Hunt the Pale Gods

A very fun take on Slay the Spire like gameplay but with many innovative twists like often paying for abilities in MADNESS (either temporary effects of mental illness in this battle or taking on permanent nasty cards for a permanent gain of some sort). They also seem to do a good job of H. P. Lovecraftian theming with most of your opponents being various elder beings...as if this whole journey is one taken in our character's mind as he tries to get a grip on his sanity.

An excellent iteration of Into-The-Breach-likes in the RLDB scene. Many silly runs enabled with Divine Cards and Curios, but also exciting and challenging runs, be it self-imposed, from the starting boon, or trying to go for specific/meme decks. 10/10 would relive the fun of this game again. edit: forgot to mention i have almost 500 hours on the game from beta testing not visible here

Просто великолепный в плане атмосферы, в том числе за счет музыкального сопровождения, тактический карточный рогалик в лавкрафтовской тематике с очень занимательным геймплеем. Жемчужина в жанре.

This is one of the best deckbuilders I have seen in a while and it's highly criminal that not many people know about it

Great deckbuilder with a classic Cthulhu theme! The originality is the grid-based movement. The arena is small and it feels like you're trapped with the monster, which fits well with the atmosphere. A typical full run loop is multiple tense hours long. It's pretty tiring to go to the end on ascension 14 when any mistake can cost you half your max life, but success is all the more rewarding. Lots of cards, lots of artifacts, lots of tough decisions to make, the roguelike feel is here :)

First of all, if you like eldritch things and you like card games, this is it for you. More in depth... first and foremost, the art is amazing. The cards, the arenas, most of the enemies, it's genuinely stellar start to finish. The five card colors/themes/decks are all distinct from each other visually, artistically, and in terms of gameplay styles, but have enough overlap to be worth combining. For example, you might use Umbral cards to keep moving around and get lots of light hits in, alongside Progeny to keep rapidly drawing and shifting through cards, and a touch of Primordial to turn those light hits into sledgehammers. Speaking of moving around, that to me is the piece of this game that distinguishes it from all others. It takes place on a grid, and the game is as much about moving around to get in range and back out of your enemy's range as it is about high damage card combos. The only negatives to me are that there aren't all that many distinct enemies and, common to most games of this genre, a brief stint of bad luck with draws can doom even the best run. So... fairly small and commonplace things, one of which can be nullified in due time if the dev comes up with new enemy ideas. They've already done so once, I have high hopes they eventually will be able to do so again. Edit: I have since found out from the dev's Discord server that he intends to add an entirely new color of cards, which presumably will include new enemies, bosses, and likely one to two new playable characters. So there's that already in the works.

Great game. So far the creatures don't seem to be Lovecraftian for some reason. But the cards and artifacts are very unique, and I can see myself playing with for a long time. Unique mechanics and gameplay, that you won't find in other deckbuilders.

Quite hard because you can't upgrade cards directly. Can be very dependent on luck on which cards you draw, and you have to find synergies. Sometimes harsh as you can't move, but it's a hidden gem of a roguelike deckbuilder

If you have 8 billion hours of Slay the Spire under your belt and want something the same but different, Hunt just might be for you.

What a hidden gem! This is Slay the Spire with Lovecraftian "C'thulhu"-aesthetics that you play on a square map, somewhat similar to Duelyst IF you only had your Commander on the field. You don't summon any creatures to fight for you. Instead your cards are various attacks, spells, skills and tricks your hero character cast around. Movement and enemy manipulation plays a role since avoiding attack is often smarter than tanking it. You only move via cards (and few other special things), but as cards are elegantly made they start combining multiple effects that make thematic sense. There are 7 schools of skills that play well in to the Lovecraftian theme, but also make sense design wise. Card could for example have 1 move combined with 1 discard from one school and 1 move and 1 exert (discard in the beginning of next turn) from another. As you progress the game, the cards will get more refined towards the schools. You always "duel" on a map (at the least in the easy difficulty that the game locks you in before you clear the game once), meaning there's just one opponent for you to beat. Gameplay plays around few card types: Offensive cards: ATTACKS (physical) and ABILITIES (arcane). RITUALS that last until the end of the combat, helpful buffs. Last type of cards are ...the ones that do everything else. "Mana" mechanics is STAMINA. You always start on max stamina (e.g 5/5) when the combat BEGINS, but during the turns you gain just +1 stamina normally. Your max stamina does not increase as turns pass but you don't lose your stamina either. Some cards cost no stamina, so building your deck as you run through the various events and encounters comes to also controlling the balance of stamina cost, mana cost, synergies and just pure deck thinning. Fights vary through not only enemy types but also random modifiers that the fight scenarios have. These Critical Modifiers can be beneficial or not, which means playing around those is helpful as well. The effects last only for the said duel, which mean that your roguelike-runs truly vary. +Player choice plays a huge role +Strategic, tactical but doesn't play like a deterministic puzzle (of which I find abhorrent) +Plays well / fast / without pointless waiting +Decent audio (the guitar track in the trailer is NOT what you will be hearing in game) -First time user experience could use more easing in; it's pretty rough to run through those menus -Bit rough around the edges but it could still use a round of polish (for one man operation this is fantastic as it is!) -UX/UI could use slight improvements, e.g. buffs and debuffs become bit too intensive to read through -> some kind of summary would help HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!