Long in the past, Duelyst pioneered the magical game mixture of deck and board. You’d construct up an arsenal of tricksy monsters, then transfer them round whereas fascinated by skills and adjacency bonuses and the security of your ‘you’ character. That was towards on-line opponents, however Spellsword Cards: DungeonTop takes the identical concept and runs with it via Slay The Spire-like dungeons. The roguelike deckbuilder got here out on early entry final week, and I’ve discovered it moreish.
You decide fights as you wander via a dungeon, discovering playing cards and battling bads. The fights themselves are fairly restrained.
Battles happen on 4 by 4 grids, not less than within the early game, and also you solely begin with sufficient mana to play three playing cards. Those may be minions or buffs, and so they stand up to stuff you’re in all probability conversant in. Ranged assaults, bettering the stats of items they’re positioned subsequent to, gaining power over time. That type of jazz. Each encounter is just a little puzzle the place you determine kill your enemy’s chief unit whereas defending your individual. My final run ended due to archers cowering behind a wall, which I might have received, if solely I’d performed a greater job of defending my very own archers. Or else constructed a deck with extra direct injury spells.
These decks ‘n tactics combos please me. The way that overlayer of decision-making feeds into combat strategy, and how you work towards unlocking more powerful cards for your next run. I don’t think about I’ll be sucked as far down into this as I’ve the Spire, however the thought is there and it’s regarding.
Developers One Up Plus Entertainment estimate they’ll spend the subsequent three to 6 months in early entry. The full model can have extra choices on your beginning hero, spells and items. I do like the way it permits you to combine and match between these, working totally different courses with totally different beginning minions. They additionally plan so as to add Steam Cloud Saves and do “a lot of balancing”.
Spellsword Cards: DungeonTop is obtainable on Steam for £10/$13/€11.
