Best Perma Death Roguelike Deckbuilder Games on PC

Crash The Core

A wonderful little rogue lite and deck building game. The UI is fairly basic but the mechanics are great which is bigger deal to me than shiny UI. I like the monster art and it in just the few days I’ve been playing the publisher has updated it, and fixed some things/issues. I believe it is a tiny or even one person maker of the game. So given the great mechanics and publisher seems to be wanting to make improvements, IMO it is by far worth the price! I always want to support small/indie developers, and this game so far been great fun!

– Real player with 19.6 hrs in game

Read More: Best Perma Death Co-op Campaign Games.

It’s nothing revolutionary, but it definitely has its heart in the right place. I had a good time playing, and especially enjoyed it considering the price. If you’re a fan of roguelike deckbuilders, this’ll familiar but fun. The Summon and Item system makes for some interesting synergies. Just be wary of some annoying bugs and balance issues, which may or may not get patched out by the time writing this. Again, nothing phenomenal but pretty alright considering it’s their first game.

– Real player with 9.0 hrs in game

Crash The Core on Steam

Underworld Memories

In Underworld Memories you control a mysterious character with no memory in an underworld dungeon. Each room is unique and full of surprises. Build your deck, defeat your enemies, get stronger and go to the next room.

With no memory of your past, your only option is to stay alive in search of answers. Advance through the dungeon and begin to understand the real reason you are there. Fragments of your past will be released, be prepared!

Features

Deck Building - Dozens of cards for you to build your deck wisely.
Procedural map - Each map is unique and procedurally generated. So enjoy each round.
Turn-based combat - Build your strategy and make precise moves.
Portals - Use portals wisely to teleport to rooms you have already explored.
Rogue-lite - Less harsh and punishing mechanics.

Read More: Best Perma Death Deckbuilding Games.

Underworld Memories on Steam

Draft of Darkness

a fantastic blend of card based rogue-like with survival horror elements and atmosphere.

there’s a good amount of content here for the asking price (around 15 hrs+), giving you a great introduction into what this game has to offer, after playing through everything there is currently available I thoroughly enjoyed my experience from beginning to end, any issues/bugs I experienced where minor(and also easily report-able within the game).

these where only things I could find fault with,

the gear can be a bit cumbersome to keep up with(it would be nice if it was a bit more visible what gear was higher level/higher rarity, I understand there is a sort tool but I wish this could be a saved setting instead of resetting each run), the UI is however very good at providing detailed comparisons between what your looking at and what your wearing.

– Real player with 20.1 hrs in game

Read More: Best Perma Death Deckbuilding Games.

Very fun and genuinely unique as far as this roguelite deckbuilder genre goes. The atmosphere often reminds me of STALKER in terms its lore and world being enigmatic. If you enjoy digging around for lore and what the hell is going on (at this point with 10 hours in I still can’t confidently claim to know myself what is up.) then you will deeply enjoy this game. It may be early access but has enough content to chew to justify picking it up just to toy around with. The combat is very odd when it comes to timings but you’ll get use to it. My favorite part of this game is the flowchart. While i’m not 100% sure what all it encompasses it basically is just helps paint a better picture of what events lead into what.

– Real player with 20.0 hrs in game

Draft of Darkness on Steam

Dungen

cute little game apart form the fact that its basicly in alpha:

bad translation to the point where you left guessing what cards do

a good portion of the cards doesnt do anything in the first place

starter decks of the diffrent classes cant fight half the enemies in the first lvl

fights start sometimes randomly without input from your side

and the list goes on and on, not worth the money at this point

– Real player with 1.0 hrs in game

Dungen on Steam

Grid Slayer

Replayability allert!

Please let the look not mislead you. This game should be played by every player who likes card battles.

This game hits all the right buttons to be fun to play.

You are dropped on a gridfield and you get to choose where. Weather and environment are part of the things you need to keep in mind.

You start with a small number of assets (cards) and it is up to you how to use and manipulate (mods)those.

If you win, you gain cards and mods. If you lose, you sometimes get money to buy certain upgrades.

