Vivid Knight
This is a cute roguelite and auto-chess crossover. It’s very strategy-focused, and the difficulty makes it quite addictive, but some balance issues begin to detract from enjoyment once you’re deep in the game.
The Good
The core game play is roguelike, with your character exploring a maze and fighting monsters in turn-based auto-chess-esque combat. Each step consumes mana, a limited resource that refreshes on each floor, and your team begins taking damage when you run out of mana, forcing you to be efficient in your exploration.
– Real player with 62.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Difficult Deckbuilding Games.
Welcome to Auto Chess Darkest Dungeon, But Cute.
Jokes aside, this little game so far is one of the biggest surprises of the year for me. I do quite like the auto chess formula, but this game takes a quite unique spin on it which makes it really enjoyable for me.
I’ve seen a lot of reviews making comparisons to TFT and they’re not entirely wrong by drawing the said comparison.
That said, if you’re familiar with games like Auto Chess and TFT, there’s a few things this game does a little different.
– Real player with 32.4 hrs in game
Banners of Ruin
I do not play deckbuilders if I can help. I’m not really down for the whole card system usually and I think Slay the Spire was the only exception. I’ve tried others in the past and none of them really stuck. This one was baller, I dig the art style and the card system isn’t overBEARing. I’m sure some folks that play this games primarily may find it easy but for a noob, it’s awesome. Even the music gets you pumped and it is very much like a choose your own adventure.
That being said, there’s not really a lot of content to the game and I kinda wish there was more to it. I didn’t even know I beat the game, I thought it was just the first part or something and then abruptly ended. Still, that didn’t keep me from coming back and playing it again and again.
– Real player with 40.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Difficult Deckbuilding Games.
TLDR: If you don’t have enough patience to read this review then you don’t have enough patience to play this game I assure you. That being said, it has a LOT of redeeming qualities and is worth a look for anyone who likes deck builders or games similar to Slay the Spire.
Let me start off by saying that I REALLY want to love this game and it is pretty good in spite of its faults. I was raised on CCGs and the advent of deck builders has given the genre a fresh and new take that I thoroughly enjoy and Slay the Spire, a game which I have played into the ground. (Ascension 20 on most characters) Ever since I have been looking for the next StS and there have been some decent offerings, but none have managed to capture my attention in quite the same way. Because of this when I saw this game come up on my store page and watched some gameplay I was immediately sold.
– Real player with 27.2 hrs in game
Void Tyrant
Yeah it’s a good game. I’ve spent probably the most hours out of anyone on this because I have like hyper autism or something (not really but I played this a lot).
People complain about the lack of diversity. They are correct.
However, this is a roguelike where each run influences the next, so it is very addictive. I am still not completely through everything. Worth every penny.
– Real player with 88.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Difficult Deckbuilding Games.
Great little rogue-like with an addictive game-play. It does take a little bit of time to get a full feel of the game. At first I thought that the RNG would drive me crazy but after a few runs and beating the boss the first time things begin to come together. Different classes and play styles allow you to control RNG in a way that’s fun.
What I love
The mixture of RPG and RNG keeps you hooked. If the RNG turns you off you can get a class that alters the RNG in their favor and if you love RNG there is a class that exploits it and 2 classes that blend this concept.
– Real player with 39.6 hrs in game
能量冲击 Energy Shock
“A deck building card game with black & white artworks."
Energy Shock. This is a turn-based action roguelike game made by Meowtoy Games. The game is currently in early access and supports English, but there are some parts that are not translated. But it doesn’t matter to play the game itself. In particular, if you are familiar with deck building roguelike games, there will be no difficulty in starting this game.
Game story begins with black and white animation prologue. Players set off on an adventure against the dark lord. As you know, most of these kinds of games have common story settings. In other words, gameplay features will be more important. The biggest attraction of this game is in the battle. It has a distinction from other similar deck building roguelike. You are duel with an enemy on the just one line street. It is somewhat strategic and has a majestic vibe.
– Real player with 3.0 hrs in game
Please note before buying that this game does not have a full english support yet!
Even for an early access, the translation is terrible: many grammatical errors, typos. Some of the lines aren’t translated at all.
The game itself looks fine, but I can not recommend it for the english speaking community.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Mage Tower: Call of Zadeus
Mage Tower is an open-world roguelike deckbuilder with no set paths.
You play as a hero on a quest to stop a warlock from summoning an interdimensional monster known as Zadeus. Travel across a randomly-generated world, visit towns, and delve into dungeons. Battle the monsters roaming the land, collect cards, and upgrade your deck.
