The Simulacrum

[h1] Veteran digital boards game player reviewing this! [/h1] Similar to [i]Magic The Gathering! (colours and mana with their archetype of creatures and spells).[/i] What makes this special is the fact that your cards become stronger and change/get abilites over time. And it's completely randomized - you won't get the exact same cards as me. The fun lies in building powerful combos and going as far as you can in a roguelike run - all cards you earn, you keep forever. [i]People are complaining about a missing tutorial![/i] This is true! But just look up the 3-minute explanation guide in the guides section and you are ready to go. In fact, after just one run, you will understand the game - it's really not hard, just overwhelming on the very first glimpse! You can meta-game pretty complex decks though, if you want. It certainly would be boss in a multiplayer game - which this also has! [h3] Achievements [/h3] very easy. I got 40% on my first run. After that I created a brutal deck on second rogue run and then stomped all Boss fights with that deck. [h3] Game Hint [/h3] [spoiler] A red pyro deck with lions will get you through all bosses. [/spoiler] [h3] Verdict [/h3] If you like games where you think strategies and also like to play solo and slow (think: Gloomheaven or Spirit Island), this is the game for you!!!

Overall an incredible cardgame that forces you to rethink your strategy after every game and during every fight, which however has some major bugs like nodes being not clickable or the game softlocking - which can destroy a whole run. If those issues were fixed, I'd say this might even outclass Slay the Spire, Monster Train and Across the Obelisk.

Ai art

UI looks ugly as hell

Fun but not super deep.

Edit: There is a game breaking bug introduced at some point that can completely wreck your runs. Until that gets fixed, I cannot recommend this game any longer. Let the buyer beware. Original Review: The game is weird and wonderful and worth it at 4 times the price. The gameplay is mostly a delving system that generates a deck for you, and then creates additional cards as you go through a decision tree to fight battles, meet odd encounters which may mutate your cards, and eventually face off against three bosses. Even after defeating these, you can continue on an infinite journey as the challenge ramps up. The card generation results can be truly strange: some useless, some useful, and some broken. The art is crazy, the text can be slightly dense, but you can build some very fun decks out of all these pieces. There are some other modes: there are bosses you can fight in order to unlock them for future delving, single games vs. the computer, and there are a couple PvP modes (1v1 and draft). Note that unless you have a friend to play against, multiplayer is probably not happening. Hoping we see more solo content in the future!!

Horrible and clunky game, Even if you like deck-builders avoid

Procedurally generated yes.

Not nearly enough replayability for how ambitious it is, but more than enough to pay for itself many times over. The actual free-play deckbuilding feels meaningless when you set the difficulty for your gameplay with a constructed deck yourself, would be a much improved game with a ranking per deck and repeated opponents at an adjusted difficulty. Draft (delve) is where replayability lies, but you face the same decks too often, the same cards even. Not something that should be encountered in a game about procedurally generated content, but I guess a choice was made to avoid too random difficulty. Game is worth it just for another card game to learn the inns and outs of, and the procedural generation adds a bit of novelty on top.