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
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
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
Luck be a Landlord
The negative comments on this game talk about how the balance is very unfavorable to the player and in order to win, you have to be very lucky. These complaints are valid. But they leave out an important piece of context: This game is being very actively worked on!
The developer is constantly tweaking with the game balance. If you look over patch notes, you’ll see tons of changes to how individual items behave, new items being added, and entire new game systems being included. Over the months, these changes have been very favorable to the player. It used to be that you’d have to play many rounds before you had one where winning was even a possibility, but now most games are winnable as long as you have a decent strategy in mind.
– Real player with 225.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Roguelike Deckbuilder Procedural Generation Games.
I LOVE the concept and the game is good but it could be better. Which is about right for an early access game.
The biggest issue is replayability. For a ‘rougelike’ that is a big deal and this game has limited replayability. Every run begins to feel pretty samey after you’ve pulled off a handful of different synergies. So far the only efforts made to address this have been adding more symbols and a handful of items. While this adds replayability it is a limited option. Every new symbol and item added makes it harder to find things that go together which lowers the fun and viability of the game. Having 100 new synergies doesn’t make the game more replayable if you can never actually get the pieces together to do any of them.
– Real player with 126.9 hrs in game
Tower Tactics: Liberation
It’s a mix of a Tower Defense and a Deckbuilder Roguelike.
Whats’s there not to like?
Especially because the Dev is very responsive and listens to feedback
After finishing the first Deck in Ascension 20 just now. I can say a bit more about the game.
There are 9 starting decks you unlock over time with your level, each with other starting cards and bonuses.
At first the game felt really hard, after getting used to the mechanics it became a bit better, but still was on the harder side.
Dev said he will adjust the difficulty to make it a bit easier.
– Real player with 50.5 hrs in game
Edit: Game is still good 20 hours in.
I would highly recommend getting this game before it releases. This game is functionally complete. Obviously there is room for improvement (more variety of content) but you can complete a run (3 maps + Boss), there is meta progression, including 8 slots you unlock over time which you slot passive abilities you find or create. Which are a little bit basic like increased attack speed or range or increased currency gain. Also there are many starter packages that change how your run starts which are tied to level progression to keep things fresh.
– Real player with 24.8 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
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