Cardaclysm

First of all: Some reviews in here are just unfair. If you like card-games you should definitely try this one out. Some reviews suggest that this is like Slay the Spire - its really not. It scratches an itch many good card-battle games do, which is a good thing and thats problably the only thing it has in common with slay the spire. I dont know how someone can say its like slay the spire really.. But one thing is for true: You don't want to stop playing. I don't think comparing Cardaclysm to slay the spire or magic the gathering is the right thing to do. People do it, just because these games have cards in it. Card Battler discribes this game the best. You have two currencies which allow you to play cards in a battle. One of them is gold and is important to play ANY card. The other currency is just for playing Monsters (So monsters need gold and the other currency to be played). You collect them throughout the game. Both refill after a battle. Atm there are over 100 cards to get. Your deck has a limit of 14. You can change your deck any time. If you have duplicate cards, you can fuse most of them into a higher level card. The "pub" is your main world. You can get quests there and go into new realms to battle monsters and grind to get new cards, gold and more. Thats the main thing to do in the game right now. There are just 2 Bosses as of now. The bosses are pretty tough and so you have to grind to be able to beat them. So the gameplay loop is grinding to beat the boss. It's also not really a rougelike as some people say. If you die, you just start from the beginning of the realm (not much progress lost). Usually you would need to start over from the beginning (like in slay the spire). Thats not the case here. I did not encounter any bugs. The game is very playable. The tutorial is a bit shallow i must admit but the game is not that hard to understand. Youll eventually figure it out for yourself. Some people say the game is to random and because of that pretty hard in the beginning. I do not agree. I also got bad luck with my cards in the beginning but was able to beat the monsters after the third try. You eventually learn the game and how to approach specific monsters the best. I even think there needs to be a harder mode in the game. It becomes a bit easy later. I think there should be some mini bosses to spice things up. Also, i really do thing this game would benefit from a rougelike mode a lot. Rougelikes are pretty much loved right now, especially in combination with deckbuilding. That will also give you more reasons to play, as of right now the game "ends" after the second boss. The roadmap looks pretty good and promises something like a "hardcore" mode with better rewards. Im all for it and can't wait. The Dev helps out a lot and even put out a patch after suggestions in discord. There are some negative things about the game. It feels a bit shallow, especially in the "pub" as there are just two people to interact with. The tutorial is not the best and the game would benefit a lot if there was a little story (to explain the basics of the world, why/that a boss is coming for you, what or why you have to do x or y). Im not talking about a over complicated Kingdom hearts or MGS-like story. Just a few npcs to talk to. Overall the game has a lot of potential and you get several hours of fun out of it right now. It scratches the same itch other card-games do. I definitely recommend it for 15€ if you are okay with the concept of early access. If you liked this review, please consider following my Curator Page: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38553778/ I will review lots of Strategy Games!

The game is unplayable because it has technical issues. I regret that I wanted to look past it for longer than 2 hours, because now my refund will probably be denied. Do not buy this game before the game is fixed. For developer: -> The game features a bug that makes it impossible to place creatures. -> If you cannot place monsters, you lose the battle and lose your progress. -> It didn't happen to me too often before beating the boss thing. But it happens to me about 3 times every 5 levels now. -> I will gladly change my review if this bug is removed.

I've came back to this game recently because I've been wanting to play a decent single-player card game for a while and realized I never wrote a review. Let me frontload with the bad, this game is [i]very[/i] amateur. Artistically it's pretty basic, it lacks keybindings, UI is a bit slow, everything about it looks like an low-budget indie project. And with that said, I will still take this over any of the 13251 clones of Slay the Spire that hit the store every day. Roguelikes in card games is that kind of trick that works only once. Because it's a card game without deck building. It's a glorified draft mode where you play as you draft and every match is dictated by whether or not you top-decked your OTK combo and you always pick the choices that remove cards because getting more is a liability. Cardaclysm is already miles ahead of the competition for not having this issue. The game is played in preparation as much an in battles. Bad reviews that mention the low-budget aspects of it are fair. Not everyone can move past jank to enjoy a game and it's very much subjective whether it's a deal breaker or not. Bad reviews mentioning an reliance of luck or complaining about system mechanics are the type of Karens that complains about a steakhouse not having vegan options. If you're getting screwed by "luck" in this game, your deckbuilding and strategizing skills aren't as good you think they are. Your deck has only 14 cards and you have plenty of stalling and drawing options to cycle through your entire deck and guarantee victory, but they aren't as obvious and autopilot-y as playing a zero-cost Anger over and over again. It's a strategy game through and through. Luck only really plays a part in the loot you drop after a battle, and that's the kind of card game experience I prefer. I wish there was more card games like this if I'm being honest. They're getting increasingly rarer to find...

Good and bad, but the bad outweighs the good. There's abilities that are just hard counters to whatever deck type you build. This would be find in a card game if not for the fact that you have to completely restart an entire level and lose all of your progress from just ONE loss. That makes any rock/paper/scissor hard counters very frustrating and unfun. Dev response update: The problem is when you flee, you're sent back to the exact same level again with the same enemy types. And, there's very little ability to acquire new cards in the tavern. So, if you run into a difficult fight, you just clear out as much of the level as you can, and then COMPLETELY RESET the entire level if just ONE fight goes poorly. Sorry, your response does not address my concerns at all. I don't regret buying it, as it was on sale, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone out there. Third update: Also, the game is buggy as hell, which really ruins your experience. Regularly I'll start a fight where it's glitched and won't even let me play any monsters. This means you either restart the game, in which case you lose ALL progress on the stage and have to start over, or surrender, which has the same outcome. Very frustrating and wastes so much time. (Another update: This bug has been resolved now, although it still negatively impacted my experience for a game that is advertised as not early access or beta).

