The Dark Horde

addictive, replayable, and just a lot of fun. if you like roguelite deckbuilders and the humor of games like Dungeon Keeper, this is a wonderful option. it's still in early access but i'm finding it more addiciive than a number of fully released games. i look forward to all the dev brings in future updates.

Very nice deckbuilder in its current EA form. A complaint is that the unlock progression is a bit slow, but not too annoying. The game is surprisingly deep and it's taking me some time to become aware of the possibilities. There's a lengthy thread in the game's forum between a player and the dev. The player is able to do things that the dev is unable to. That's a pretty cool feature, I think. The game deserves attention, a hidden sleeper, imo.

A hidden gem! This is a really fun game with incredible music. There's a lot of strategy involved too, as you have to balance your time with summoning monsters and casting spells. The artwork is top notch. I love the classic monsters theme, plus summoning the grim reaper is so much fun! Love it!

It's actually pretty solid. For early access, there's very few issues — the only notable one is the sound glitching when you hover over cards during a screen change every so often. There's (hopefully) some balancing to be done as the RNG can be overly brutal at some points, but I haven't seen anything that seems like a total barrier. Most of the big plateaus in difficulty are handled by using a different deck at a lower level and leveling up. There's a lot to unlock and the gameplay is pretty engaging too.

Fun game. Easy to learn. Heroes and bosses can be tough. You don't need rare or epic cards to win, but they sure are fun to play with.

So this is a good game and I highly recommend checking it out if you like roguelike deckbuilders, but, I am writing this review to give some constructive criticism to the developer. Edit: Literally the day after I posted the review, the dev released an update with balance changes, and the game feels significantly better. I will leave the old constructive criticism in my review just as a window into the development history of this game I suppose. Thank you dev! So I haven't played the game much yet, and so I probably just haven't learned the mechanics well enough to do well consistently, but I think that the initial difficulty of the game is way too high. The first or second run I did was by far the best run I had, despite future runs having better cards, more resources spent on upgrades, and more knowledge about how the mechanics work. When I play a game for 3 hours, I expect to feel as though I have made progress in those 3 hours. I have unlocked many things, and as a player, I expect that unlocking things will allow me to progress further in the game. Instead your difficulty curve is just a flat line. The game doesn't allow you to progress, it is sink or swim, and that is a good way to deter people from coming back to your game. I have a busy life, I barely have time to play video games anymore, and so I do not have time to dedicate to grind this game till I understand how to win. A game should get more difficult as the player's skill increases, that makes people want to keep playing your game. As it stands, your game is a good concept, it is built well and feels like a full game, it has sufficient mechanics to keep it interesting, but the thing it's missing is a sense of progress. Unlocking things isn't progress if the player doesn't feel like they are improving. It's just making the system more complex and messier before the player understands the basics they were given. Here is a good first step to solving this problem. Get rid of the miracle cards on the first difficulty. I do not understand how the skull system works because I can't beat the game, but I assume each skull is a higher difficulty. Why is it that on the easiest difficulty, you add cards that benefit the enemy whether I play them or not to my deck? And not just for like special boss battles but EVERY BATTLE! Or at least nerf these cards on the lower difficulty. Isn't it punishment enough that I literally have to pay to use this card to prevent it from damaging me? Why does it also have to summon enemies or discard my hand when I play it? That would be a fun addition to a higher difficulty, but not base difficulty. I would say a good rule of thumb is to act like anyone who is buying your game has never played a video game before. If you give your game to someone who has never touched a video game, they should be able to figure out how to play, they should be rewarded for getting better at the game, and they should feel like they are winning at least as much as they are losing. Losing is an essential part of learning. I am not suggesting the game should be so easy that it's trivial for a new player to win, but it should be easy enough that it's trivial for someone who is experienced in the genre to win, and advance to a higher difficulty that will offer them a challenge. I would not have spent all this time writing this review if I did not see a lot of potential in this game. Perhaps you will feel as though you cannot make some of the changes I suggested because it doesn't align with your creative vision. If that is the case, I implore you to come up with your own solutions to the problems I mentioned. I will probably give this game a few more hours of my time, and then drop it until it leaves early access because I don't feel like I am making progress fast enough to justify spending my time on it.

The dev listens to feed back.

The pixel art is cute and charming, watching those lil guys bouncing around is a joy. The gameplay loop and the colors do well in satiating my ADHD tendencies, im locked in when im playing this. This game has so much to offer at a great price point. I enjoy the time-unit mechanic, theres always something happening to keep you engaged and if you wanna slow down you can take your time. The synergy possibilities is fun to interact with in the deck-building making the decision making enjoyable for me. The replay value is high, im always end up lying to myself when I say just one more run.

A really fun roguelite with tons of content.I find the endgame challenging but possible.

good game. a turn-based deckbuilder with real-time autobattling. +successful genre hybridization. +deck and build variety +secondary incentive: gather resource or seige