Death: The Ascension
Certainly not for everyone, confusing at first, but has plenty of unique mechanics after you get past the learning curve
– Real player with 285.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Roguelike Deckbuilder Tabletop Games.
Update:
After a few ascensions, I have a better idea now how the mechanics and concepts fit into this creative new game developed by a very friendly and responsive indie-developer who has updated the game in quick response to suggestions on the discussion forum.
What is it?
I would describe Death: The Ascension as a card/puzzle life-choice simulator in which you aim to optimize your chances of a successful ascension by manipulating event probabilities. It has a deck-building type of mechanic in which you add cards to your deck, but the deck is not a draw-deck. Cards in your “deck” influence the chances of drawing cards into the player’s five card hand from an infinite pool. In other words, if you have only one card in your “deck”, you have a 100% chance of drawing five cards of that type. You are playing cards against Death as your opponent. Death has their own deck that has similar draw mechanics, but only draws one card per turn. Each turn one card from each deck is played with four possible events dictated by the player’s card with varying probabilities for each event known ahead of time.
– Real player with 83.4 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 Roguelike Deckbuilder Turn-Based Tactics 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
Shadowplay: Metropolis Foe
Shadow play: Metropolis Foe is Turn based Cyberpunk rouge like deck builder game set in virtual metropolis with a band of virtual rebels at a time with alternating play styles to learn and master. Character specified card development are veiled as reflected in the games numerous unlisted None Achievements with quite a deep learning curve.
Level are choice based as your progress depends on the chances you take with random encounters and numerous ways to progress and build your deck and optimise your items and support skills for the end game boss.
– Real player with 41.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Roguelike Deckbuilder Cyberpunk Games.
Cost the price of a movie ticket and lasted 10 times as long. If you enjoyed Slay the Spire, you will enjoy this game, two arcs completed, rewards give replay value, but unfortunately it has been abandoned. So it is incomplete. Still I enjoyed it enjoyable and a game experience worth having/ recommending. Hope the devs will complete it one day or make a similar game again.
– Real player with 29.1 hrs in game
Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles
An all new dice-deck-building roguelike, Astrea, has you chart a path through the ruins of a lost civilization as one of six brave Oracles. Using an ever-changing deck of dice and enchanted Sentinels, Purify waves of Corrupted foes and a decayed goddess to save the Star System.
• Fortify Your Astrarium - Choose among hundreds of different dice that suit your penchant; reliably safe, perfectly balanced, or powerfully risky
• Purify vs Corruption - Tactfully wield an innate risk vs reward system by pacifying enemies through Purification, or Corrupt yourself to unleash abilities that help tip the scales
• Uncover Modifying Star Blessings - Imbue your Oracle with unique passives yielding potent effects that changes up your fundamental tactics
• Over 20 Upgradeable Support Sentinels - Enchanted constructs that offer supportive dice rolls making them reliable companions in the heat of battle
• Choose from Six Brave Oracles - Each possessing their own unique dice sets, abilities, and playstyles
• Choose Your Path Wisely - Laden with bountiful boons to enhance your chances for success and encounters against waves of enemies that impede your progress, chart a course through the ruins of a lost civilization to the source of Corruption
• Battle Challenging Enemies & Terrifying Bosses - Formidable foes all have multiple unique modifiers, skills, and interactions requiring strategic use of all your abilities to scathe by
Long ago - when ancient ruins were once flourishing civilizations and their populace lived in idyllic bliss - a mystical star governed all. Loyal disciples, called Six-Sided Oracles, were blessed by their star, granting them the strength to seal away the gift of heavenly bodies within mystic relics.
All was perfect and harmonious. Until that one fateful day - The Crimson Dawn Cataclysm. A ferocious inferno sundered down from the sky, engulfing the entirety of the star system, crumbling the foundations of their society and corrupting the souls of the weak-willed. The disciples of the star were lost to the chaos - their creations scattered across a vast world of ruin. Could there still exist those who were capable of wielding their power?
Eons later, brave young scions awoke to a mysterious call beckoning them to the ruins of the ancient disaster. It is there they find the lost six-faced relics of legend and writings detailing the original Six-Sided Oracles, a vengeful deity, and a Corruption Plague. The new Six-Sided Oracles embark on a journey to save their star system and search for the secrets of their destructive history.
