Card Quest

I love roguelike card games, but I feel like I should have listened to the negative reviews with this one. The mechanics are all quite cool, but for me the entire design falls apart on one fatal flaw. I usually play these kind of games to do some quick up to one hour long runs in the evening. However, with this one, two evenings in a row, the runs ended up in a lengthy slog that almost lasted past midnight. And the worst thing was that the gameplay did not even change very much during those 2+ hr long runs, I just eventually felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again. The resulting boredom and loss of concentration (which is highly required ALL the time or you will lose fast) made me perform worse, so I did not even win in the end. Idk, it just feels like it is a game for a different, more slow-paced era than this one. There are just so many more interesting games of the same genre, that spending 50+ hours to unlock most the different content of this one seems highly unlikely for most gamers imo.

I like the concept where the equipped items determine the composition of your deck. But the UI/UX is terrible. There are no tooltips for the icons. Attack cards require two motions to play, even though there's no reason they can't be played with a single drag like in Slay the Spire. The enemies that appear out of the darkness seem to exist solely to annoy the player for no good reason.

So far, so good, and better. This game might not make the most spectacular first impression, but it's made with skill, care and subtle charm, and despite being a card-based sorta-roguelite, it is most decidedly NOT a Slay clone. But given that it came out two years before Slay, perhaps this shouldn't be surprising :)

GREAT GREAT GREAAAAT GAME THAT DOES ITS OWN THING. In the current era where anything with cards (that isn't a TCG) must be a variation of Slay the Spire, Card Quest is different and it's a lot of fun. I'd remove the "rogue-like" tag for sure. Strangely, I'd say this plays more like a unique strategy or even puzzle game, with the replay value coming from the learning and retry you need to succeed. ------------------------ THE BASIC CONCEPT Your character may be fixed from the start of an adventure by choosing your 6 items, and it can perform quite consistently after that. The deck is built from your style/school, main hand, and off hand; each part giving around 5 cards. Plus picking armor and two trinkets; these give passives and/or quasi-consumable actives. Just a couple of trinkets end up being redundant/too weak in comparison. The way this creates variety is amazing. It's like each of the four characters has 3 or 4 subclasses that you can merge in different degrees. All, I do mean ALL, strategies are distinct and fun. The puzzle comes in because each zone presents unique enemies that might ask you to do very different things to win (especially the later ones). So, you'll sometimes get into fights that counter you terribly. Next time, you'll plan your build to beat that harsh zone. This game had me making a Word document to record details of the zones, so I could plan out the best complete paths for the different characters I wanted to win with. It was all very fun and rewarding. ------------------------ THE PROGRESSION When you beat a zone, it gives you 1 item for the character you're playing with. It was also very rewarding to discover piece by piece the vast possibilities of what each character could become. In this sense, there is meta-prgression, but I never felt like it was grinding, each item was the well deserved prize for solving an interesting fight. Also, the game does not become boring due to unlocking super powerful things. ------------------------ THE VIBE The art seemed a bit off at first, but it really ended up growing on me. It all brings a lot of flavor into what you're doing. For a game with no animations and no depiction of your character in-game, the art really pulled it off!!! It got me vividly imagining and acting how the fights might play out in real time. Weird, but even the plain black background ended up working well. It was just a nice canvas to imagine the dark forests, caves, stormy mountains, corrupted streets, roofs at night, castles, and all the atmospheric scenes suggested. Everything flows in a nice simple story that branches with your decision of which zone to explore. It all just works! ------------------------ THE BAD Card Quest does have bits of jank. Mostly issues with unclear or incomplete explanations of what items do (and plenty details that are important if you really want to plan your adventure), specially the info around buff/debuffs. I did encounter 1 or 2 mechanics with such quirky inconsistencies that I must assume they're bugged. Again, the game had me writing details about this in my Word document... but it's all worth it. ------------------------ Thank you for all the fun!

This is truly an underrated gem classic. I'm really sad that this hasn't received more attention but I think that's only because of the slight difficulty curve in learning how to micro-manage your deck and cycle through efficiently. Here's hoping to the remaster 🍻.

This is to me one of the best "deckbuilder" games ever made. There's almost zero randomness, you build your entire deck at the start of the game (which is how actual physical deck building card games work) and try to survive until the end picking the right challenges suited for your cards. There are a couple of extra abilities and stat increases to gain along the way and further tailor your build, but most of the toolkit you have from the start. There is 4 classes, each with their own unique card pool, subclasses to unlock with their own unique spin on the main mechanic, dozens of equipment configurations. If you want to unlock everything this game has to offer, there is a lot.

I didn't click with this game at first. The tutorials were long and hard and I wasn't really enjoying playing these same stages over and over again. I would recommend doing only one of the tutorials at first and hoping right in the main game. I went back a while later and got hooked. It's not your typical deck builder, since you get to respond during your opponents turn with dodges, blocks, and counters. There are no random cards to add to your deck, all of your equipment has a certain set of cards associated with it. I wasn't sure if I liked this at first, but it grew on me. It takes some practice, but once you understand the mechanics, playing out perfect turns and clearing an entire screen of enemies on turn 1 feels great. It's insane how many pieces of gear there are to unlock and combinations of builds that all feel uniquely different. Each class has a piece of gear you can unlock, noted by a ? on each zone whether or not you have unlocked it or not. There must be at something like 200+ pieces of gear to unlock that each come with their unique set of cards. Even after 50 hours, I have only unlocked about a 3rd of the gear.

Card Quest is one of the best deckbuilding roguelites I stopped playing multiple times. The combat is great. Building your loadout before the run and then being forced to live with your choices the whole way through makes every fight feel tense. There’s also a ridiculous amount of stuff to unlock. New gear, new archetypes, weird interactions, hidden mechanics. I recently learned there are secret classes (at 50 hour mark!) and my immediate reaction was: “that sounds awesome.” My second reaction was: “there is absolutely no way I’m surviving long enough to unlock those.” Because man, this game is brutal. Still didn't finish one of the 3 levels... Dwarf level... Keep dying on last boss... Runs are LONG, (too long) and mistakes are punished insanely hard. One bad turn or one misclick can completely kill a run. That’s honestly my biggest issue with the game. The difficulty itself is fine. The problem is how much time you lose when things go wrong. Dying near the end of a run doesn’t make me want to instantly retry, it makes me stare at the screen like I just lost a save file in 2004. Still, I keep coming back to it because the actual gameplay is so damn good. It feels old-school in the best possible way. If you want a chill roguelite to relax with, this is absolutely not it. But if you want a smart, punishing, extremely satisfying strategy game that respects your brain more than your free time, Card Quest is fantastic. I just hope devs worked on Card Quest 2 rather than these Survival games, (and no, i have zero interest in managing my food supply, i'm a father already, thanks) but well, it seems they sell more.

I LOVE CARD GAMES. Also this one is extremely good

Having fun with it.