I’ve got a few hours in the game under my belt now. I finished the tutorial floor and then started a run on normal and I’m on the second floor now. I’m playing the starting rogue class that’s the only one that’s initially unlocked.
This is one of the best and most fun card games I’ve played. The UI and graphics are quite nice. It even has a large fonts mode and UI scaling. Overall, It’s hard to believe this was all done by a single person, even if he is a professional graphics designer.
The game mechanics are quite interesting. You pick a route through each floor like Slay the Spire and others, but you get to see in advance exactly what cards and rewards each battle will give you. That allows you to pick the path through the floor that allows you to build the deck you want. Speaking of the deck, you get to change it on the fly and swap out whatever cards you want in between battles.
Battles are interesting as well. You don’t defend on your turn but instead on the turn after the enemies play their cards. You can purge cards each turn for energy to play cards and you can purge as many as you’d like. You can keep a potion in your belt pouch to play at any point in a battle and/or brew one in advance that gives a battle long buff.
You can create some crazy effects by combining some of the effects on different cards like “trigger” and “Swift”. I combined them last night in a way that gave me 15 damage cards in my hand to play that cost 1 energy each. I had only 1 energy left but still managed to play them all and kill the boss. That’s because the card I chose for the effect was one that also had a “draw one card” effect attached to it. Because you can purge as many cards as you’d like, I’d play the attack card and then purge the card that got drawn as a result for 1 energy. Rinse and repeat. It was pretty awesome.
The game also has spells and artifacts that add modifiers or enhance other cards in some way. In addition there are rune stones you can socket into your cards that add effects. As a total package I think it’s a winner and I can’t wait to play some more. It also looks like the dev also wants to add some new classes and other stuff to the game.
Recommended for those that like games like Slay the Spire and Monster Train.