Find the boss wizards' castles and destroy them.
NO NODES, PLEASE
Travel in any direction and explore a randomized map full of towns, dungeons, monsters, events, and other secrets. Swap cards in and out of your deck anytime. Collect overworld powerups and spells. A free-roaming deckbuilder you can play however you want.
UNIQUE DECKBUILDER COMBAT
Mage Tower is a digital sequel to the 2013 internationally published card game Mage Tower, A Tower Defense Card Game, with hundreds of new cards. It expands the original’s first-of-its-kind deckbuilder combat system, which was inspired by tower defense games.
PUSH YOUR LUCK
Activate up to 6 dangerous idols before battle to make the fight more difficult, but give better rewards. This makes every battle meaningful and challenging, as you place the biggest “bet” you can based on your deck’s strategy vs. the enemy’s deck.
PICK YOUR CLASS
Over 80 character classes. Each class comes with a unique class card that cannot lose durability or break, meaning it will be your most reliable card and often the card you build your strategy around.
NINE YEARS OF DESIGN
Mage Tower’s cards are a rich well of variation, featuring mechanics that have not been done in even the most popular card games. Escape the lurch of endless “4 Damage + Random Combat Mechanic” cards!
FEATURES:
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Single-player roguelike deckbuilder.
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350+ cards (most are UPGRADABLE.)
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80 classes.
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Late 90’s aesthetic.
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Cards lose durability after battle; fortify and repair the ones you like.
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4+ biomes, each with different enemy types.
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Push your luck before battle with the Idol system.
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Discover boons, random events, and overworld powerups throughout the world.
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Crazy boss fights! Battle dozens of plant monsters, wizards with otherworldy spells, or multiple cards representing the various parts of a single foe.
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Dungeons with unique rewards, but one life pool to last you through.
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More advanced, strategic, and complex cards than other deckbuilders. BIGGER TEXT BOXES!
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Easy to learn - the original game has a 2.83/5 complexity rating on BGG.
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Sequel to the 2013 card game which raised over $24k on Kickstarter and has been sold in game stores internationally.
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No “open-world slog” - always on the edge of your seat pushing your luck with battles and managing your deck and card durability.
Pirates Outlaws
Pirates Outlaws is a roguelite deckbuilder where the player is the captain of a pirate ship in search of fame and fortune, and must fight against Human pirates, skeletons, ghosts and monsters. The game mechanics will be very familiar to anyone who played other games in the genre such as Slay The Spire or Neoverse, although of course Pirates Outlaws has its own unique twists.
Combat Mechanics
Combat is turn based, with the player’s actions being represented by the cards drawn into their hand, and you’ll see what action each enemy intends to take on their turn. Melee attacks can only target the enemy closest to the player (unless the card says it damages all enemies) but are usually free to play. Ranged attacks can target any enemy but they cost ammo to play. Other cards can give the player armour (which can be carried forward to the next turn), restore health, apply status effects to the player or enemies, change the position of an enemy, or have other special effects.
– Real player with 78.6 hrs in game
This game looks and plays like a pirate skinned Slay the Spire, and well, that is pretty accurate and not a bad thing either. It does mold and craft its own unique image in both the style and gameplay. Some of the game design choices would actually make me think it is more of an Anti-Slay-the-Spire at times as it makes deliberate design decisions to stray from the path of its inspiration.
While you can craft some pretty OP builds still, it can be a lot harder to achieve some of the broken builds of stacking poison to 999 or such - largely because the status system in this pirate game is quite different. Only one status is allowed to be active at a time. So if your enemy is poisoned, they can wipe their poison stacks clean by buffing their self with an attack increase. Because buffs can erase debuffs and vice versa. However, this goes for the player too. There is even a boss battle that will absolutely wipe the floor with you if you don’t have some kind of way to buff yourself. He will keep raising your injury (this game’s version of poison) stacks on you and they will just get higher and higher unless you wipe it with a buff. Not much different than how Slay the Spire bosses can hard counter some of your decks. But at the same time it is just different and feels unique. I wasn’t so sure about the status system at first but it grown on me quite a bit. Which I think brings me to the next major difference.
– Real player with 69.4 hrs in game
Second Second
Edit: Changing my review to Positive already after the first patch. They fixed some of the glaring problems, and shrug I like the game. Hope they do more updates soon.
The game is quite interesting. I would recommend it if it didn’t have such huge problems. But right now I can’t do it, not in the current form. The game has some serious problems. I know this is “early access”, but that doesn’t excuse everything.