Deep Sky Derelicts
I will caveat my recommendation by saying that it only just makes it over the threshold. It has a couple of nice ideas that make it playable but many small annoyances that make it far less so. It’s quite cliched but if I could give it a “meh” I probably would.
There are several reviews that compare it to Darkest Dungeon (one of my all time favourites) so I gave it a go. After an hour playing, I realised that this was not particularly accurate. Other than having turn based combat and a map where you wander round and encounter random things, it is not that similar, please disregard anyone saying that!
– Real player with 72.2 hrs in game
OVERVIEW
As a TCCG/RPG game Deep Sky Derelicts scratches an itch I didn’t know I had. It has a few rough edges, but I can certainly recommend it. It is mechanically sound and thematically interesting, albeit somewhat clumsy and childish at times; more on that later. The presentation is well executed and the pacing is just right thanks to careful balancing.
GAMEPLAY, MECHANICS
There is a lot of variety here - the number of classes/specializations makes for great replayability. I’m pretty far along in my current playthrough and I already know what my next party composition will be. The game can be swingy at times, but I never ran into long periods of it being too easy or unfair party wipes. At least… not yet. That said, there are a couple of things I dislike, mechanically speaking:
– Real player with 53.0 hrs in game
For The Warp
As others have pointed out, this game has a lot of great features and has some compelling gameplay. However, there are three things that kill it for me because they lead too far down the path of heavy RNG.
- The shuffler makes no sense. The fact that you don’t discard cards and that every time you draw a hand that you are pulling from your entire deck is against the foundation of what a deck builder game is supposed to be. It has all of the other facets of how to build and manipulate your deck but the player should be drawing from a shuffled stack and continue to do such until the discard pile needs to be shuffled back in. I might have been less opposed to this if you could freely discard cards from your deck without needing to pay for it or have NPC’s want to buy them during events. But as it stands, it is far to easy to get a 18-20 card deck and that is far too much RNG when doing pool draws.
– Real player with 12.2 hrs in game
As others have stated, FTL meets slay the spire.
HUGE potential here. I think a few things need reworked.
1. Balance: jmzero’s review goes in depth.
2. No discard pile: this i feel is an odd design choice, since there’s no discard pile, all cards used immediately go back to the deck, so attaining any new card is a constant lower percentile of getting any card in your deck on every turn. So you may never see your new card in play…ever. Since the deck is shuffled every turn. This is poor design, you cant structure synergy here, as you are constantly threatened to draw the same cards over and over. This just feeds into the balance problem, of “just grab the most OP cards and scrap the rest”
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
Hand of Fate
What drew me towards this game was the aesthethics and atmosphere shown in the trailers, and I was not disappointed.
The game is presented as you, the protagonist, sitting across from the dealer, a mysterious hooded figure, to play game of cards.
Everything in the game has a representation as a playing card.
The playing field is a bunch of cards, laid out in small mazes.
Your equipment is made up of cards like weapons, helms, shields and a plethora of rings.
Your enemies are cards in 4 suites (dust, skulls, scales and plague), each of which is a theme (e.g. the card “2 of dust” is a pair of bandits).
– Real player with 64.2 hrs in game
I’m going to try and be as thorough as I can with this review. I’ve been playing the game since before it was released on steam. I think that now they’ve made it clear the game is almost finished I’m going to explain why this game is FAR from finished.
Let me start out by saying that I’m an old gamer, yeah an old guy still playing games. So, the definition of what was and what is now considered a ROGUE-like are two completely different animals. The old rogue-likes were fun games were you crawled a dungeon in search of treasure and weapons much like the new ones. After that the definition has changed. Old rogue-likes required you to use your wits to advance your character in such a way that you could accomplish your goals as long as you played your cards right “no pun intended”. The new rogue likes are a smorgasbord of take it up the proverbial gluteus without any way to counter/block/prepare or even chance your way out of a situation. This growing trend of masochistic (why people think it is) enjoyment has literally turned rogue like games that could have been great from games that lasted weeks, months, & years into ones that only last a few hours, days, or weeks. That’s if you’re willing to deal with them for that long.
– Real player with 42.0 hrs in game
Little Dungeon Stories
Starts off with a good concept but far too short and the events are random so sometimes useless events show up. There is also not much variability in the types of events. Character stats are random and unable to be customised except a one-off buff choice at the start. Boss rewards are not unique, just giving you a refill of resources.The game ends at floor 150 (if you get there that far with rng. I’ve played 7 hours and got there 4 or 5 times) and replayability is limited. I feel a bit disappointed as this is basically completed on release and not in early access where much of the content could be improved. Would need a moderate amount of improvement for me to recommend it.