I have no idea what this game tries to be. Dungeon crawler? Collectible card game? Roguelike? According to the tags, RPG and card battler? All at once without commiting to anything, that's the best guess I can make. You have a character - if that makes a game an RPG, the box is checked. If not, I fail to see the RPG elements. There are cards, sure, but it's not a card battler. You run around on maps (that would look nice if it wasn't for the insane bloom/brightness; nothing you can do about it) and fight creatures in turn-based battles. So far, so good, that's fun for a while. You loot cards, you can level them up by combining two of the same kind to a better version. But this is where the problems start. Summoning the creatures costs two resources: runes and orbs. Better cards cost more resources - which would be fine if you'd find more 'during your adventure' as the tutorial claims. That is not the case. I have over 100 golden runes, but didn't gain a single orb. Now I can either keep playing low tier creatures that die at the sight of the higher tier enemies, or I can render my deck unplayable by upgrading them. Then there's the 'interdimensional tavern' where you go after a successful run. Note the 'successful'. Your storage for unused cards is here. If your run was unsuccessful, you do not return here. You appear at the start of the run, with the same cards you previously failed with, and you won't get a chance to adjust your deck until you somehow win. Beyond that, the tavern is populated by a handful of NPCs who give you fetch quests or trade items/cards for other cards. That's it. No dialogue or anything you might expect from an 'RPG'. Just the same 3 'bring me McGuffin', 'slay 1 creature', 'slay 3 creatures' quests over and over. Except for the weird brightness, the game looks decent. The music is relaxing; the few voiced lines in the tavern are jarring. The gameplay is a mess. There's promise, but in its current state, I can't recommend this game.

It's "listening to a podcast in the background" grindy. That's not for everyone - for me it was alright. I liked collecting the cards and figuring out builds. Here are all the problems I encoutered: - Controller at times just stops being able to perform certain actions but not others until you restart the game. - The targeting arrows for selecting enemies in battle when playing with controller are really bad. It can be very hard to tell if you're targeting the outermost enemy or the one next to it. - If you modify your deck and equipment midstage and then die, you're reset and have to do the deck management part again as well, not just the fights themselves. - Some early game cards stay relevant, but they stop showing up except for specific traders. So if you don't farm them early game, they can be tough to obtain, and the game doesn't bother informing you about it. - Challenge/Insane stages seem impossible when you unlock them, but trivial when you're at the endgame, even though they're supposed to scale, so it felt like I had been wasting my time attempting them early on. - You get to preview enemies, so you can craft a deck accordingly. Except for the bossfights, so most of time you'll have to repeat the whole stage just because you weren't clairvoyant enough to know the bosses' gimmick in advance. Would recommend to grind resistant players only, but not to anyone in its current state. Has a very Early Access feel to it.

[b]TL;DR[/b] #1 way the game could improve is to Provide passive gold (mana) regeneration during a match so early-game you can use more cards in a single battle on a hard map or hard enemies. As an alternative, I would be happy just being able to 'quit' a map "type" to get a different type when I've come up against a layout that my deck of cards cannot overcome. Long version: I really wanted to recommend this game, the concept seems really awesome and I enjoy the art/music/atmosphere, and I didn't experience any bugs when I played it... but unfortunately I can't recommend it. I was doing okay to start, not super easy which I felt was good for puzzling out what to do. But, then for my 4th or so level it generated a "poison" map, and after 5 or so tries I couldn't find any way to move past the level. The map layout is generated randomly - but the "type" of map (and enemies associated with that map type) are either set in advance (I haven't restarted the game to confirm) or once set the type does not change until you clear the map/level. This means that even if you die/fail, you are put right back where you were with the same enemies and the same cards that couldn't do it the first time. If it were a matter of needing a different deck/strategy, okay cool, that might be a fun challenge, but at this early point in the game I have barely more cards than I can fit in my active deck, so there is very little to try changing out. I feel like I could move past this level if I could play more of my 20 cards but I don't have the gold/mana (or mana regen cards, or passive mana regen) to make it happen. UPDATE: apparently there are (or were?) really powerful 'free' cards available from the developers that helped me get past the level I was stuck on and I was able to play the game a bit further, but honestly, I'm not motivated to keep playing it. If they didn't already, the devs should add these free cards within the game as part of a starter deck or whatnot; especially if they are necessary for moving the game forward.

tldr: game-play wise game is atrociously badly done. One of the worst combat system I've ever encounter. Progression is done via grind, zero skill or tactics involved. Gameplay loop is goes like this: You run trough small dungeon fighting the same monsters again and again (very small variety). Combat is done via summoning creatures with cards. Cards cost mana to play but instead of normal mana-per-turn economy you have all your mana available from the start and creatures can attack instantly. So 99% of the fights is done in one turn and is a complete stomp. Mana is increased permanently trough gathering shards on the map. Your goal is to roflstomp 200-300 dungeons and get manapool big enough to casually summon top-tier creatures at will and roflstomp final bosses. Yikes. The only reason why I didn't refund this game is my hope that they will use this money to send game-designer to some career-improvement courses.

