious decisions, will you be a wise mage?
Say Goodbye to Gameplay Routines
Every gameplay throws you into unique situations with high replayability, where different draws and different random events require a different use of resources. Play with skills, and a bit of luck, to win challenges or improve your tactics while trying.
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
The king’s guard
Assemble your guard and defend the king’s lands! In this turn based card game you have the ability to control the battlefield by spawning units from your guard and supporting them with powerful magical abilities. As you win battles your guard will expand and become stronger. Along with the guard, your commanders will become more experienced and provide a powerful global bonus. This will allow you to take on even more complex challenges.
During the battle you can control every unit by giving them a specific task, or just let the game play on its own. Positioning and timing is everything! A quickly placed unit to protect an archer, or a tactically used spell can quickly turn the tide of battle.
Build a powerful guard for every commander
The game has three commanders, each with their own benefits. Each commander has its own guard and abilities, which is represented by a deck of cards. Some battles might be easier to complete with the powerful spells of the wizard, while others may be easier to complete with the knight. It is entirely up to you how you build your commanders. While the knight can easier level up front line units and make them stronger, you can also train him to become a more potent spellcaster.
Choose your battles
As you complete encounters you will be rewarded with experience and cards. Every encounter offers unique rewards, so it might be profitable to complete an encounter that awards a rare spell with the wizard. The experience of battle levels up your commander, granting the ability to evolve your cards and give strong global improvements to the entire deck.
Choosing the correct commander for a specific battle can greatly improve how fast you can beat them all.
Challenge or relaxed mode
If you prefer a challenge, the game can be completed in challenge mode. In this mode, it is similar to a roguelike game. You start the game with one commander and can complete all of the encounters a limited amount of times. As a result your choices become a lot more important because you have less opportunity to make your guard stronger.
In case you prefer a more laid back experience you can play the relaxed mode. In this mode you are free to play all encounters as many times as you want. You are also free to build on the guards of every commander in the game as you see fit. In case a level is too challenging, you can complete some other encounters to create a stronger guard force before you try again.
Turn based, most of the time
The game is turn based, but it has a real time element. At the start of your turn the game is paused, giving you an entire new hand of cards to play. While the game is paused, you can reinforce parts of the battlefield and think out a strategy. Then the battle resumes and you can interact with the battlefield for the rest of the turn. Some powerful cards can only be played during this part of the battle. You may want to keep your best abilities back to allow you to quickly react to a dangerous situation. In case things are moving too fast, if you are playing relaxed mode, you can slow down time to give you more time to react.
At the end of a round, the cards that remain in your hand are discarded, so make sure you get the most out of every round!
Dark Stone: The Lightseeker
Even though the early game may be boring, the game allow for in-depth strategy and planning, with gradual unlocks over time which allows for you to plan ahead with better starting teams and permits for you to build larger teams during the runs, while also increasing the maximum difficulty with each complete run.
– Real player with 40.1 hrs in game
I got the opportunity to play this throughout the beta recently. I was new to the deck building genre, but not roguelikes, and have thoroughly enjoyed the game. It is certainly plenty difficult for me and Jinny has been incredibly receptive to feedback on balance and UI/UX changes. The English localization is still a work in progress, but its not bad by any means.
Definitely recommend if you enjoy the genre.
– Real player with 17.2 hrs in game
Falling As Lightning
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Space, deckbuilding and conquering systems sounds like a winner combination. Unfortunately, the current design hides a rather lackluster deckbuilding experience behind a minimal effort to actually teach the game.
Even before diving into the subpar gameplay, learning how to play it is a chore in itself. The tutorial is one-pager trying to explain key concepts which is difficult to grasp without context (it’s not helping that it uses different terminology for draw, discard etc). What’s worse, in game it’s not possible to access the tutorial unless you quit to the main menu and there are 0 tooltips for clarifying parts of the game.
– Real player with 1.9 hrs in game
I had a good time playing it. Parts of it are definitely not polished, and I wish you could save 10 card decks instead of having to redo it every time you want to use those cards. Spawn locations are a bit too varied, as you can spawn right on top of the enemy or a good distance away. Decent deckbuilding game, worth taking a look at although it takes a couple of games to get use to and the tutorial is alright but hard to grasp. That is all I have to say, good time
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game