– Real player with 8.4 hrs in game
The Little Dungeon Stories game process is entirely built on cards that entail a certain outcome. In fact, the game about the dungeon works - you get various situations, which are presented in the format of cards with inscriptions, and you can react to them with one of four options. Your actions have certain consequences that naturally affect the gaming process. If you are wrong and make the wrong decisions, the dungeon will sooner or later destroy you, after which you will have to start the game again. This is the whole essence of the game process - you have to pretend where a decision will lead you to, after which you will take it and move on. Sometimes questions are really complex and even logical thinking does not help, and sometimes developers provide quite a simple choice. That ’s the whole point of the game.
– Real player with 7.3 hrs in game
Nadir - Prologue: Slay the Six
Nadir - the point on the celestial sphere directly below an observer. It’s the direct opposite of the zenith… and your destination.
GAME DESCRIPTION: 🔥
Nadir - Prologue: Slay the Six is a free prologue to the dark deckbuilding roguelike adventure, with its artwork burning of infernal fire, and many extraordinary inspirations, the deepest of them coming straight from Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Control powerful, yet extremely blemished teams of characters, each representing one of the deadly sins. Fight using a plethora of unholy cards and try to escape the seemingly endless, multi-layered city.
TWIST ON A TURN SYSTEM 🔥
The Threat Counter shows how powerful the enemy’s attacks will become. There is no limit of played cards, but each of them adds points to the Threat Counter, so you’ll have to manage your risk-taking.
CHARACTER-BASED DECK BUILDING 🔥
Each character on your team contributes to your main deck; find synergies between each Sinner’s cards and build a dream (or nightmare) team.
CONTROL YOUR SINS 🔥
Every Sin has its own group of Sinners, shells that will bring its will to Nadir. As the sinners’ journey progresses, their power will grow, unlocking new abilities to fight even stronger threats. And if they shall fall, the abyss will produce more fools to try.
CHOOSE YOUR OWN APPROACH 🔥
Do you prefer raw damage or a more cunning way of poison? There is a multitude of different card effects to choose from. But remember that the enemy will attack you back, so you better look for cards that will decrease the Threat Counter.
CHALLENGING BOSSES 🔥
Each level of Nadir has its own Floor Guardian that you will have to defeat in order to go deeper into the city. But be careful, each of them has a unique ability!
REACH THE BOTTOM OF NADIR 🔥
This goal seems simple, but considering the characteristics of Sins, will they be able to divide the power between them?
A JOURNEY UNLIKE ANY OTHER 🔥
Watch your back on your way to the bottom of Nadir, taking time to admire its horrific look. It might feel familiar – from the wonders of the Divine Comedy, to desaturated aesthetics of Sin City, to the unforgettable design of Hellboy – yet not comfortable at all.
MODDING SUPPORT 🛠️
Devil’s in the detail and that’s why Nadir offers a built-in, extensive modding support for those who want to expand the world of Nadir and imprint their twisted fantasies onto every inch of the game.
Neurodeck : Psychological Deckbuilder
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What is this game about?
Neurodeck promises an interesting combination of deck building paired up with psychological challenges such as loneliness and exclusions and mental health issues such as phobias. If that sounds interesting to you don’t get your hopes up unfortunately. The psychological part is pretty much tacked on, with very thin connections to the main theme, while the deckbuilding is OK at best. Let’s dive in quickly:
– Real player with 7.2 hrs in game
Solid deck building game.
On the + side:
The idea is awesome
Animations of the phobias are smart
Many interesting game mechanics: the shark phobia was a real challenge - it … behaved like a shark would, eating your cards.
In many subtle ways, the design was smartly done.
Very addictive until the realities below hit you:
On the - side:
Many cards are useless. Too expensive in terms of stamina, duplicating already existing effects, introducing effects which are irrelevant etc. I would say about 3/4 of the cards I have seen are horrid. After most battles you gain a card and the 3 choices are usually so bad that I had to skip selection. Thankfully, there is such an option ( = choose none of the cards) and you can also remove cards from your deck, which is very important for a deck building game. But still too much fluff.
– Real player with 7.2 hrs in game