[h1] This game is really, really good! [/h1] Not perfect, mind you, because there are some minor bugs, but really good all the same. I got it for a few euro's on Steam when there was a discount. I am now 40 hours in, and I estimate that have completed about 80%. For me, that is incredible value for money. If you can get it for a discount like me, I highly reccommend it. If there is no discount right now, place it on your "wants" list in Steam and you will get a message when it does go on discount. [b] Why is it good? [/b] The game is hard core, but it rewards careful planning and preparation. It can be very punishing for complacency or lazy decision making. Also there those rare occasions where you just lose to randomness (= a bad draw). If you cannot handle that, this game is not for you. For me this is a positive feature because randomness and high stakes add tension and excitement to a game. It makes your decisions more meaningful. Randomness adds some unpredictablility. Sometimes losing to that is a price I am willing to pay for an exciting experience. *** warning minor spoilers ahead *** [b] How does the game work? [/b] The game is a "roguelite" deck building game, where you collect cards to improve your decks and items to improve your outfit. The items you wear synergize with certain cards that you can play in your decks. They act like permanent 'enchantments'. You are a wizard and can walk through levels where you will encounter enemies. After every encounter, you are rewarded with a low rarity card and after every level (of about 5 to 8 encounters) you are rewarded with a choice of 1 out of 3 high rarity cards. The levels are procedurally generated so you will never play the same level twice. The encounters are also randomly generated, so the exact mixture of enemies that you will face will also always vary. [b] Why is it so hardcore? [/b] If you lose an encounter you will lose all the cards and items you had found up until that point in that level permanently, so you will have to find them again later. Plus you will lose a card that you already had before you entered that level temporarily and you will have to win it back by retrying and completing the level. For reference: an encounter takes a couple of minutes so a level takes about 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the size and the resistance you face. [b] How do start winning? [/b] Before you enter any encounter you can see which enemies you will face and which abilities they have and you will ALWAYS have the option to exit and change your setup before you enter. You should absolutely do this ALL THE TIME. Especially in the beginning. Plan your encounter. Which enemies will you face? What can you bring to defeat them? [b] How deep is the game? [/b] There are 5 'tiers' in this game. A tier is a collection of levels that is completed by beating the boss. At tier 1 and 2 I found my self custom building my deck for every single encounter. At tier 2 and 3, when you have collected som more cards, I found myself switching between about 4 combinations of decks and matching outfits that I had built, to beat specific enemies. But even then I needed to swap out some individual cards or items, depending on the exact composition of the enemey group. During tier 4 I had such a powerfull deck and outfit of items that I could use it almost all the time, except when facing a very specific enemie unit. Interestingly, this deck that was perfectly suited to beat allmost all of the encounters in Tier 4, was absolutely worthless against te boss of tier 4. This is no coincidence of course and the same thing happens at the lower tiers as well. So the decks that you need to beat the bosses have to be specifically designed as well. And the game knows what strategy you will most likely have adopted during that tier and has a boss that is ready to beat you. [b] Why am I so impressed by this game? Part one: balance [/b] Imaging having to design a game with randomly generated encounters that are made up of 2 to 5 enemies that can be chosen out of about 50 to 75 options per tier (I estimate about 500 different enemies in total). These enemy groups should work together well, if possible. And now each one of those randomly generated encounters should be a challenge to beat (not trivial) but be beatable by a well prepared player at the same time (not impossible). This game does just that and I am thougoughly impressed by it. [b] Why am I so impressed by this game? Part two: agency [/b] I have played deck building games since the very beginning (=1994). And I have played A LOT of them. Both in paper and digitally. What I find very impressive is the amount of influcence this game gives you as a player to combat randomness. I call this room for choice: agency. I will list a couple of them here. 1) you play a 14 card deck and can have 3 copies of a single card. 2) you draw a 4 card hand but can redraw (mulligan) as many of those initial 4 as you want FOR FREE (meaning you replace it with another card) 3) you can combine some commons into an uncommon and can combine some uncommons into rares FOR FREE. And back again too FOR FREE. No diminishing returns. No decisions that cannot be reversed. I cannot stress enough how huge this is. For a particular unit, I found myself upgrading it to rares in Tier 2 and then downgrading is again into commons, during tier 3 where I needed a lowe cost unit that could provide the same utility. Not having to grind for those commons again is such a great feeling. Being able to freely experiment with different versions of a card is great as well. 4) as mentioned above you get to chose your exact deck and setup before you enter an encounter and should absolutely do so 5) as mentioned above you get to chose a single card out of 3 after completing a level 6) there are some other options in the game to exchange cards with vendors as well 7) you get to chose when you face the final boss of a tier and can grind as long as you want before you do so. All in all an incredible amount of freedom of choice, which makes the game feel more like a puzzle game most of the time and not a mindless dungeon grinder. [b]So that was the "Good", how about the "Bad"?[/b] Well the controls are pretty bad. The resonse time is slow and the mouse is very inaccurate. Mostly this does not matter except for 'Highmore' levels. Those have traps that have to be avoided. Since the keys are slow and the mouse is imprecise this makes for a frustrating experience. The consequence of hitting a trap is no so bad though. You do not die, but just get send back to the beginning of the level. You keep everything you had earned so far and opponents that you had defeated stay dead. Because this 'death' by a trap is so inconsequential it makes these pointy traps seem really pointless ;-) I think the game would be better if this aspect were just removed. There is plenty of depth and variety without it. Another fix would be to improve the response of the controls greatly both in latency an accuracy, but it feel like that would be a lot of work. And for what, this is not an action game so it does not have to incorporate this aspect. [b]And the "Ugly"?[/b] Well there are some bugs. I got 'stuck' on a map in the corner of a level once. The keyboard could not get me out and the mouse could not either. I had to exit the level by escaping to the tavern (which can always do, thankfully) but this meant I lost the items and cards that I had gathered in that level. That was pretty frustrating to be sure, but since it has only happened once in my 40 hour playtime so far, I do not think it is a big deal.

Addictive gameplay loop. You run around, fight enemies, collect stuff and upgrade your creatures, spells, and itemization. Then you head back to the hub, turn in a few quests, look if the merchants have anything interesting and then it's back to adventure within minutes. The low poly art is pleasing to the eye and the music switches between relaxing and epic when appropriate. The general feel of the game reminds me of Etherlords, a boomer card game I used to sink a lot of time into back in the day. Be aware however, that there are a few rough edges that I hope will be addressed before the full release. Particularly for pc users the interface feels a bit on the clunky side. Storing cards, sorting them, turning them into currency, and managing your deck takes a lot of time and could use an upgrade. If you want extra storage space for surplus cards you need to buy it with in-game currency, which doesn't seem to serve any purpose at all. And again, automatic sorting options are almost non-existent. The game already pushes you to specialize in one of the four factions but dabbling in other colors feels almost impossible with the way surplus cards are handled. Also, some cards have unclear effects and could do with more extensive tooltips. If you buy the game as it is at the time of this review, you can expect an excellent timesink for when you have 20 minutes to a few hours to kill. Runs and battles are smooth and fast-paced, while downtime between runs is usually the work of minutes, unless you need to clean up your collection a bit in which case my previous notes apply. The game has the potential to be very good, with some work on the U.I. and more content added.

