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
The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game - Definitive Edition
Ever since the online emergence of Magic: The Gathering (sadly not available on Steam anymore), many developers tried to copy the formula and release their own version of a turn-based card game either for mobile phones or PC. A flux of these came in 2015, when even major companies put heavy emphasis on releasing entries of this genre expecting huge income. Many actually became more successful than the original, mainly more and more people began playing games on their smartphones and due to the simpler rules used compared to MTG.
– Real player with 134.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Story Rich Games.
How much you’ll enjoy this game partially depends on your expectations beforehand. If, like many others, you’re a huge fan of the physical card game you might walk away disappointed, as it changes quite a few mechanics.
That being said, looking at the product objectively as a whole, it’s pretty solid. Personally, I think they improved on the game quite a bit. Granted, I find the physical card game it’s based on to be pretty mediocre. It’s probably one of my least favorite card games from fantasy flight. Whereas the physical version felt a little stale and slow, the digital version feels a lot snappier, interactive, and overall more intriguing than the physical version.
– Real player with 107.7 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
Read More: Best Deckbuilding Board Game Games.
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
Load Roll Die
Exciting and strategic dice combat!!! Its lots of fun discovering all the different ways you can combine different dice faces to create a unique battle plan. The dice and plentiful cardboard landscapes feel really physical and its satisfying rolling a bunch of dice at once and watching them pile up! Dice go brrrrrrrrrrrrr!
– Real player with 7.4 hrs in game
I was given this game for free a few days before the official launch, so my 2-ish hours are solely based on that build. No, I was not given compensation for playing the game and my review is unbiased.
Load Roll Die is a Roguelite Dicebuilder game, in which you move your little blob character through various randomized maps, fighting enemies and bosses, collecting different types of dice and powers for each die. It’s a very challenging game, but in a way I don’t think it really should be. Being a game revolving around dice, it’s reliance on RNG is almost absolute, with an almost healthy amount of strategy involved, given that you can create some interesting and powerful builds if you have the right powers and the correct dice, but it’s always a gamble to see what you loot from enemies, find in chests and buy from shops, which items are sometimes overly expensive for the small amount of currency you get overall. Enemies get from easy to hard really quickly as well, each one having their own specific builds that sometimes are perfected to do something specific, such as replicating dice, dealing a lot of poison damage, destroying a bunch of your own dice, etc, most of which are extremely reliable and non-RNG dependant, contrary to your shabby builds at those levels. Some other issues lie in QoL stuff, such as some powers being confusing to understand from their descriptions being vague or poorly explained, and how at the start of the game you can start off without any dice on accident, making you unable to advance.
– Real player with 2.2 hrs in game
Echo of Ayllu
This is a well balanced TCG!! It still on open beta so I think it will greatly improve!
Is FTP and has serveral game modes! Draft, Mirror, Reversal and you can practice VS an IA that also has some premade decks that you can check out.
It will take a bit of learning at the beginning since the mechanics are innovative.
An interesting feature is the possibility to chat with your rival in a comic-like fashion trough pop up text bubbles.
Has some bit of MTG, Eredan or Heartstone in it but in a complete different fashion.
– Real player with 161.5 hrs in game
Buen juego, diferente a otros TCG, hay que tomar en cuenta la tactica y estrategia para ganar.
After playing several hours, I can say that the mechanics feel quite similar to Urban Rivals, but with more tactics, if you liked that game, this is yours.
– Real player with 89.6 hrs in game
Monstermonger
Disclaimer: I helped to playtest this.
I had really good fun with this - it’s got that “easy to learn, hard to master” feel. The mechanics are straightforwards, but that disguises some depth of strategy, as I found out when I went from the tutorial to the hard AI and got schooled :-) I’m looking forward to trying multiplayer and finding out how much more there is I don’t know yet!
Very easy to just dip in for a quick game, but also very easy to get sucked into “just one more”…
– Real player with 5.9 hrs in game
I originally downvoted this because I hit a bug fairly early that stopped progression. The developer was very responsive. I sent him some screenshots of the bug and he is making a number of changes. The game is fun, and the creatures are cool. It’s not the world’s deepest game, but it is fun and it’s not expensive. If you like these sort of soft strategy games to relax with, this is actually one of the better ones I’ve seen in recent years.
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
Koi Farm
I really enjoy this game and the collecting Koi, its a very relaxing Koi breeding simulator but there are so much that can be made better. First is perhaps adding just a few more ponds so that we can oragnize the same types of Koi together else it just ends up being a huge mess of Koi swimming together and it can be hard to pick up a specific Koi you are looking for. Also, there are a few bugs here and there that causes the game to freeze sometimes but it will go away when you restart the game. Just hoping that these small bugs will be solved in future updates so that the gameplay is smoother.
