Rally: Endless Conquest

[b]tldr:[/b] At first glance it looks like just another of the thousands of generic rogue-like card games that are coming out these days, but this is surprisingly the best rogue-like card game I have seen in a very long time. Don't let the visuals/audio detract you from a masterfully crafted gameplay loop. It is a genuinely unique gameplay experience where the cards you draft throw themselves onto a 4x4 grid, and your input on each turn comes in the form of slightly altering their placement to enable various adjacency effects, which can frequently result in chains of effects that exponentially multiply your attack/wealth/defense. After you've chosen which pair of cards to swap, you decide whether to spend some of your gold (which can be used to reroll card options) to negate some of the damage you'll receive, and proceed to the next turn. While that seems very basic at first glance, this simple formula leads to a really enjoyable gameplay loop as it is very easy to find a good move but often extremely challenging to find the optimal one due to the sheer number of interconnected effects in play. This is compounded by the fact that many of the decisions you make involve trade-offs between large immediate bonuses and small permanent upgrades. Despite the strategic complexity, because your only agency on any given turn is a single decision: which two cards to swap, the game avoids the information overload or tedious decision optimization present in some other titles. To top it off, the game has a very elegant design where it keeps the number of mechanics to a minimum and obtains depth through the interplay of those systems. The card designs focus very heavily on synergy rather than individual power, which means you will very often encounter cards that are genuinely exciting/fun to build around. You can build some genuinely overpowered engines, but not consistently enough for you to force any given strategy due to the scaling cost of re-rolls. Each run is quite short, involving only half a dozen encounters that can be completed in under half an hour and is perfect for small sessions. Granted, everything is not perfect. As a low-budget early access game, it lacks some amount of polish, particularly in terms of the visuals and sound effects both of which lack a satisfying pop or feedback for your actions. The enemy variety is also largely nonexistent with systems present to make various encounters unique but not fleshed out enough to have a major impact on your decision making outside of a few edge cases. Despite those imperfections, I would wholeheartedly recommend this game even in the current state. It's a phenomenal addition to the rogue-like genre because it understands what makes these games fun and executes on that vision extremely well.

Very innovative roguelike deckbuilder! Sold on it after watching Retromation's Let's Play. I love how the gameplay is essentially switching the position of 2 of the cards in a 4x4 grid each turn so as to make the most of the current 16 cards' various synergies (card x gives benefit to card y as long as not adjacent to card z).

I love this game! I do have one complaint and thats the card unlock mechanism. This game is hard and requires synergy to beat the later levels. Very strategic game unless you luck out and get a Rat King while running a perfect deck for it. But when i win i unlock more cards that are of a different faction. Not enough of them for a good deck yet but the more i unlock the harder it is get my synergistic deck so i hate un locking cards when that should be a good thing. Dont mix All the cards, when i unlock the Dwarf leader it should have its Own faction deck it pulls from with an assortment of allies. Then when i unlock cards im getting rarer cards for my current faction and making future runs More fun instead of harder.

You only have to search through 128 pages of Rally car games to find this gem.

Fun deckbuilder with satisfying mechanics. Each run is ~10-20 minutes so its easy to jump in, and do a run whenever you feel like it without being locked into something for a long time. Looking forward to seeing where this goes!

It's a great game! go buy it while it's cheap... Golems ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rock!

Just a really fun little game. Very casual "Luck Be A Landlord"-style, but with the unlockable elf-character it becomes a genuine fun puzzle game.

For the price, it's quite good card game, with a twist. The base idea consists of having a 4x4 grid where cards from your deck can appear in a random order. You'll want to use various abilities, depending on main faction, to swap the locations of these cards around to cause synergies to occur. Often, you'll want four cards of the same faction to be lined up. This charges ability points for the said faction. In-between rounds you get events/items/drafts to refine your build further. Drafts specifically you get VERY often (out of a choice of three). There are four factions and seperately neutrals, which have various possible combinations with each other. Some of the cards are hidden in the collection and only show up as draftable upon meeting certain untold conditions. These aren't necessary to win and I personally felt like it was rather difficult to find them. Though I believe a good chunk of my playtime is from before they were added, which might affect things. + Short runs and can save mid-run + Endless mode + Several different strategies for each faction + Unique art style * Game overall even on Hard isn't that difficult, unless deviating from stable strategies to seek the unknown cards mentioned, or if the RNG screws you hard with drafts. Balance-wise a lot of the strategies work as a result of this (some better than others, of course) * 1,0 Event system felt a bit half-baked to me, it doesn't take away from the game but things like adding +1 defense to a card isn't particularly exciting. Some events have heavier impact, however * While items can refine your build to be successful, there are also duds that are very uninteresting, such as +2 defense each round. I'd wish for more variety among the common ones, but perhaps it wouldn't work for balance of the game It's good fun for some afternoons. There's a demo available, for those interested.

Very promising game, already fun while still being in development, and the price is very affordable. The concept is similar to the game "Luck be a landlord": you have to add cards to your deck, if possible that synergize well together, so that you can keep ahead of the increasing damage coming your way. There are different elements of strategy (do you play a single race, or try to mix two or more for increased risk/reward? Do you focus more on gold to bribe your enemies, or try to build a stronger defense so that you can spend money to be more picky about your cards?). However, you can definitely play and win without having to overthink every little decision. For those who like a challenge, the endless mode has come your way, so I suspect you have to plan a bit more to be able to last.

This game has potential. It features fun original mechanics and neat art that resembles pictures from old Tarot cards. I feel like balance needs a little more tweaking, and user interface could benefit from some enhancement – both in the visual department and in terms of how informative it is. My main gripe is that as your deck grows, it becomes more difficult to track how different cards interact with each other. More tooltips and visual indicators would make it easier. But hey, the game is still in early access, and at the end of the day it will be a unique beast among fellow deckbuilders.