I came to this game expecting a deck building strategy in the same vein as Slay the Spire and Griftlands. The first thing you need to know before going into this game is that it is designed to be a slow grind rather than a deliberately paced strategic gauntlet. I gave this game a chance after coming to terms with its slower pacing and unique deck building style. I was ready to sink hours into a game where I could gradually get stronger without the threat of losing all of my progress, and experiment with different decks and strategies freely. The game is very close to being great, but there is still an unforgivable flaw that completely turns me away from this game. It is possible to get stuck because your deck is not strong enough to clear the enemy encounters at a certain level. Difficulty does not adapt when you die. There is no saving, loading, or starting new runs in this game. If you get stuck at an area where the monster encounters are too demanding for your deck, your only choices are to replay the level at the same difficulty against impossible odds losing all progress each time, externally wipe your save data and start the game over, or stop playing the game. I never got to enjoy having lots of cards and trying new things. I just got stuck, and it looks like the only way forward is to start over and hope that this doesn't happen again. Without a foolproof safety net to prevent the game from soft locking, I will not trust it with my time. This game is worth checking out if you are interested in a card battler where you slowly accumulate power and have lots of freedom to adapt as you play, but be prepared for something to spoil the fun. Other criticisms I had that were not deal-breakers: The game has a very impressive visual style, but has a few serious weaknesses when it comes to presentation. Gameplay clarity is sometimes totally lacking when passing to enemy turn causes lots of fast animations to play. Between retaliatory attacks, passive effects, and end of turn triggers, I have often had allied and enemy creatures die unexpectedly with no clue what happened. This game would benefit greatly from generally increased animation clarity and deliberate pacing of actions which resolve between the player's turns. The real-time top-down navigation of the overworld is not a perfect fit for its gameplay. There are temporary bonuses scattered around the overworld which automatically affect the next combat encounter you engage in, and if you want to save certain bonuses for certain harder encounters, you have to waste a lot of time running around a moderately sized area in real time or else waste them on easy encounters or even ignore them entirely. Having a real-time chase sequence which punishes unprepared players with defeat is also a sketchy mechanic; it puts pressure and gameplay emphasis on a player's dexterity and navigation, which is an odd set of skills to suddenly demand while playing a strategy game, and at its worst is a serious detractor from the game's accessibility.

Without delving into the game hugely I've already decided I like the gameplay. It reminds me of the old MTG(the name escapes me) game where you wandered around the world collecting cards and gear to start building a deck.

The core systems are fun but after a couple hours it becomes impossible to progress. The jump in difficulty all at once combined with the inability to retain your progress upon loss or find an easier place to grind creates an insurmountable barrier which leaves you stuck with no way forward and no point to continue playing. If they fix that, as well as add more content, the game will be quite fun but until then i'd say it's only good for a short distraction.

I wanted to enjoy this game and it has a lot of great ideas. But after the first 3-4 where I truly enjoyed myself the repetitive tasks became very apparent I had hoped that new tiers of cards by progressing might alleviate this but the prohibitive cost for new cards and the hard limit of each deck requiring 14 cards just made it hard to pick the right approach to the situation as well as maintaining affordability. Having a lot of cool cards was nice in theory but only being able to afford one per game or even some cards that clearly were not affordable at any point was baffling.

Poorly balanced card game with lots of visual and gameplay bugs long after release. The game suffers from big problems balancing how you earn the resources to cast your cards and enemy difficulty. This forces the players to choose between an mindless easy grind for resources or extremely random runs where bad rng forces you to re-play a level dozens of time.

I like this one. It's not very deep, but it's a lot of fun for a short while. You basically have a limited amount of resources with which to summon some monsters and try to kill a few handfuls of enemy monsters each map. There are a few map or collectible one battle bonuses as well as artifacts and cards to collect or upgrade. You gradually build more resources with which to summon more monsters and can complete little quests or trade items to gain further strength. Lots of customization is possible and you can play in 10-15 bursts to complete each map.

tl;dr: It's currently unfun and aimless. You wander a mostly empty 3D map and then you do it again for very little progress, repeat and repeat and repeat. The first thing you notice starting up the game is the unpleasant experience from the startup cutscene being sound balanced far too loud, and that you can't skip it until you complete the tutorial. Even if you have already watched it. Make sure to mute your speakers before launch then drop the games sound in Options after. Said Tutorial is unskippable and not well-tuned for genre savvy or new players, and I say that as someone who likes this style where the tutorial doesn't actually teach you anything and you have to figure out the game on your own. Make sure you don't save and exit during the tutorial unless you want to start it over. There is not currently an option to turn off annoying warning pop-ups after you've seen them. The 3D is awkward and plays slowly. So you slowly see the same animations over and over again. The 3D leads to frequent missed movement on the map and talking to invisible characters in the Pub like the Artifact Trader who as far as I can tell is only offering to take your valuable gear for a single useless and weak common card. The 3D also often leads to accidentally talking to people just because the auto-walk passed you near them. You cannot reconsider the trades in the Pub so if you click off to view card details you cannot talk to that NPC again for that trade. The core deckbuilding and fighting gameplay itself is inadequate and most importantly unfun for an StS-like. You have a pool of mana that doesn't refresh, you can only use a certain amount of monsters even if the old ones die, you don't even get to discard cards turn-to-turn if you don't use them. That can lead to a near-brick starting hand where you are just stuck with mostly unplayable cards that you will never get the space or mana to play them or draw your other cards. There are enough bugs that you will run into some. Like creatures with Evade being paralyzed despite what the tool-tip says. I want to stay positive, I'm not refunding, but the sheer, aimless toil of the game makes it feel like it will take more than a year for this to be in a good, playable state.

It's a very simple game that looks like it's made for mobile. It's entertaining for awhile - even addictive - but it's also poorly balanced and lacks strategic depth. The 'story' is a skeleton at best. I picked it up for a few bucks; if the above doesn't bother you and you want to spend some hours grinding your way through something new, it may still be worth picking up at a large discount.