– Real player with 16.5 hrs in game

I just started this game and I already love it. If you are into strategy games that are easy to pick up but take a while to master, then this is the game for you. I like the characters and the different challenges that are put on the field, Only thing I would like to see is a fun animation when you kill one of the bad guys, I will edit my review as I get more into this game. Thanks for your time and happy gaming : )

– Real player with 13.8 hrs in game

Grid Slayer on Steam

The Corpsmen

Unless you have a passion for making an ultimate abomination, the content of this game, at the moment, only amounts to 2 hours tops.

Game got great concept and a very solid core, but very messy in many ways. Bugs, crashes, lags. Afaik the devs are aware of the bugs and UI issues, so it should be fixed eventually, but for now, if you can’t stand “true” early access games, I’d say you wishlish this and wait. “True” early access as in, it really is an early access game, unlike many modern games where it’s pretty much complete but they just put the early access tag there as an excuse in case anything goes wrong, this game really is in early access state where the game pretty much is incomplete, but out there early so people can test it out.

– Real player with 33.8 hrs in game

Warning before I post this. This game is still in development, and as such has some issues. That being said it just had a huge update, and a rather riveting beta phase for such an update. The development team seems to be paying attention to the forums and are able and willing to answer questions, even inane ones like that kind I ask.

They are working hard on fixing the bugs and issues, even at this current moment as I type this up.

That being said, I do recommend this game.

I should go over it, so here I go.

– Real player with 33.3 hrs in game

The Corpsmen on Steam

Trials of Fire

Look guys, I’ve been playing this game for a few weeks now and while I can say I do love this game. It’s got adventure, a unique world to explore, characters that have a surprising depth to them (on the few occasions you have the right character for the right scene), and a plethora of fun combo cards and builds. …But…

I fucking hate this game. You have GOT to do something about the enemy combo formation tactic that goes on. It’s the same tactic every time- but it’s UNAVOIDABLE. No matter how you attempt to position, it’s a HEX BASED GRID- you cannot avoid getting surrounded by dudes. Every unit just moves in to surround one target, then all cards are wasted for 1 dude to hit the target 1-3 times, proc’ing the other enemies 2-6 times, for a total of 3-12 damage. If you were confused about the result, your character is dead. Which cannot be mitigated properly because healing herbs only show up when I complete what amounts to a laughably unbalanced boss fight where the 1st boss sends more dudes after you than you can possibly field, while sitting back in the corner buffing himself into oblivion and tagging your guys (who are stuck in combat with his overpowered handmaids) with dot damage and cackling maniacally. Not sure if someone on your team is one of those sadistic Dungeons and Dragons DM’s who think that its totally fair to TPK the party in the first 5 minutes but it feels that way at times.

– Real player with 291.2 hrs in game

As much as I love the genre, card-battler deckbuilders have become a deeply overcrowded field in the last few years. I’m always on the lookout for titles that stand out in some way, doing new or unusual things, and especially ones where those things actually work. Trials of Fire hits that mark, in a few different ways.

First off, it’s a party based RPG, with your three-man team being composed from nine total classes. Each character has their own distinctive deck, consisting of five generic cards and four class-specific starters. The core deck for each character is kept essentially fixed at this size, allowing the player to replace any of those nine slots with more advanced cards drawn from a class-specific pool. Alternatively, they can instead elect to replace one of their existing cards, either basic or advanced, with an upgraded version. This replacement-focused attempt at deck-building strikes an interesting balance, and it’s been pretty rare for me that the decision of what to do is a totally obvious non-choice. The fixed size also serves to keep the deck for each character relatively manageable, as with a more traditional approach applied across multiple characters the size could get unwieldy. There are rare circumstances in which a character will pick up an additional ‘Trait’ card in their core deck, which can’t be overwritten or replaced, instead requiring action to remove. It’s likely not surprising that the most common of these are various Injury cards (gained from risk taking during story events, or having all health depleted in combat) as well as Fatigue (added to the whole party if they’ve gone too long without rest).

– Real player with 82.6 hrs in game

Trials of Fire on Steam

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

Fuzz Force: Spook Squad on Steam

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

Card Quest on Steam

Mage Mountain