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 Management 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
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 Board Game 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
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
Read More: Best Roguelike Deckbuilder Turn-Based Strategy Games.
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
Decks & Daggers
(Review updated after completing the game.)
I felt neutral about the game until about half way through, but having finished it, it gets my unequivocal thumbs up.
I loved it.
It’s not a Slay the Spire clone, or anything like that - and yet I do feel it could offer the depth of strategy and builds of those games (and its spin-offs) while still remaining true to itself.
This game has had a lot of love and character thrown into it, which exceeds the StS brigade. It has a story and interesting characters. The art work is also beautiful and full of atmosphere and charm.
– Real player with 28.3 hrs in game
It looks like a fun game but sadly the cards you are dealt for each hand are completely random, so you can end up with no chance at winning a round and this happens time and time again.
I played for 6 hours and most of that time was starting again as the cards I was dealt meant I died pretty much on the first hand of each round.
What should have been a great game is ruined by the RNG.
Edit - Following latest update
I revisited the game after the update and although the RNG is still an issue (for me), it’s much less than before and I completed the game.
– Real player with 21.3 hrs in game
Urban Cards
Well, I first wrote a semi joking review about how this game was sucking up all my time and you shouldn’t get the game unless you wanted to be sucked into it like crazy but now that I’ve spent even more time playing it and the recent update came out, I wanted to change this review to reflect a truly positive view of a game that I enjoy a lot.
I play a lot of roguelites, no game genre speaks to me more than one where I can sit down, start a new run from the beginning, and either lose or win it within the hour and still feel satisfied with myself, even wanting to start another run out right away.
– Real player with 68.0 hrs in game
–The game’s alright. Very uneven gameplay. If you lose on debt it will feel super-frustrating, there is only one card in the game that can regularly clear more than 1000 debt at a time and if you miss it you will lose. This happens too often to recommend the game.
–The music is pretty good. Production values are otherwise indy. The voice acting on the Gamer and Harbor characters is so annoying it’s better playing against them on mute.
–Debt is the worst thing about the game at present. About a third of my losses have ended on “I’ve only encountered 1 card that can reduce my debt, and the hacker boss gives me debt every turn, so I have X turns to draw Money Laundering before I lose” or “this enemy has 2 cards in his deck that can give me $600 debt, if he draws both of them before I draw Money Laundering, I lose.” I don’t think I’ve gotten past day 2 of any of the Oper playthroughs where I’ve failed to find Money Laundering. The debt that I pile up is mostly from uninteractive enemy effects (the hacker’s boss inflicts a passive $100 debt per turn, and some enemies have multiple copies of the ****ing card that gives the other player $600 debt to the enemy). If you have to lose on debt, at least it should be from a lending minion, those are interactive.
– Real player with 50.9 hrs in game
DungeonTop
Beware that initial playthroughs may frustrate you. It is recommended you start out with the Warrior and the Shield icon, it’s just easie to surviver. Also you need to remain picky about cards. If you die, you have to start over. You can save after each battle and you can kill program if you’re losing.
Really love this game. Graphics, music, mechanics, it all comes together very well and it’s highly addictive.
Much less random than other rogue games like Darkest Dungeon and more strategic, giving more choice each turn. It also has more interesting cards to offer than most deck builders and a game board adds brilliant chess like strategy element where position matters a great deal.
– Real player with 40.9 hrs in game
Story
At the beginning of the game, you select and play as a hero. Long ago, there were legends of a place known as the Grand Forge. This was a city whose citizens were so adept at creating that they could bend the fabric of reality itself, using their skills to create whatever they wanted. The story begins three years after something called the Steel Curse has blighted civilization, causing black iron gates to crop up and manifest countless waves of monsters within the walls of major cities. The hero you select will gather an army (and minions and strange cards that do other things) and traverse the levels of the dungeons in an attempt to quell the monster attacks forever.
– Real player with 31.6 hrs in game
Card Hog
10/10: Highly recommend
Playing this game from the very first day of release I can say this game has a huge potential.
Buggs are fixed within few hours and new content is added nearly every day.
Even though game mechanics are simple as you spend more time playing you can master these mechanics and find your own way playing this game.
Based on your skills one run can take from few minutes up to hour and more.
For now, you can play few modes:
Endless Dungeon Crawl - 3x3, 4x3, 4x4
– Real player with 17.9 hrs in game
This is a great game when you just want to play something for 15 minutes. This is a card game but not one where you have a deck of your own and play cards on a field. Instead there is a grid of cards randomly chosen from enemies, weapons, healing potions, and more, and YOU are one of the cards! You move around the grid up, down, left, right by clicking on the card next to you that you want to go to. If there is an enemy there you’d better have a weapon otherwise you take damage equal to the enemies HP. Your HP is 10 and you need to be careful not to take too much damage because healing potion cards do not always show up when you need them. If your HP goes to zero, you die. Other helpful cards are shrines that make every enemy on the board poisoned or on fire for a few turns. There are also spikes to watch out for. They go up on one turn then down on the next. You can walk over them when they are down (it looks like ground with a bunch of holes in it) and that neutralizes that threat. Some enemies move and follow you as you take your turn but most stay where they are so you can maneuver around them, grab a weapon, collect coins and then come back to kill them. But each move you make creates a space for a new card to appear and it could be an enemy, a weapon, spikes, healing potion, or just flat empty ground.
– Real player with 11.6 hrs in game
Geometric Sniper - Card Game
Have you ever seen a roguelike sniper card game? Not! We didn’t know any of them either, so we turned our favorite sniper game into one! Get ready to find cards and hunt your targets armed with the deck you’ve built! Overcome the challenges and make the right choices to save the day!
A unique and challenging roguelike sniper card game!
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Prepare:
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Challenging missions in adventure mode;
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Random maps where it’s up to you to choose the path and benefit from it or bear the consequences of a wrong choice;
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Build your Deck wisely to meet mission challenges;
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Be careful with civilians, they will be present in some moments of the game. You must protect them while killing your enemies;
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Negotiate the release of hostages or be precise in your shot! You can risk and eliminate your target before it kills the hostage;
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With each mission new enemies and situations for you to face, new cards and equipment to help you on your journey you can find, hunt your targets, complete your mission and return to base, the next mission awaits you.
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Other game modes and more…
Good hunting!
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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
One Deck Dungeon
One Deck Dungeon is a lot of fun! You play an adventurer who decends into a dungeon made up of randomly drawn cards that you must overcome (or run away from). Fighting and disabling traps is resolved via dice rolls which are mitigated by your Skills. The number of dice is determined by your equipment. It’s a very clever and pretty game.
However, 13 hours in, I just stomped all the Fearless (hardest) mode dungeons with my Healing Spec Paladin. I mean, it wasn’t even close, even when she got completely unlucky. (for proof, feel free to check the screenshots on my profile) Perhaps Healadins are just overpowered once you know what’s going on.
– Real player with 69.0 hrs in game
One deck dungeon is a very faithful interpretation of the board game, and this translates into a very fun, albeit slightly repetitive experience.
At its heart, one deck dungeon is a simple dice game where you roll dice of 4 different colours in an attempt to overcome enemy encounters by using the dice to fill in the boxes on the enemy card. Dice can only be used to fill boxes of the same colour as the die and if the number on the die is higher than the value on the box. Any unfilled boxes then apply penalties in the form of damage or wasted time at the end of the round. At the end of each encounter you can then choose an additional die for future encounters, a skill which can be used to manipulate your dice in various ways, or experience towards your character level. This process then repeats until you eventually reach the boss or perish in the attempt.
– Real player with 62.6 hrs in game