Kind of relaxed explored game, you journey into many different realm/area to grind and build yourself up and be powerful to proceed the game. Collect [Golden Runes] and [Soul Orbs] to increase your maximum resources. Your goal is simply to build a deck of creature/minion and spell cards with its own unique abilities, art and 3D animations. A deck contains only 14 cards. Each battle, you draw 4 cards at a time, and you only draw the new cards which replace ones you've used in the match. Battle rewards you to collect your loots. You can upgrades later as long you have collect enough resources. That allows you to play more better stuffs. There are many different cards for you to make a good deck of your taste. Explore each realm/area. They have own positive or negative stats. Pluss you need to collect keys to procced and finish your journey. Or face one of the Boss itself. You can avoid the Boss by running around and get into the portal to the pub/town. Items/Gears are in this too, collect them and make a set for your strategy gameplan. If you failed/die during your exploring/quest, you only lose the cards you have collected since you have entered the realm/area. So try not to take any risk unless you are pretty sure you are prepared.

Cardaclysm is a straight-forward card-player game of creature summoning, where the player decides when they may be strong enough to confront their pursuers. Each venture out of the Inn generates a randomized area filled with enemies and treasure, as well as a portal back to the Inn. Repeat as necessary, accumulating items and cards to gain the power to defeat the entities gunning for you. Well done quick-run kind of game.

This is a game I was mixed on for awhile until near the end. There is zero purpose to grinding, the game limits you in so many ways. Want to build a cool deck go for it but your golden shards which or soul orbs wont allow it. Want to play fun big cards in your deck you can have MAYBE 1 or 2 at most due to the cost of them. Also if you get one bad draw a battle can be over before it even begins. If I could build decks as I wanted or had say 1 limiting factor not MULITPLE I could maybe recommend this.

Pretty Worth it game at 80% off ($4) Just started and can see myself having alot of fun TBH. Abit of Card battling, running around Collecting equipment and upgrading Cards. The Difficulty lies mostly within the Mana Restriction every Battle (Gotta Summon Wisely) Its Chill most of the time then BOOM random panics here and there from random bosses coming at you. Just make sure you run around the Boss in the First level and get to the Portal, Dont Fight it and it'll start getting good at Level 2+

Really wanted to like this one, love the idea, just find it too frustrating right now. I'll give it another shot when 3 things are fixed: - Discard a certain number of cards in your hand per turn (so if you're stuck with high cards only you have a chance of getting something you can play) - Fixing those Gargoyles or just removing their rock form (I often hit a stalemate with them because I don't have enough total attack power left to kill them in one turn) - Add some sort of progression when you die in a run - i.e. keeping a certain percent of cards, items, and tokens, because right now, if you fail a level you just feel like you wasted your time as you don't keep anything, most roguelikes usually have some form of meta progression even when you die.

Awful level designs, unpolished graphics (your character floats), choke point gameplay (you will get stuck as the mechanics of the game is not at all well planned or thought). Don't purchase this unless it is with 90% off on sale.

As an avid card-game player, I loved this game. It scratched that itch of a solid PvE experience that so few card games out there provide nowadays. Don't get me wrong, sometimes the game is a bit buggy, and it's a bit rough around the edges (why do the potion master and card sellers trigger when you get close rather than when you click on them?), but it's still playable, and a good experience if you like card-slinging and looting your enemies for more powerful cards.

I am very glad I didn't listen to the negative reviews on this. This game is great and it's honestly baffling how this is "Mixed" at all. Either the reviews didn't understand how to play the game or they're just trying to be harsh for the sake of it. I was looking for something to fill the Etherlords-type void of card games where you can actually see your minions summoned on the board, and this delivers more than I expected. The collection of cards is much bigger than I expected, and the decks are all 14-cards each. The game makes wonderful use of this and gives you hard hitting cards from 5 different colors, plus items for your character which buffs different types of minions. Meaning you can build dozens of completely different strong decks, even early on. I also have nothing but praise for the card system itself. It doesn't have the usual "flying" or "tank" systems that can get so tedious and innovates with cool abilities that manage to play into the system quite well, making positioning and order important, while keeping the resource management the crucial thing. The graphics are smart, I'm not sure what you call that art-style but it reminds of For the King, it's simple, but strangely effective at portraying things well, the game feels indie without feeling cheap. There is much more I could get into, but it'll all tell you the same: if card games are at all interesting to you, this is a worthy purchase.

I got this on a discounted sale price of $2 and for that price I would definitely say this game is worth playing. With one important note. The biggest strike against this game is that it doesn't respect your time. Gold that is used for spells and summons goes up by 2-4 per stage and as the game gets more difficult, this never increases. Orbs needed to summon more creatures are exceedingly rare though I was lucky to get some boots that made summoning take one less orb. Finally to get to the last stage you have to grind 60 keys and that was finally when I called it. 17 hours for $2 is a good value but the terrible high grind shows a lack of respect for the player, so only buy on sale.

Cardaclysm is a grinder of monster battles. Fight with your monsters turn-based style (mostly like hearthstone), with cards of monsters and spells that you collect, upgrade, trade and grind down. Walk a bit getting power-ups (retro) and equipment (diablo) on a map (randomly generated), until you fight enough monsters to leave that map to the inn and interact with a number of NPCs. They trade and give quests to you, then you leave the inn and start a new random map. There's more to it than that but I described the core gameplay. It's fun and pretty. It could really use more weight in the form of roguelike element such as permadeath and impactful choices that completely turn the gameplay on its head. Maybe a tree of some kind, perhaps a skill tree, simple classes with a few bonus-malus or a tree of world changing effects. I personally play it permadeath (without game support) and that works for me.

