Card Dungeon

The game has a very nice look, but after playing with it for a couple of hours I became quite frustrated with how limited my choices really were. I'm a big fan of difficult games, and was hoping that this would test my wits the way Darkest Dungeon and Card Hunters does, but hard games are only fun when winning or losing is the result of a player's decisions. The lack of choices hits you the moment you start your first game, when you have one type of hero to choose from, one choice of positive traits, and one choice of negative traits. You don't even get to name your generic knight. Anything you find in your adventure has to be used immediately, or lost forever. Since any given card can only be used about a dozen times before running out of charges, it's very easy to find yourself with access only to defensive/buff cards, and without a fresh attack card you are effectively unarmed. New cards are obtained almost exclusively by killing monsters, so if your last offensive card is out of charges you are utterly screwed. If you could trade in all of your defensive cards for one offensive card, you could keep playing. Alternatively, if dying gave you an additional trait to choose from on your next attempt, there would be some reason to try again. As it is I'm moving on. I'll likely check back in a year, but for now I'm taking this off my tablet.

This is a great game. Very fun, and a cool mechanic all around. Upgrading/leveling is pretty buggy, though: you're supposed to unlock new traits with special gems. I've found two, they tell me I've unlocked a new trait, but nope. Then the rules say that you visit a "shop" every three levels, but I've never seen it show up: lots of gold and nowhere to spend it! Maybe I'm not understanding, but if so that needs to be more clear in the rules. But this is really fun! I hope these bugs get fixed, and then I'll be the first to change my review to 5 stars.

It's an enjoyable dungeon crawler with lots of replay value. The rooms and maps are randomly generated, as well as the treasure drops. The unique aspect of the game is that your "attacks" break after you use them 5-8 times, which forces you to use drops from enemies. This can be frustrating the first few times, but you can have your cards restored at the red fountains. It can also be hard to notice "status" conditions on your character unless look at your enemies past attacks. The game encourages dying by randomly giving knowledge gems on enemies. Theses allow you to unlock new perks/flaws which make future runs much easier. Some cards seem much more useful than others (I used lava tile for most of the game). If you want a adventure game with lots of replay, this is the game for you!