Biggest issues:
Some combat bugs. When you quit to the menu and go back into the game, the battle replays, and the results are DIFFERENT. Suddenly you don’t take tons of damage, and you now have way more HP. This is just a replay, there should be no change in your HP, however the result is totally different. In the replay, things probably played correctly, or totally differently, either of which is bad.
– Real player with 41.2 hrs in game
The campaign mode, was like mode to know the themes of the cards and interections between cards.
On the other hand, the standard mode challenged me to manage time and remaining health.
There is a big gap between these mode, but I indeed that they are both interesting game to play.
As I played this game, the concept of using time to use cards, and various types of cards kept me fresh.
There are some bugs yet, but this would be improved as they provide the updated version.
– Real player with 26.1 hrs in game
Across the Obelisk
If you are input deck building games and would like to play with up to 3 friends then you will simply love this game. It is so varied in all runs we had ( 30) and it is still fun to experiment with new deck ideas, improve strategies and learn from each new weekly challenge.
– Real player with 199.9 hrs in game
This game is a great little deck building game with some RPG stuff thrown in. Don’t listen to the reviews that say you HAVE TO GRIND to beat it, I was able to beat it on my third run and that was just learning what the cards and debuffs/buffs do. Plus it has co-op!
– Real player with 176.9 hrs in game
Card Quest
This game is like if FTL and a modern digital card game had a baby with most of the fun parts of both and none of the flaws.
You build your run from the start out of pieces of equipment, each of these pieces of equipment come with cards that make up your deck. For example, a sword comes with 3 sword hacks and 1 sword stab. This is how you build your deck. Unlike any other roguelike i’ve played, there are very little upgrades you can get within the middle of a run. In fact, there isn’t really any. Every single stage comes with a piece of equipment or upgrade to a piece of equipment, but these carry over run to run and mostly serve to give you more options. You don’t slowly build up a run as you play it, you build your run from the start and see how far you can get.
– Real player with 126.2 hrs in game
This is a tentative recommendation. I enjoyed the game, but not quite for the reasons I expected.
When I bought this game, I expected it to be something of a ‘deck-building’ game, when it’s really more of a resource-management game. That is to say I expected to theorycraft some overpowered decks by finding hidden synergies between card packs, but the way the game is designed causes most card packs to only work with a few others, and it’s fairly obvious which ones go together and which ones don’t.
– Real player with 106.3 hrs in game
ORX
Defend your lands and save your kingdom from the relentless attacks by a never-ending swarm of ORX!
ORX is part-tower defense, part-deck building card game, set in a beautifully drawn world of dark fantasy. Expand your territory, call soldiers to arms and fortify your castle with every card that you play!
As you progress through the game’s sprawling Campaign, you’ll unlock new cards for a grand total of more than 300 - all of which can be used to bolster your kingdom’s defenses. And with the powerful items, known as Artifacts, which can be found throughout the world, you can enhance your deck in game-changing ways!
Every level, tougher and more relentless enemies will assault your kingdom - and it’s up to you to pick the right strategy and rid your realm of the green-skinned menace once and for all!
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300+ Cards - experiment with the cards available, and unlock new ones to build the perfect deck!
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4 Factions, each with their own set of cards and tactics
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A roguelike-style Campaign, featuring 3 Acts, all with their distinct biomes, day/night and season cycles!
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Over 30 types of enemies, all chomping at the bit to burn your castle to the ground! From simple, yet nasty grunts to ORX Heroes, all equipped with unique abilities - there’s plenty of danger coming your way!
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An advanced difficulty mode, available to those who’ve mastered the Campaign - put your tactical skills to the ultimate test!
Take Carcassonne, one of the most well-known tabletop games in the world, mix it with the ever-popular tower defense gameplay, and add the unpredictability of Slay The Spire’s deckbuilding roguelike mechanics - and you’ll get ORX!
Each level, players will build fortified castles in order to survive a relentless onslaught of enemies. Your deck is the key to your success in ORX - use the cards in your possession to build castle walls, pave roads, summon armed troops and strengthen your kingdom in many different ways!
Each card costs a certain amount of Gold - and while you earn a set amount of Gold over time, you can build Farms, Villages and other useful locations to increase your income and unlock the full potential of your deck! But remember, gold isn’t the only way to build up your realm - be sure to scout the nearby area for Vaults, containing powerful rewards.
But be warned - you only got a short amount of time before your kingdom gets rushed down by hordes of green-skinned monsters, getting angrier and more powerful, wave after wave! Gather the right deck, fortify your defenses, and think on your feet - that’s the key to standing tall against the never-ending hordes of ORX!