It's got some interesting ideas, but it feels half-baked. Feels like a very early, though polished, early access game. The overworld itself is static and uninteresting to explore. Enemies stay in a specific spot, often blocking a path, and you can even inspect them to see what you're up against before deciding to engage. But really there's no reason for this to be a whole 3d zone that you run around in. It's just a waste of your time. The only exception is that once you kill every enemy on the level and open up the exit, a powerful enemy spawns and chases you down (it's allegedly the final boss). It moves at the same rate you do, though, and spawns at the entrance to the level, so as long as you remember how to get to the exit then you're never in any danger of encountering him if you don't want to. The whole thing could have been done equivalently with a node-based map, like many games in this style do. Between levels, there's an inn you can visit. And, once more, there's no reason for it to be a 3d area you walk around in, it just wastes your time. All that happens at the inn is that there are some NPCs you can interact with; get quests, trade cards, etc. There's never any choice in these interactions either, beyond choosing to accept or decline. No reason this couldn't have just been a menu. The art style's actually not bad. It's a good looking game. And the reason I keep harping on the uselessness of these 3d areas is because a lot of effort clearly went into them, and it's totally wasted. They should have either figured out some way to make the worlds actually matter, or they should have saved their effort for tuning the game itself. Speaking of. The game is interesting in that you're entirely front-loaded with resources. Throughout your adventure you'll collect gold and orbs. Gold is spent to play cards, orbs are required for summing creatures (in addition to gold). These resources replenish at the start of each battle, but that's all you get for the entire battle. You can combine cards of the same type to make a more powerful version, which sounds great on paper. Except that doing so also increases the cost, doubling it or more. In fact, I found that it made a lot more sense to keep my cards at low levels (which, thankfully, you can always revert an upgrade) so that I could afford to play more of them. The battles themselves are generally very short. It's rare for a battle to take more than 3 turns. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Each battle is basically a little puzzle; with your scant resources, how do you defeat these enemies as efficiently as possible? I think it actually works pretty well, to be honest. But the short duration of the battles just underscores how much time you spend walking around a largely empty, if pretty, map. My final major complaint is the deckbuilding. You're never allowed to turn down card rewards, so everything goes in your deck. This is particularly frustrating in the beginning of the game, where the tutorial has taught you to always upgrade cards (but you really shouldn't), and you will frequently get cards that are totally useless and just take up space. Once you get up to 12 cards, additional cards are stored outside your deck, and can freely be swapped in between battles. And this is yet another reason why keeping low-level cards makes more sense than leveling them up; I'd rather have two mediocre scorpions in my deck if it means I don't have to take a totally useless card. I think the deck-building issue could be solved with two changes; first, start the player a full deck of barely usable cards, so that they always have a choice if they want to add a newly-acquired card in. Second, have the tutorial be a bit more bearish on upgrades. Explain that you can, but it's not necessarily the best move (as I said, the tutorial would have you believe you should always upgrade ASAP). Finally, there's not really a failure state in this game as far as I can tell. If you die, you temporarily lose a couple cards and restart the level. This is bad both for taking a lot of tension out of the game, which is important for a roguelite, and because you could wind up in a death-spiral situation where you're incapable of advancing but the game just keeps letting you try instead of just calling it a loss. I'm disappointed that this game has come out of early access. I really hope they continue to work on it. It's got a solid foundation and does some interesting things I haven't seen in the genre, but it needs a lot more design and development.

Too limited in every aspect of a video game. Maybe the art will bring some nostalgia for some of us, but don't expect it to carry you during your mandatory grind. Shouldn't sell students homework.

A VERY light, casual game. Feels like a free mobile app that tries to hold your attention with bright flashing lights until the next ad comes. Very little depth or challenge. No disrespect to people that are into casual games; it just wasn't at all why I expected.

The GRIND is INSANE! Dont be fooled. The devs answer complaints about the grind like this: You can trade in cards you dont need for the cards you need. There is exactly one trader that offers you after every mission three random cards of random uniqness. Each at 50, 75 or 100 stones depending on the power of the card. Now first you rarely get any cards you need to optimize your deck secondly after making a run throguh a level to get surplus cards you exchange those cards for 10 maybe 15 stones. You see the problem right. To just get one unique or rare card you have to run through levels again and again and agian. In the leves you just get useless weak cards and higher levels were you can get useful card you cant do because you are to weak to go there. The first hours you could feel the progression, it was very enjoyable to play and now after beating the first boss the game has essentialy coming to a standstill. I have grinded for 5 or 6 hours, still made ZERO no kidding, no exaggeration ZERO progress. Cant beat the second boss, cant do higher levels because i cant get a real good deck together to walk thorugh a level with better loot and basicly thats it. The game expects me now to grind for i dont know maybe 50 hours through low levels until the trader has at random some good cards and i get enough stones to buy them. The sun is shining outside. I think i rather take my bike and go to the local park for free. So on a good side this game will help me get some sunlight. Though i could have done that without paying for this UNBALANCED UNFUN MESS.

It's a CCG with limited maximum card inventory (you can never own more than 1% of all the available cards). Combine that with a mobile game gatcha approach of having to have multiple duplicates to actualise any cards potential. What you get is a card take on a pokemon game with the PC having 12 inventory slots and you require 9 copies to fully evolve something.

'Cardaclysm' hits the ground running with its delightful loop of collecting cards and equipment that make powering up your mage both generous and visually rewarding. The game's design ensures that even death is but a minor setback, contributing to an initially addictive gameplay experience. However, the charm begins to wane as the procedurally generated maps reveal their shortcomings, with an abundance of dead-ends and repetitive layouts that add little to the game. Furthermore, the choice to employ a 3D map feels like a misstep when a 2D environment with meticulously handcrafted levels could have served the game's mechanics more fittingly. Despite this, 'Cardaclysm' shines with potential and is enjoyable, even if it currently gives off the vibe of a quick, mobile game port rather than a fully-fledged PC title. It's a game I like and see potential in, and if given (a lot more) further development and refinement, it could evolve beyond its current limitations.

Fun little deck builder. The top-down isometric style doesn't add anything to the game, but it doesn't need to. I appreciate that everything you find in a level carries over between runs, from cards and artifacts to permanently increasing your maximum energy, which makes this game feel like less of a roguelike and more of an RPG. The deck buliding and battling mechanics are solid, and there's enough variation to hold interest. Would recommend if you are into crafting one permanent deck more so than if you're coming from Slay the Spire, but there's plenty of card-battling fun to be had for the price.

