Age of Rivals
AoR is deceptively simply - all you do is pick from one of four cards. Eight picks is a round, four rounds is a game. That’s it. 10 minutes per game.
Behind that simplicity of gameplay is a cleverly designed, exquisitely well-balanced, damn fun little game. You can get the hand of it in 20 minutes, but appreciated the full interplay of the cards and game dynamics takes a bit longer. Still, after 10 hours I felt confident and was winning more than half my games against other players.
Part of the genius of the game is that, while you can guarantee you will draw up to 3 specific cards, in general each game will have very different start conditions and card draws. You can design a strategy around a particular horse cards, for instance (there’s a nice little strategy around the Four Horsemen card that I enjoy), but if you don’t luck out and pull horses in as a resource at some point, your strategy just won’t work. Fortunately, that’s not the end of it. If you are flexible and quick on your feet, you’ll cobble together a new strategy on the fly, and can still pull out a win, even without a single horse.
– Real player with 136.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Indie Multiplayer Games.
Age of Rivals is a strategy card game. There is no play to win, in fact once you buy the game there isn’t even an option to spend money on cards. You gain additional cards simply by playing the game. I love this feature, and wish more collective card games followed this structure.
So how is the gameplay? It’s very easy to learn, the tutorial is very hand holdy but perfectly explains everything there is to do with the game. And I strongly advise you do the tutorial as you get enough in game gold to buy your first couple card packs.
– Real player with 93.3 hrs in game
Mystic Vale
It’s a great rendition of my favorite card game, and always a fun play due to the nearly-unique card crafting system (I’ve only seen one other game, which both isn’t in video game format and is a product of the same company). It’s fast-paced and the automatic counting of resources is very nice.
That said, there are a few issues (all minor):
EDIT JAN 28: 1 was asking for clarity in cards remaining (counting on-deck or not). It’s apparent enough after checking once or twice and sticks with you; as of this edit, it’s cards under the on-deck
– Real player with 481.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Indie Fantasy Games.
I recently downloaded this digital adaptation of the card game Mystic Vale having never played the physical version. I can say I love the game so far, and recommend it to anyone from fans of casual card games to more serious board game geeks. Essentially, It’s a well-balanced deck-building game with a theme of fighting the corruption of a sacred landscape through the cultivation of nature, and in my view is very relaxing, yet mentally stimulating, to play.
Those who have played the card game Dominion or other games of the deck-building genre will recognize the mechanic of purchasing cards from a center tableau, adding them to a deck of initially underwhelming cards, and slowly increasing potential of combos and synergy as the game progresses. However, the mechanic in Mystic Vale of crafting each card by adding components, or “advancements” in in-game terms, to each card’s top, middle, or bottom zones is unlike Dominion or any other game I’ve played. In my opinion, this concept alone sets Mystic Vale apart as an island of true uniqueness in a sea of ripoffs in the board/card game sphere.
– Real player with 81.0 hrs in game
NoWaitHero
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Deckbuilding + bosses + game mechanics = Start with 5 basic cards and pick 1 of 3 cards after each battle. Cards stack in 5 slots, so plan well or you may not have the right moves to take out enemies,
– Real player with 4.5 hrs in game
No disrespect to the developer but I have to give a thumbs down at this time for the following reasons :
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There isn’t a tutorial, what is going on? I don’t know what the card values mean and how to play
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The game has been built in Unreal engine but I’m not sure why, it’s 2D graphics. The use of Unreal means that it’s really slow and sluggish. I have a computer that can play RPG and MOBA fine but not this game, it’s not been optimized with the 3D engine, the framerate is low, the mouse cursor movement is painfully slow and cannot be changed and all transitions in the game are too slow
– Real player with 0.1 hrs in game
Vault of the Void
Challenging, fair, and fun deckbuilder that respects your time and brings meaningfully novel mechanics to the genre.
Vault of the Void doesn’t feel like early access, yet I am excited that it is.
