Pirates Outlaws
Pirates Outlaws is a roguelite deckbuilder where the player is the captain of a pirate ship in search of fame and fortune, and must fight against Human pirates, skeletons, ghosts and monsters. The game mechanics will be very familiar to anyone who played other games in the genre such as Slay The Spire or Neoverse, although of course Pirates Outlaws has its own unique twists.
Combat Mechanics
Combat is turn based, with the player’s actions being represented by the cards drawn into their hand, and you’ll see what action each enemy intends to take on their turn. Melee attacks can only target the enemy closest to the player (unless the card says it damages all enemies) but are usually free to play. Ranged attacks can target any enemy but they cost ammo to play. Other cards can give the player armour (which can be carried forward to the next turn), restore health, apply status effects to the player or enemies, change the position of an enemy, or have other special effects.
– Real player with 78.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Roguelike Deckbuilder Pirates Games.
This game looks and plays like a pirate skinned Slay the Spire, and well, that is pretty accurate and not a bad thing either. It does mold and craft its own unique image in both the style and gameplay. Some of the game design choices would actually make me think it is more of an Anti-Slay-the-Spire at times as it makes deliberate design decisions to stray from the path of its inspiration.
While you can craft some pretty OP builds still, it can be a lot harder to achieve some of the broken builds of stacking poison to 999 or such - largely because the status system in this pirate game is quite different. Only one status is allowed to be active at a time. So if your enemy is poisoned, they can wipe their poison stacks clean by buffing their self with an attack increase. Because buffs can erase debuffs and vice versa. However, this goes for the player too. There is even a boss battle that will absolutely wipe the floor with you if you don’t have some kind of way to buff yourself. He will keep raising your injury (this game’s version of poison) stacks on you and they will just get higher and higher unless you wipe it with a buff. Not much different than how Slay the Spire bosses can hard counter some of your decks. But at the same time it is just different and feels unique. I wasn’t so sure about the status system at first but it grown on me quite a bit. Which I think brings me to the next major difference.
– Real player with 69.4 hrs in game
Roguebook
Wanted to hold off reviewing it until I beat +15. If you’re looking for a new deckbuilder, I’d recommend this one. I’ve played Slay the Spire, Monster Train, and a few others, and this one really made me want to thoroughly complete it. There is enough variety and unique combinations that really makes each run fun and challenging. It’s not perfect (I’ll talk about that below), but it’s worth the coin.
Positive:
*Gem system adds a fun element that makes some not so useful cards viable.
*The large deck angle adds more ways to build around bad cards.
– Real player with 150.8 hrs in game
I unfortunately can’t leave a positive review. I am a linux user. Before buying this game, I checked and saw that the game worked fine with steam compatilibity tools, so I bought it. The game was working perfectly. Then they added an update, which added some random visual bugs (slightly annoying but nothing major) as well as some random game crashes (around once every 1h30 of play for me, but since I’m slow and runs were about 2h30 that was quite annoying). Then the last major update hit, claiming some bugfixes. Cool. I do not experience any bug anymore since my game doesn’t even launch anymore. I’ve tried switching the compatilibity modes, proton versions…etc… to no avail, the game doesn’t launch anymore.
– Real player with 103.6 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
Read More: Best Roguelike Deckbuilder Comedy Games.
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
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
Iris and the Giant
This review is mostly based on 8 hours playing the demo, and one 2-hour run post-release. Will update sometime.
TL;DR: A good game but not quite ready for release, and the lack of explanations might frustrate you and make it seem harder than it is.
Does the fact that every card you play is destroyed from your deck worry you? It worried me, but it actually works because you get frequent chances to replenish your deck, and you’re not playing with several unique cards but rather a fairly tight set of base effects and improved versions of them. It doesn’t really matter that your sword is gone after you attack, because you probably have 4 more in your deck, you can get another 6 from the next chest you find, and you might have a magical power that gives you 2 swords for free at the start of every room.
– Real player with 15.0 hrs in game
Overall, I’d recommend Iris and the Giant for its surprisingly deep positional combat and charming art style. If you’re primarily looking for a great story or you don’t want to fail a few times while gaining upgrades, maybe Iris and the Giant isn’t for you.
I really enjoyed the combat system (I’ll elaborate below). I enjoyed the simple art style and good music. That said, the story didn’t work for me. It felt like it was relying heavily on common bullying/depression tropes. I personally didn’t find the story to be a motivating factor nor did it enhance the game play for me.
– Real player with 13.7 hrs in game
Solitairica
Introduction, basics of gameplay
It’s a really interesting spin on your typical Solitaire formula. The addition of different enemy types (with own skills and passives), spells, equipment slots and deck types gives the game surprising depth. Solitairica also requires some real thought, especially if you want to get through to the end, regardless of whether it’s a Normal or an Elite run.
