Ariokan™ - create your cards, break the Meta

First impressions are great. The idea of allowing players to create custom cards that go into the pool for anyone to draft, collect, and eventually use is incredibly neat. Gameplay during actual card matches is fairly engaging as well (despite admittedly being pretty bad at it). There are balances in place to prevent a player from creating a "I WIN" button. The stronger a created card is the heavier the drawback needs to be for it to cost a reasonable amount of mana. It can feel a little weird with some of the slight variations of art styles between custom cards all right next to each other although that is just an inherent nature of the mechanic. Exact stats/effects or card names cannot be duplicated so there is a degree of "hey this dude jacked my idea!" that might feel discouraging in theory although in practice it is unlikely to completely hamstring creative visions due to the shear amount of combinations available with the current options (and prone to expand further if the developer adds more). The developer is pretty active, responsive, helpful and receptive through forums/discord so even though the community is relatively small it is great to see the effort being put into it. There are some in app purchases which can be an understandable turn off although I don't think anything exclusive or pay to win is being offered that wouldn't be accessible to someone who only buys the base game. Essentially it only acts as a way to speed up the acquisition of packs or frequency of creating cards. Animations exist and feel good enough to not be distracting, won't be as beautiful as something you would see in a mainline TCG card computer game although it does better than a good handful of card games on Steam. As a player that doesn't enjoy heavy PVP elements there is plenty of PVE content such as VS AI, Roguelite, challenges, etc. Yes you can also use your custom cards in the PVE content. Highly recommend Ariokan to those that like card games, collecting, and being part of an ecosystem heavily filled with community creations. For those who prefer smaller yet focused card pools, struggle with artwork consistency (including AI), or are just adverse to card games in general then this may not be for you. However there is a free demo available that I highly encourage anyone to try if they are on the fence. The ideas here have a lot of potential which leaves me excited to see how the future plays out.

Been playing Arikan on Epic for a while now. i wasn't initally sure about the buy in when i first saw the game, but i was intrigued about the idea of being able to create your own cards. I decided to give it a go, figuring that even though many online card games tend to be free-to-play, real world TCGs such as Magic the Gathering, Yu-gi-oh and Pokemon tend to cost anywhere between $20 to $50 for one deck, double or triple that for a deck that's competitive ready. I played the game almost religiously when i first started. Don't get me wrong, There were bugs, half the time i thought i was playing against Ai in the PvP mode, and Epic Games aren't known for having good multiplayer servers. But it was clear the devs were still trying to figure things out, so i was willing to give it a fair chance. Overall, i had a mostly enjoyable experience playing Ariokan. I was obsessed with Mantes decks initially (The faction of Pirates and sea creatures), even created a bunch of cards. I then experimented with wiith Craith, Luminia and (Mostly) Unaligned decks; I generally had a good time playing these decks, even when opponents were ridiciously hard. Furthermore, unlike all the many free-to-play card games across steam and Epic, at no point did i feel that i had to spend any more real world money than what i spend to buy the game. The gameplay rules were easy to pick up, and have been refined over time. it was a bit janky initallly, but prior to being released on steam it has become a lot more simipler to pick up, but remains difficult to master. For the Ai components; i'm more on the fence when it comes to everyone's favourite buzzword. but i think its been implimented reasonably well here. Online games will almost always have bots to battle when real players aren't avalible (or for when the player chooses PvE or a similar mode). Yes the game does include a lot of Ai-generated artwork, but i feel it helps in the long run with the creation of cards; you don't have to folk out money to pay a real artist if you don't want to, but i'm glad that Ariokan has the option to use you own artwork in place of images generated in game. Just don't try to use copyrighted images, the card becomes unplayable very quickly, and that's assuming the system doesn't catch it instantly. The Ai generator used for images here is both free and tends to be more hit than miss when it comes to card artwork. Overall, i encourage everyone to give the game a fair go. Remember, your spending the same to purchase and play the game here as it would to buy a deck or two of most real world TCGs. Review Edit (29/07/26) - For clarification's sake, i'll admit that i completely forgot to check out the card creator section of the Steam version of Ariokan on the date of release. My knowledge of the game comes from the Epic version, i forgot about Valve's stance regarding AI, and at the time assumed both the Epic and Steam versions were identical. - I have since played the steam version a bit more to give a more honest review. As far as i can tell, aside from my comments about the AI components originally being inaccurate (for this version at least), everything else i've stated above in my review remains the same.

I love the concept but the game ends up being really annoying to play because of some shoddy design with tooltips and other related elements. Also, I do not believe the AI disclosure is accurate. Yes, players are certainly uploading material from various sources, but even the base cards provided from the developers appear to be AI generated.

The disclosure mentions users may upload AI art. It makes no mention that the devs may use generated art themselves. Ariokan uses what looks suspiciously like generated video in its Legend cards, with some very non-sensical details. It uses art that looks generated in its tutorial, when providing random art for cards. The game is janky. It's slow to respond. The graphics in the The £25 game has microtransactions for online play. Yes, they added an offline mode and wield that as defense of the microtransactions, claiming they've 'removed them', but [i]they're still there[/i]. This game isn't worth £25. Play Legends of Runeterra instead.

I've played Ariokan for a long time.... since a reasonably early point in the beta! The game was already a great innovation back then. It's such a thrill to see that it has full released here and it has improved so much since the last time I've played it! If you've played MTG, Yu Gi Oh, and/or Hearthstone... you'll love this one. Clearly my by lovers of card games. Totally worth trying!

Fun and well thought out card game. I really wish a majority of the official content was not made with generative AI, but the option to add your own art to make your deck truly unique is super cool. Looking forward to seeing where this game goes.

Have put in plenty of hours on the Epic version and excited to get into again via steam. I've played tons of digital card games and eventually I always get tired of chasing cards (normally having to put out £££) so I could complete a meta deck to compete at higher level. Ariokan grabbed my attention by offering something I'd never seen before - custom card creation. It's really satisfying getting your hands dirty and actually creating cards to fit a build, rather than the other way round. It's made the whole tcg genre feel actually fresh again, rather than just another branded reskin of the same mechanics all over again. Well worth trying out for fans of the genre - you're going to get something fun and unique, which I feel really can't be said in the market anymore.

Hello there, one of the beta-testers here. Ariokan is one of my favorite card-battler games. The advantage it has over Hearthstone is that (almost, if not) all the cards in the game are created in-game by players like you and me. 12/12. Actually, 14/12. Very recommended for lovers of card battles and detailed customization. The spell and minion card maker is top notch over that of Hearthstone's but Legendaries and Deities (Gods) are the rarest because of the uniqueness and/or cost of money it takes for these cards to make. Still enjoyable, even I made a Deity with my own money (Andrewius). I love the custom rules and the ability to choose AI's deck anytime in skirmish modes. Campaign is a good thing too. Ariokan's final score is 14/12. That means it is exceptionally good. So good I played for 912 hours and 48 minutes of pure fun creation and gameplays on Epic back when the game was in alpha/beta on Epic.