Mage Tower: Call of Zadeus

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:

  • Single-player roguelike deckbuilder.

  • 350+ cards (most are UPGRADABLE.)

  • 80 classes.

  • Late 90’s aesthetic.

  • Cards lose durability after battle; fortify and repair the ones you like.

  • 4+ biomes, each with different enemy types.

  • Push your luck before battle with the Idol system.

  • Discover boons, random events, and overworld powerups throughout the world.

  • Crazy boss fights! Battle dozens of plant monsters, wizards with otherworldy spells, or multiple cards representing the various parts of a single foe.

  • Dungeons with unique rewards, but one life pool to last you through.

  • More advanced, strategic, and complex cards than other deckbuilders. BIGGER TEXT BOXES!

  • Easy to learn - the original game has a 2.83/5 complexity rating on BGG.

  • Sequel to the 2013 card game which raised over $24k on Kickstarter and has been sold in game stores internationally.

  • No “open-world slog” - always on the edge of your seat pushing your luck with battles and managing your deck and card durability.


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Mage Tower: Call of Zadeus on Steam

Card Quest

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


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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