Words Can Kill
Words Can Kill is a fusion of roguelike deckbuilders and word games. But this game isn’t about your vocabulary. It’s about your decisions and resource management. You will travel through the fantasy world and fight monsters trying to find a more efficient way to use your letters and your gear.
Features
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Indirect synergies. It’s hard to consistently use a powerful weapon that requires 6+ letters for bonus activation with a deck full of rare letters and without additional draw sources.
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Plan your future turns. Are you ready for a strong enemy attack on the next turn? Don’t use words now, place your letter tiles on the board and wait. This way you can make multiple blocks on the next turn and defend yourself.
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RNG management. Replace tiles in your hand any time you wish. But pay with your health.
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Upgrade your deck. That tile with ‘Q’ poisons your life. Remove it from the deck on your next visit to the forge.
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Easy to learn, hard to master. The game has simple mechanics but deep strategy. Only a true hero can save the princess!
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Dozens of random enemies, random maps, 100 unique items. It’s still a roguelike, so yet another stupid death awaits.
Read More: Best Roguelike Deckbuilder Word Game Games.
Cardnarok: Raid with Gods
Been looking around for some indie games and found this little gem. I love the theme and ideas behind this game especially with the choices of heroes from mythologies of all backgrounds.
The combat definitely requires strategical thinking, planning and careful calculation in order to level up fast and build decks that work with your team. At current state it’s quite playable and no bug that bricks the game experience.
The developers have been patching updates aggressively and that is a good sign.
– Real player with 189.3 hrs in game
Interesting take on the genre
The core loop is:
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a string of StS-like maps
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connected by a monopoly/Game of the Goose-inspired overworld
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coupled with Rogue-lite Metaprogression
The combat is pretty standard with the caveat of 3 characters (with somewhat varying abilities) in “tag-team”
The Deckbuilding part follow the newer trend and allow the player a high degree of control over the resulting deck
Overall the game could use more polish and some extra content, but it’s a solid buy if you’re a bored deckbuilder.
– Real player with 27.6 hrs in game
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 (+, +/-, -, ?):
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The game looks really nice, shiny and coloful. I like how the characters and enemies move in a limited way.
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Great character design.
! Mecha Peppa is probably my favorite.
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A good selection of weapons, skills, dice, buffs and debuffs*.
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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
Read More: Best Roguelike Deckbuilder Tabletop Games.
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
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
The Last Hex
–-UPDATE—
Several months ago, I reviewed this game and gave a generally negative review mainly because of difficulty. This was before the developer made substantial and significant changes to the game. I am pleased to announce that the developer has made this game much more playable with multiple difficulty modes (which all games should have) and added a lot more content. There is an element of strategy with this game, and by playing it many times, you can pick up on the cards and the gear that you really want to keep that will give you maximum success. After the develop made the necessary changes, I have logged in over 200 hours to this game. If you play on Initiate level, the potions don’t really matter too much until you get to the boss camps and the final boss where you can use as much potions as you want.Thanks to the developer’s earnest in making this game better, there is new content every month. Overall, because of these changes, I do finally recommend this game if you have an hour or two to spare.
– Real player with 312.2 hrs in game
Getting close to 20 hours in right now, and unlocked about half of the heroes to play with. So I wouldnt be surprised if this game will amuse me for 40+ hours, which is very good considering its current pricepoint and that its still in early acces. However, i believe the game is 90% complete so it’ll prob leave EA soon.
Anyhow, its a slay-the-spire-like deckbuilder that is easier at some points, and harder at others.
For example, in here you can take your time to build your char before you fight the big boss, no set path to take. You can actually go back to shops to buy specific cards or items.
– Real player with 131.3 hrs in game
Hand of Fate 2
Having not played the original, I didn’t know what to expect, but I have been pleasantly surprised. This game is equal parts choose your own adventure, collectible card game, tarot card game, The Price is Right prize game, and action RPG. And it all works together really well.
Each of the 20 or so scenarios will have an overarching story that is told through narration, text, and events occurring through randomly placed cards that the player traverses as a figurine. The player can select from their previously won cards before each scenario to choose the encounters, weapons/equipment, and fortunes they will face, in addition to cards unique to each scenario. Other cards and player companions will have their own stories that will be told over the course of many scenarios. The story itself is a meta game, as told by the narrator, known as the dealer. Your character plays the game of life and death against the dealer as the story unfolds.
– Real player with 121.0 hrs in game
_During your travels, you stumble upon somewhat unnecessary wall of text blocking your path. The scribble describes a sequel to a flawed game of age long forgotten. As you gaze through the text, you notice small ink marks both above and below it: “hrs on record”, “helpful” and “funny”. From the corner of your eyes you see a hooded figure to the left.
“You’re welcome to read it. But mind you, that’s just an opinion of mine,” a low humble voice echoes in your ears. The figure’s been watching you all this time._
– Real player with 98.7 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
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
School of Magic Prologue
Very interesting i like how magic/cards works
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
Hey Everyone, yeah i really liked the Artstyle of the Game. The Soundtrack is well executed. The Combination with the Skill / Spell Cards is pretty stunning. I played the Demo and want definitly see more, when the whole game is finished. People who are invested in Kill the Spire, will be entertained and others have a more easy way to get into that system with the Action RPG part.
Keep on the good Work developers,
sincerely
Rince
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
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