When I started my very first game of Vault of the Void, I wasn’t sure if it would click with me. I needed to see depth, but at first there was only complexity. I wanted the stimulation of challenging puzzles and the pull of seeking and sequencing powerful combos; instead, I was met with loads of text (with tooltips for some things) and a bizarre mechanic where enemies announce their attack, make their attack, but don’t actually do damage until the end of your following turn.
– Real player with 162.8 hrs in game
This hidden gem deserves more recognition than it currently receives. Personal views sees this game as a fantastic deckbuilder game. I’d even deem it on par with Slay the Spire, the corner-stone and genesis of many deckbuilders on steam. Here is a perspective to appreciate this unrecognized game:
Vault of the Void establishes a sense of strategy to it more so than other deckbuilding games. This includes each battle reward known prior to starting a floor. This allows the player to strategically plan their route from the start of the game. Additionally, the player, prior to the run’s beginning, inspects the vault guardians at the final floor. These vault guardians possess mechanically intense battles, and rewards to fight the final boss: the Void. These two out of four vault guardians must be killed prior to killing the Void, so prepare for difficult fights and satisfying rewards by strategically building decks.
– Real player with 101.6 hrs in game
9 Till Void
Very innovative and engaging gameplay. Figuring out how to unlock all the characters is a fun puzzle. Give me more please 3
– Real player with 313.1 hrs in game
(Just as a heads up, I was a beta tester for this game!)
9 Till Void’s a fun and strategically deep roguelike puzzler that makes you feel like that one person who knows a card/board game like the back of their hand. (You know the one.) It has familiar movement options seen in other roguelikes with its 8-directional movement and ability to pass a turn, but the real fun comes in with the various spells the game has to offer. From simple ones like Magic Punch and Mage Hand that simply deal damage to adjacent enemies, to action-gaining ones like Chain Lightning and Sands of Time which give you more actions for your turn. The action-gaining spells specifically make the whole “card/board game expert” claim from earlier hold true since you’ll be able to zip around levels and use multiple spells in one turn with them. This can be important since with most spells, you can only use them if you’re on the same row as where they’re placed in your loadout. Add the titular void into the mix which starts to close in while you’re still in a level and damages anything that’s in it after your turn ends, and you’re now tasked with making your loadout as flexible as possible for whatever springs up on you during your runs.
– Real player with 41.8 hrs in game
Card Crawl
Card Crawl is a really good casual, card based video game. It’s easy to learn and enjoyable to play. There are two things that make Card Crawl great: First, playing a full game doesn’t take long. A full game averages maybe five minutes. Second, this is a game that is a lot more tame when it comes to the difficulty. This is not another frustrating/rage inducing game. Success in Card Crawl depends on what cards you are dealt, and how you choose to play them. There is some strategy involved and you do have to think about how you want to play your cards. There are also a lot of special ability cards that you can unlock as you continue to play and get better. The game’s randomness with regards to what cards you are dealt, and which special ability cards are also randomly chosen for you, provide tremendous replay value for Card Crawl. There are also extra gamemodes and characters that can be unlocked as well. This is a game that can be enjoyed in both short play sessions and long play sessions. There’s also a mobile version available for Android (on Google Play), and for iOS (on the App Store). Card Crawl is definitely one of the very best card based video games that there is. For a game that costs so little, you get so much in return. Card Crawl is great if you like casual games and/or card games. I highly recommend it!
– Real player with 120.9 hrs in game
Very fun, well crafted, simple game hampered by its unnecessarily grindy quest/unlock system.
You play against a random deck drawn from a fixed set of cards 49, and you get to choose 5 “ability” cards to mix in for a total of 54. The ability cards are fun, but you’re heavily reliant upon the luck of when they show up.
You unlock more ability cards with credits you earn as you play. Credits earn decently fast and you can read card descriptions before you pick which one you want to unlock, so earning them is not bad at all.
– Real player with 105.8 hrs in game
Crystal Soul Chambers
ABOUT THIS GAME
Crystal Soul chambers is a roguelike card game where you must create a group of 3 characters, each one with his own unique card set. Each of the characters has their own abilities related to their personality!
FEATURES
Dynamic Deck Building: Choose your cards wisely for each member of the group! You must find synergies and measure the cards for each one of the group members
Select cards that work together to efficiently dispatch foes and reach the top.