The “meat” of the game is gauntlet-type journey, with 18/28 battles and final boss. A single successful run takes anywhere from an hour to three, luckily there’s option to save & quit. And you’ll have to do plenty of runs to unlock and complete everything. I’ve spent well over 60 hours so far and I still have few deck types that I didn’t complete Elite difficulty with yet. If you like puzzle, strategy and/or card games then you should enjoy your time here.
– Real player with 155.7 hrs in game
Target Audience: .Those who like spider solitaire and Roguelites.
Summary:
While the base game may not EXACTLY spider solitaire, it uses the core game concept, and adds a layer of combat and skill to it. And what does that do? It makes an addictive game that I planned to play 4 hours to get my first impressions. Instead, I ended up playing 14+. This should tell you something. Using skills to turn a defeat into a victory was always satisfying, and a game that was great to play in the background while I was watching YouTube videos. The different classes and items helped to keep the variety up, while buying news skills and changing up strategies was great to see what new combination I could put together next. The game could use a few tweaks to make it more of a streamlined experience, and the developer seems to be taking feedback after he watched the video review I produced. And I would like to see the game on the iOS/Android platform, as I think it’d work really well there. But even for what may seem like a higher price compared to other solitaire/card games out there, Solitaircia delivered in some addictive gameplay, and made my other reviews that much harder, with the time I spent on this one.
– Real player with 96.3 hrs in game
Underworld Memories
In Underworld Memories you control a mysterious character with no memory in an underworld dungeon. Each room is unique and full of surprises. Build your deck, defeat your enemies, get stronger and go to the next room.
With no memory of your past, your only option is to stay alive in search of answers. Advance through the dungeon and begin to understand the real reason you are there. Fragments of your past will be released, be prepared!
Features
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Deck Building - Dozens of cards for you to build your deck wisely.
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Procedural map - Each map is unique and procedurally generated. So enjoy each round.
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Turn-based combat - Build your strategy and make precise moves.
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Portals - Use portals wisely to teleport to rooms you have already explored.
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Rogue-lite - Less harsh and punishing mechanics.
Draft of Darkness
a fantastic blend of card based rogue-like with survival horror elements and atmosphere.
there’s a good amount of content here for the asking price (around 15 hrs+), giving you a great introduction into what this game has to offer, after playing through everything there is currently available I thoroughly enjoyed my experience from beginning to end, any issues/bugs I experienced where minor(and also easily report-able within the game).
these where only things I could find fault with,
the gear can be a bit cumbersome to keep up with(it would be nice if it was a bit more visible what gear was higher level/higher rarity, I understand there is a sort tool but I wish this could be a saved setting instead of resetting each run), the UI is however very good at providing detailed comparisons between what your looking at and what your wearing.
– Real player with 20.1 hrs in game
Very fun and genuinely unique as far as this roguelite deckbuilder genre goes. The atmosphere often reminds me of STALKER in terms its lore and world being enigmatic. If you enjoy digging around for lore and what the hell is going on (at this point with 10 hours in I still can’t confidently claim to know myself what is up.) then you will deeply enjoy this game. It may be early access but has enough content to chew to justify picking it up just to toy around with. The combat is very odd when it comes to timings but you’ll get use to it. My favorite part of this game is the flowchart. While i’m not 100% sure what all it encompasses it basically is just helps paint a better picture of what events lead into what.
– Real player with 20.0 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
Gamble Tower
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Three clans to choose from, choose a combination of a primary and secondary clan to achieve different builds!
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20 different enemies that vary and change between floors!
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Two main boss battles with unique mechanics.
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Over 50 different orbs that you can modify and upgrade in different and unique ways.
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Capture and use enemies (and the enemies’s tools and weapons) as a way to improve your deck
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Random events, shopkeepers and interactions between each combat!
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The tower and its content are procedurally generated between each run, no run is the same as before!
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Gender swapping
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And the content list is still increasing!
A deckbuilding roguelite game where you hire a hero to crawl his or her way up to the top of a distorted tower in search of treasures, while you bet and gamble against other gamblers to profit on your hero’s misadventures.
Here you have Orbs (which actually look more like gemstones) that have a plethra of uses and effects but act exactly like cards, you have things such as Summons, Equipments, Attacks, Special Orbs and more!
A variety of different kinds and types of enemies and other gambling challenges await for your unlucky hero inside not very friendly rooms, where you might find a reward at the cheap cost of your hero’s life.
You must find precious orbs and synergize them with the other gemstones available in your orb to assure your success on this expedition! Find them on chests, enemy loot and other quite… interesting places.
Each run is different in this randomly generated tower, where you might find a lot of weird NPCs and gambling gadgets, therefore, keep entering surely not suspicious doors to your heart’s content.