Cardaire

It's not bad. The AI needs work to make it more of a challenge. I had fun though, it's nice seeing more single player card games coming out.

What a joy of a game! A short and very obvious love letter to the early era handheld TCG games, Cardaire is a simple game with a very well designed progression and fun quirks that keep its card combats fresh all the way to the finish line and even past into the postgame. The story is cute and well told, the characters are simple yet memorable, the OST is quite a banger (shoutout to the Max Luxiato theme!!) and the art is great and evokes the exact feeling of watching a late 90s early 2000s cardgame on its first few boosters. Amazing game!! Hope to see more from this dev!!

All the nostalgia of Duelist Kingdom with a fun collectible card game. There's something really charming about the game that makes me want to keep playing.

I liked it, left it on in the middle of the night last night to auto grind fishing. There are common things like ai being mentioned, but one thing I would like to see is for the game not to lag when I have every card possible in my deck. It's a stretch I know but that's my minor criticism. I honestly like this game and would love to see what this creator does with it in the near future.

For anyone growing up with story-driven, single-player videogame adaptations of TCGs (or original card games) - such as Digimon Digital Card Battle, Pokemon TCG for the Gameboy, or dozens of Yugioh titles - this is a really well put-together inclusion to a (fairly niche/dead) genre for a bargain price. The story is simple, but serviceable, with the occasionally surprisingly insightful or entertaining comment or joke. The music is, surprisingly, quite good (the first boss music is particularly good, and I appreciate the added instrumentation layer when it moves from the conversation into the battle itself). The card pool allows for some diversity of strategies, and the pacing of giving new cards that slowly unfold new synergies and options is well-implemented and enjoyable. For certain, this game deserves a bit more attention than what it's gotten, if only for how rare it is to see a card game in this style nowadays. The [i]weaknesses[/i] of the game are almost entirely down to the length and mechanical complexity. I finished the game in as little as 4 hours, including collecting one copy of every card (except for the few 'secret rare' cards that you have to grind for). Shockingly, there's no post-game content whatsoever (yet), even though it seems to be hinted at. And the opponents of the game are so easy (in part due to relatively poor AI) that there really is no point in grinding or finding these secret rares - there's nothing like the Digimon Digital Card Battle post-game with the opponents playing special hyper-powered cards against you. There's only 118 or so reasonably acquirable cards, which feels a fairly small amount, with maybe only about 7 or so real archetypes viable: I'd categorise them (using Magic the Gathering terminology) as something like "Go-Wide," "Voltron," "Aggro," "Burn," "Control," "Dredge" and a special named/tribal archetype. Further, there's no ability to save and load decks, which somewhat discourages you from switching away from whichever deck you've tended towards when it's already beating all of the opponents anyway. Finally, the animations/gameplay feel fairly slow in-battle; I feel spoiled by animation/battle speed settings in most roguelite deckbuilders (or speed-up buttons on emulated older card games). And yet, despite two paragraphs of me pointing out the weakest elements of the game... I still need to leave with stating unequivocably that this was a wonderful trip down memory lane for me, a satisfying four hours, a rare type of video game, and it's a game I deeply hope receives more content or a much larger and more ambitious sequel.

Great game! Charming dialogue, unique art, and fun gameplay loop. The AI could definitely use some work, but it's definitely great for a Yu-Gi-Oh-like setting. It's a hidden gem and I hope the squeakquel has more eyes on it.

I got all achievement in this game and I enjoyed it a lot. As someone who loves MTG, YuGiOh FM, and old YuGiOh DS games this game was awesome. The resource system is very similar to Lorcana from what I know about it, but it is great and a really fun game. Figuring out a good strategy and pulling a new card I could put into my deck felt great. Even after finishing the story, hunting for all cards and card backs was also a cool challenge in of itself, and rental deck tournaments and Grappler Format offer even more unique challenges if you want them. The game has a few issues. I got it on sale for 2€, the playtime is so short that I honestly would not get it for 10€. The fishing mechanic is really boring, and to 100% the game you need to spend a solid 30 minutes essentially being Afk with it. And the game is also really easy, with most opponents feeling like their decks are tossed together from random cards and the AI literally handing me games sometimes. The gameplay feels a bit slow, but that is mainly a result of the turn structure, which was also a strategic part of the game I really enjoyed. Despite these issues this was overall a really enjoyable experience. I had a ton of fun with this game, and found myself wishing for more (and lucky me, a sequal is coming out this year). I really wish there were more of these kinds of deckbuilding rpgs. Great game.