I like Cardaclysm, but I don’t love it. It has you roaming around a world and fighting what are effectively turn-based Pokemon battles. You get new cards as you win these battles, and you can make cards stronger by combining any duplicates you get. It’s a cool system, and having a very hard limit on what you can use in any given battle keeps things fun as you pick up more options. However, combat just feels a bit dull sometimes. There’s definitely an element of misfortune here in that it’s in one of the strongest Review Round-Ups I’ve done too. It’s fun, but it’s not fantastic.

Straight forward card collector game with an appropriate level of challenge scaling. Must say that for the stage of development at time of purchase it was a rather fun game...unlike most collectors on Steam I have played. Some minor annoyances of the game is a) some of the gear is not clear for symbols and b) lack of a window native environment for the game. Truly a enjoyable game with much potential

This is not another StS clone. This is turn-based tactics with lots of monsters and spells, so its comparable to Monster Train. You have a 14 cards deck and can keep all cards you find in backpack and storage... so you can replace one card with another any moment out of combat. The game looks easy in beginning, but it's not. I've played about 100 hours and want more.

Good replayability, but gets a little grindy. Devs should improve the storage chest and inventory for cards, its a little hard to navigate. Also allow presets of deck, its troublesome to keep switching cards as different enemies encounter

One word: This game is "AWESOME". This game is so good and super addicting, I can't stop playing. I can't believe the rating review of this game is only mixed. it should be overwhelmingly positive! Well, perhaps this game was released too early few months ago and not having enough contents back then. I'm so glad that I ignore the negative review and get it!

I think this is a great card game, but not necessarily the card game some people want it to be... I mean, the game has been criticized for not being like other games of its kind and I think is not fair. Cardaclysm is not one of those games where you are gonna use every single card you get or change cards all the time, most of the times you will have your usual loyal effective monsters (the ones who paralyze, evade and have armor, usually) spells, and some heavy hitters, and with those cards that work like pieces of a puzzle you will have to realize how to defeat the monsters. I like it for what it is: a fun challenging puzzle with good graphics. Some dislikes: the traders keep asking me to trade my best cards/equipment for trash and I don't like having to run from the Boss at the end of the stage because that's dumb. Outside of that, I think it's a great game.

When I first played this game in, i think it was around april, i was dissapointed by the lack of content and depth. Its an early access title, so I let it be and gave it another try after a few major updates: and ive got to say, a LOT has been added to make the game more interesting and fun, Id say that its already as is a great game to play if you are into this genre of games, though dont expect a slay the spire clone, its very different. Hope the devs keep it up, has got a lot of potential.

[h1]---Problems Summarized---[/h1] - Floaty controls in the overworld feel bad - Overworld is just linear paths of fights, no decision making - Can't see who you're fighting until after discard phase - Creature health system means no power-creep - Small card hand means strategy is limited - Battles are short and all feel the same -Enemies are repedative, sometimes literally repeated I think that's everything... My review will be rambley and bad. But I might as well voice it. I'm not a fan, it's pretty rough. I do not recommend this. [h1]Boring Overworld:[/h1] My main issue is the game's just boring. You walk in a linear path to an enemy, choose to start a fight, after the fight you gain more cards then just walk forward to the next encounter, repeat. There are bonuses to pick up on the overworld but they are just in your path and activate instantly, you can't save them for a tough battle later. You also can't do any planning because you know nothing about your next battle until it's already begun (you don't even find out who you're fighting until [b]AFTER[/b] you've discarded cards for your first hand). And you can't leave a battle mid-fight. This all makes the walking around in the overworld pointless, I have no decisions to make and no strategy/plans to employ. Also the controls in the overworld are very unresponsive, you keep walking for a second after letting go of a direction. using the mouse click to tell your character where to go is prone to getting stuck or slowed down on things and also suprisingly imprecise (doesn't stop walking where you clicked, but a little off to the side or ahead). So the adventure aspect of this single-player CCG is boring and just wastes time. But that's fine, it doesn't waste a lot of time. So If I can just enjoy the card battles then it'd still be fun. [h1]Unsatisfying Card Battles:[/h1] The card mechanics are adjusted to be more fitting for random encounters, creatures have a persistent life bar through a given battle, so they take damage over multiple turns. This, to me, sorta ruins some of the fun of most CCGs where now my creature is only useful for one or two turns and then is dead (no power creep). That is combined with a lack of mana and little means to regen mana, so you have to pick your creatures carefully (could be exciting strategy). There's no power creep, since you run out of mana, but there also is keecapped strategy because you only have a hand of 4 cards to start and that's your max. This hurts the strategy with very powerful and common bad luck. ([u][b]Note:[/b][/u] you do draw a card each turn and there seemed to be cards that get you more, so long as you have room to hold them which again is only 4 cards). So you regularly find yourself too low on mana to play anything and without your utility cards since you only have 4 in hand. All of this is hurt more by the fact you can't see what you're fighting until after the discard phase. You get stuck often. Most fights are determined by your hand pull and the very first turn (even when they last several turns). Creatures that do any useful amount of damage cost like 16 - 20 mana and you only start out with say 30-some at the stage of the game I stopped at (really the first level after the tutorial level). The only way to get more mana is a creature that gains you mana when it attacks. The problem is it's expensive so you need to play it first turn every time, otherwise you will be mana starved on the 2nd turn with no way of gaining more. This means it goes up against the fullest set of enemies every game, and dies on turn 1 or 2 (seemingly targetted by the enemies). So you really only get to gain mana once. and its 4 mana, an almost useless gain. [h1]Nitpicks:[/h1] Another issue is the way dieing works. If you have no creatures and it's the enemy turn, they can swing at you and you die in one hit (that's all fine). But generally when I'm about to lose it's obvious. I don't have enough mana to summon anything I'm holding, there's no way to gain mana, so I can see a full turn or two in advance that there is zero way for me to win. But the game doesn't predict that, it forces you to quit (or just play and watch them attack). For example, if I have no living creatures and not eneough mana to play anything, and the game turns over to my turn, it feels bad to make me click "End Turn" just to watch the enemy attack, just skip to the enemy attacking me and say "No More moves" like Bejeweled or something. Another problem I have, when you DO die, you respawn back at the start of the linear level you just battled through (and lose all the cards you gained in that level). So it makes you do all the battles you actually won again, just to get back to the one you failed (each one along the way possibly ruined by bad card-pulls). The battles are at most like 6 turns long, so fighting the same enemies feels identical since the games don't diverge much. Either you did the winning strategy game, or the game where you lose, there are only two ways battles feel (overly simplistic maybe). Also I ran into a situation multiple times where I fight a set of enemies, move on to the next encounter, and it's the exact same set of enemies. It's not fun when that happens. And after I died in a level 3 times, I spawned in a different level (maybe a hub world because there was a merchant) with zero explaination on screen, and just more enemies to fight in a linear path. I don't know why I didn't get to keep trying the level I failed in. [h1]I should mention:[/h1] you can sorta optimize your deck by combining identical cards into upgraded versions and you can undo this upgrade anytime in the overworld, which is [b]very[/b] cool. But again, they're really expensive once upgraded so doing that ruins your ability to play, while not doing that makes you very weak. I feel like a single-player CCG just needs a different structure than this. Either make the card gameplay more CCG-y and longer form, cutting out overworld fluff with maybe a simple map and menu navigation. Or make the adventure part fun with planning and exploration (and maybe party members or something I dunno), turning the card gameplay into more of a traditional turn based RPG (keeping all the current card mechanics of course I just mean that's how it would feel in that context with a fun overworld). But right now it seems to do neither very well.

