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
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
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Word Game Games.
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
ARTHA
the game doesnt even work!
– Real player with 7.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Tactical Games.
** Not sure what language this was made in, but do not buy if you plan to play in English**
No worthwhile tutorial, very very poor translation means card mechanics are a complete mystery with cards acting in bizarre fashion.. sometimes doing one thing, sometimes not doing anything at all. The performance is also pretty bad. I can’t really figure out any mechanics that work properly.
A shame because there is a lack of non-p2w card games out there.
– Real player with 0.8 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:
-
Deckbuilding before the game, the player builds a deck (example: Magic the Gathering).
-
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
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
Causa, Voices of the Dusk
I have waited until the end of the beta to make this review, to follow close the development of the project, so I have a lot to say. First of all, Causa have captivated me since the origin because was very different to all card games we have, it have 3 big differences to them:
- First and more important, is not a game gated to the “mana system” cards have not mana costs, the game works by “Levels” of a different source, the Causa Pile, this pool of resources is filled with cards you “sacrifice” from your hand or board, and the actual “costs” of the cards are the “Plays per turn”, you can play cards from your hand or the same Causa Pile if they have same or lower Level requirement than the amount of cards in your Causa, those cards expends Plays, so normally you can play up to 2 cards per turn, but a lot of them give you more plays to chain combos between them and make fun and smart strategic moves.
– Real player with 870.0 hrs in game
Causa has many new ideas that fix every problem I’ve ever had with other card games. Their development team is consistently involved with the community, listening to suggestions and sharing promo codes and in game items.
Story
The lore of the game is incredibly deep if you care to look into it. I do, and I’ve fallen in love with the world hidden behind the cards.
Sound
The sound is amazing! Every sound effect is made to fit what’s happening on the screen, and the music is fitting for both menu and battle.
– Real player with 369.3 hrs in game
Cards and Castles
Oh Cards and Castles, When i ran into this game over 2-3 years ago, I have to be honest I didn’t expect much. Now looking where I am and the game is today I felt like this game may have been one of the greatest games I’ve ever run into. The game itself is a great combonation of Collectible cards and strategy with very intersting mechanics and a meta that keeps gameplay interesting.
The evolution of the game has been a positive one in terms of graphics and gamplay. The graphics back in the day of course looked pretty floppy but it eventually evolved to fit the faster pace of the game in which it is currently in. The several Mechanics of the game provide for startegical thought as well as positioning which throws aspects of chess like thinking into the game. Not to mention deckbuilding which throws even more thinking in the game due to thoughts like determing how you wish to play or how you would want to win matches. The state the game is in currently certainly shows its progression and for people just discovering the game you may find it to be pertty well made
– Real player with 3148.1 hrs in game
As a long time Duelyst player, and fan of the genre in general, this is finally a game I will be able to invest a lot of time into. I have looked for a long time for a replacement, and this just may be it.
Old negative reviews are badly out of date, and basically nothing is true in them anymore. Ignore them.
The game has no paywalls, nothing is locked, everything can be obtained in game and it is pretty easy. The F2P system is very generous and I was able to make a top notch deck in a single day. The ranking system is wonderful, being both based on the player and the deck, so you get matched appropriately, and you are not punished for trying a new deck.
– Real player with 1173.0 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 (+, +/-, -, ?):
-
The game looks really nice, shiny and coloful. I like how the characters and enemies move in a limited way.
-
Great character design.
! Mecha Peppa is probably my favorite.
-
A good selection of weapons, skills, dice, buffs and debuffs*.
-
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
Lost In Fantaland
Hello~ We are a team of two: Supernature Studio. We are very happy to announce our new game here.
PLAY
Lost In Fantaland is a retro pixel-style roguelite game that blends deckbuilding and turn-based strategies on a checkerboard.
You can choose Warrior, Mage or Deceiver to explore the randomly generated world and fight on a 8x8 checkerboard.
You can build your powerful deck and collect a wealth of items and secret treasures in the adventure.
Go and defeat your enemies one by one!
FEATURES
1. The great blends of deckbuilding and checkerboard strategy creates a fresh feeling.
2. The creative card combination play method makes unexpected surprises.
3. Each adventure in the randomly generated world will be different and fresh.
4. Different gameplay by unique character classes.
5. A huge amount of cards, items and secret treasures to unlock and use.
6. Persistent upgrades and carryover between runs.
MORE
A lot of content is still under development.
If you are interesting of our game, please contact us: supernature.game@gmail.com
Rise of Humanity: Prologue
I recommend this to fans of turn based games who are cool with card based attacks. This is basically a free demo of the full version of Rise of Humanity, and it accomplished its goal of getting me interested in the full game which I have now wishlisted.
Here is what you need to know:
+High quality graphics detail, great antialiasing, as well as decent music and sound effects, but as for graphic performance…
-Ultra graphics setting @ 1440p on my RTX 3080 maxes out the GPU with an average of ~90 FPS? Its not like I can zoom out wide, so I was hoping for something a bit closer to my 165 Hz refresh rate.
– Real player with 1.4 hrs in game
Changed the audio settings aaaand… it’s gone. Completely. Reinstall did not help. I’ll probably try it later, with version 1.x. Unplayable atm.
=========
upd.: the bug was fixed fast enough, devs are surprisingly interested in feedbacks, and gameplay, nevertheless still being buggy, is promising.
I’d like to see less pointless actions in battles, like move to the shoot distance - use card - click on the single enemy instead of use the card on the enemy on click. Or drag card on yourself if this is the only option to use it - on yourself. Also planing a chain would be better imho then use cards one by one.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game