An Ever-changing Chambers: Whenever you embark on a journey to rescue one of the characters or liberate it, the layout differs each time. Each game mode has his own unique way in which you can create or discover the way taking into account your best strategy.
Crystal Soul Chambers comes with:
3 different game modes, all of them with roguelike and exploration elements: Rescue, Liberation and Rankings
Classic JRPG Battle Themes fully orchestrated
Anime Style JRPG graphics
24 characters that each have their own unique set of cards.
300+ fully implemented cards.
200+ different items to be found.
50+ unique combat encounters.
Card City Nights 2
I was skeptical of buying this game because I don’t really like “casual” games, but I did enjoy the game despite it being filled with stuff that wouldn’t normally be to my taste.
The premise of the card system worked really well. The board positioning/countdown system sounded silly but was really interesting. There’s a careful balancing act between planning ahead for the space your going to need, crowding your opponent out, and getting down the powerful cards which are harder to hook to chains and make it harder to keep your chain momentum going. Unfortunately this is all scuddled by cards later in the game that are able to ignore all of this, and I haven’t seen a strategy that works better than spamming those cards over and over and I was able to cakewalk through the game once I figured that out.
– Real player with 37.7 hrs in game
Card City Nights 2 is unfortunately a much worse game in many ways than the first game.
The core gameplay is similar in many ways, with having to connect 3 cards together using the 8-way arrows on each cards. But the board is one large 6x3 board instead of each player having their own 3x3 board, and connecting the cards doesn’t immediately cause an action, but rather activates them, to do something in X number of turns.
There are definitely pros to the new game. Being able to place your cards directly in the way of the opponent is nice. The “spy” cards that have red arrows that connect to the opponent’s cards are very cool, and there’s some great balance with them (they often have powerful placement effects, but help your opponent create matches). There’s a lot of interesting possible combos you can do. Like powerful cards with no arrows, that have to be activated by other means. Or cards with great effects only WHILE active, which means you want to delay their turn timer as much as possible.
– Real player with 32.6 hrs in game
Concrete Jungle
Allrighty, folks, we are looking at a gem that doesn’t even know what KIND of gem it is. Is it a strategy? Yes. Is it an Indie? Yes. Is it a Tetris-like game? Yes. Is it procedurally generated? Yes. Is it a Rogue-lite? Yes. Is it Ironman? Yes. Does it involve competition? Yes. Can you play it for hours and hours on end? YES!!!
I was absolutely surprised just how much the game did right. So, in true fashion, let’s take at the good and the Bad.
The Good:
1. Awesome AI. I love AI that can make my life a living hell. The AI will exploit your mistakes, take advantage of them, and crush you, rather than just hang back and let you feel all good for beating it.
– Real player with 70.3 hrs in game
I wish I could recommend this game. There is a lot of interesting potential that is wasted here. Unfortunately that’s what it does: waste your time and its own potential.
The “city planning” aspect of the game is purely cosmetic. There is nothing about this that relates to city building aside from the cosmetics. You could pallet swap this with any theme and it would still be a puzzle game. I feel thoroughly mislead that this has anything to do with city planning.
It’s also almost entirely multiplayer focused. The single player campaign is over before you even learn all of the mechanics. Any length you get from it is purely from replaying the same levels in an effort to get a better score.
– Real player with 50.5 hrs in game
Folding Edge
I’ve got the 1st round clear.
Good job, actually it is better than I expected.
The group making this game should then continue to modify the details to make it better.
– Real player with 59.9 hrs in game
UPDATED VERSION (March 2020)
Game has changed name from Starship Helmet, but same card style battles + campaign. No tutorial but clearer translations, so expect to jab at it for the first couple of games, it becomes obvious soon. Enjoyable.
Improved balance, campaign and new special weapons, plus crew that can improve cards.
At first glance the new graphics look worse.
Still a couple of Chinese parts. Easy to guess the meanings by jabbing at them. [In the original game entire cards might be in Chinese - seems fixed.]
– Real player with 22.9 hrs in game