A well designed fresh take on card battlers with a lot of content, especially for a title in early access. You collect artifacts, temporary buffs and currency used to summon creatures. Each map is randomly generated, giving this component of the game a bit of a dungeon crawler feel. Your goal is to eliminate all enemies. When you encounter an enemy on the world map, the game takes you to a battlefield where you can use your collected cards. Battles might appear a bit limited at first glance, but you'll soon find out that there's more here than meets the eye. Even in my two hours of play, I've found that there are a lot of options to play in your own style, combining cards in creative ways. This is where I truly believe the game shines. Some balance issues pop up here and there, but I'm sure these will eventually be ironed out. I'd say so far so good, this game definitely has potential and it's worth picking up.

Some of the mechanics in the game are neat, others are really well done. When i 1st started my playing i thought, well this could be a really good game, but after 20 minutes or so, i found myself thinking, where's the rest of it? after 3 hours i was still thinking the same thing. You kill some stuff, go back to the inn, accept or turn in a quest (pick up an item on the small map) or talk to a goblin who wants to trade you a crappy card for usually 2 of your good ones. rinse repeat. no store to upgrade and/or get better stuff, no nothing, this game deffinately needs more.

Has nearly no game design. Just randomly copied a few card game mechanics without the slightest idea about how to implement any of them into a new game. Worse than Etherlords which is an old series with the same game framework released almost 20 years ago.

Oh dear, why so many bad reviews for this fun game! This game is awesome. I was bored at the 1st stage too but the more time u play with it, it will become much much more fun. ( more epic and legend card) This game needs you to grind to find cards then combine them to be a stronger version. The gameplay is not just a normal card battle, but also a sort of puzzle game( need to plan before playing ) cause the match will end in only 2 or 3 turns late game. Hope you guys can enjoy it much like me :) . For a 5$ game, it totally worth it.

I will admit, I went into this game somewhat skeptical, as I haven't been especially into card games in quite a while, but this definitely did not let me down. The combat mechanics are somewhat similar to what you would expect out of Hearthstone, but the animations and overall visuals are much more satisfying. The rpg-esque style of gameplay makes it a lot easier (from my experience) to bust out hours on end of the game since it's not just back to back battles with no breaks inbetween. The game devs themselves have been doing a great job with the early access, listening to the players feedback and implementing changes almost immediately, so I have high hopes as to where this game is going to be at by the time it's finalized. All in all, this game has been a great time to play so far and knowing that there are going to be further additions to the game just make it all the more exciting.

This is a very solid game with a great deal going for it. It's a deck builder with persistence, in that you continue to amass power every time you attempt a run. Over the course of 20 hours playing this game, I was constantly getting stronger and stronger, unlike many games with "rogue like" elements where you are constantly moving backwards in your progression. The cards are interesting and varied, and some very powerful combos can be realized. As of now (03/05/21), the game has some balance issues once you get further into the game, but these didn't hinder my gameplay until well after 15 hours in. Also, the developer has been active on the forums and quite open to making changes to the game based on player feedback, which is a good sign. I imagine that soon, most of these balance issues will be worked out. For the price, you really can't go wrong. I only got to the fourth tier of five or six, and got 20 hours. You could easily hit 30 or 40 hours here, and maybe even more if you really like farming out that perfect deck.

Love this game. Extremely addictive. Impressed of the genre mix. You battle your way through random and very short encounters. Each one gives you random loot (cards). By exploring the map you find random gear for your character. A very solid grind. Thus the grind does never feel cheesy, you always have that 'only one more battle before I quit' desire. And although the battles are that short, they are not simple in any way, things quickly get super complex with upgrading cards, having map effects, different creature types, spells and fnally your gear affecting combat and specifc card types + mixing additional cards into your deck. Beware: Some of the long negative reviews here critizise things which just aren't true and the reviewers seem to not have understood the game's UI. Make sure to read the dev's answer. The negative: There is an "action" mechanic at the end of each level which is not a good choice for something like a chill-out puzzle game. But it's somehow easy to manage. Though I'm not yet able to fully measure its impact on the later game, I think it hasn't any good reason to exist and hopefully will get removed from the game. Give it a try, it's heavily underrated.