– Real player with 22.1 hrs in game
This game is relaxing and slightly addicting at the same time. At its core it’s a ‘fill the book collection’ type of game, but there’s no pressure or time limit to do so. You start with a couple base fish colors and then after each book page is unlocked, the game requests slightly more and more complicated color varieties using some basic breeding techniques. There is a very simple tutorial, but otherwise it’s all experimentation (unless you look up a guide of course!)
The game itself is fairly basic and no frills, but for $3 I couldn’t ask for more. What it does have is quite well done. The sound effects of water/rain are soothing and graphics are pleasant to look at. This is one of those games you can just have idling on another screen because it’s actually quite nice to look at the fish swimming around and have the water sounds.
– Real player with 21.0 hrs in game
The Vaults
Embark on a journey into the new fantasy world of The Vaults! Learn the abilities of powerful scrolls to cast magic spells on your enemies or allies. Fight in battles and upgrade your keepers. Get crystals, dig caves, open rare chests, find weapons and much more. Complete Story Mode to save the world of Alexandria from hostile forces!
THE WORLD:
This adventure begins with light surrounded by pitch darkness. This light is getting bigger and bigger. A large portal opens next to you, a mysterious being emerges from it. He gives you three creatures and a set of powerful scrolls for you to save a world, the world of Alexandria.
Alexandria is an ancient world that was once a utopia. This earth is considered the center of the universe, it is through it that cosmic bridges pass, breathing life into all inhabited worlds. Beings spread out over the universe have learned to use these bridges to travel to Alexandria, to mine ancient resources and scrolls from it, stored in hidden vaults scattered throughout the land.
In addition to Alexandria, there are two other worlds: Gradon and Alevia.
Gradon is a world, the main inhabitants of which are humans and dwarves. They share the world with huge mammoths, insects, snakes and other animals.
Alevia is a world of elves, more than half of the world is covered with mysterious forests called Lorandia . These forests are very dangerous, and rarely has anyone returned from there unharmed. The Kingdom of Hyghbourn is the second part of Alevia. It is controlled by the tyrant Hatus. The Hyghbourn monarchy is known for its brutality and belligerence.
FEATURES:
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Over 40 different powerful scrolls.
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Upgrade the player to level 80. Learn new abilities.
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Over 100 equipable items. Each item has over 40 different characteristics.
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Fight against artificial intelligence or real players.
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Play a gripping storyline and save Alexandria from destruction!
TIPS:
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Choose Wisely. Each turn, your keeper can either attack or collect ethereal, but not both. Choose your attacks wisely.
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Guard. A creature with Guard will help protect your keepers so that the opponent is forced to attack that creature instead. This allows you some time to boost your keeper’s stats.
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Vocations. Find vocation scrolls to train your keepers to a certain vocation. Each have their own specializations.
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4 Main Stats. The main 4 stats you want to know are Health (Heart), Power (sword), Temper (shield), and Cultivation (scythe).
Vulgord’s Tower
I was a tester for this game, and let me tell you I would pay every penny and more to play this game. It is totally worth the purchase and it is a favorite pastime for me with my friends!
– Real player with 47.8 hrs in game
This game is so much fun to play with friends. It plays like a real board game - the random events, the challenge of racing your opponents around the board, and the joy of wickedly sabotaging your opponents via spells cast from the wizard tower leads to a lot of chaos and fun. It’s really nostalgic. I think anyone who has played Dark Tower or other vintage fantasy board games would definitely get a kick out of playing this, especially in multiplayer.
– Real player with 44.1 hrs in game
Tanto Cuore
I’m a mega fan of this franchise, owning every expansion to date, and a backer of the 10th anniversary kickstarter. This game was included in that campaign!
This “simulator” has a lot more than I was ever going to expect. There is a single player campaign with unlockables, including some of the promotional cards. There’s some light VA and other touches that ad a nice sense of flare for an already functional game.
I have some nitpicks about my experience with the single player campaign. The first couple of games ease you into some of the concepts, including the optional goals. Later, however, the CPUs reveal themselves to be rather… interesting. Their behaviors are not always consistent, and some of the decisions they make are nonsensical; often buying low cost cards when they’re able to afford high costs. This worsens in larger games with more players, and balloons when the game gives you the optional goals of doing “x amount of things” in games that often end much too quickly to achieve. Instead, 100% the single player campaign turns into something of a slot machine, playing game after game hoping that the CPUs strategy and behaviors aren’t going to end the game as you still need to employ five more cards for that last star.
– Real player with 41.4 hrs in game
Tanto Cuore is one of my favorite games to play. Over the last year I’ve been very disappointed I couldn’t play with friends and that I couldn’t go to conventions to play Tanto Cuore. I can only beat my husband at this game so many times before he’s going to refuse to play with me. I was at my wits end because I own all of the table top games and I don’t want my ability to win to put him on the verge of insanity. I am delighted to see the game is out. I bought it and just played by myself for two hours. You may have saved my marriage.
– Real player with 19.5 hrs in game