Deckbane: Deckbuilder & Poker

App Store Editors’ Notes

Personal opinion

This game is really fun to play! I do have some problems with it, I wish they told me how to unlock new leaders, and made high score on how far you have gotten!

Neat Game

I really like the game loop and it is an addictive game. However, it’s hard to read anything. I’m having a really hard time with the ridiculously small text on the cards. Update: The text is better and that makes the game much more enjoyable.

So so unbalanced

There is another review here that perfectly describes all the issues with balancing. I too have played and loved Wildfrost, and I want to love this title too, and I’m giving it 2 stars because it’s a lovely looking game and has a hook that makes me want to play it. But it truly does need a serious rework of pets / coins / relics for it to be actually viable as a strategic game. I’m giving up on it for now sadly, I’ll check it again in future.

Games just… bad

With as little hate in my heart as I can put into this comment, the gameplay is just bad. The overall concept is kind of cool. I’ve beaten the heart deck. But the balance on pretty much everything is garbage. 99% of the pets and vases are just… horrendous. Here’s a couple examples. Why would I ever take any of the card mults? +2 per card of the same suite? That’s a total of +10 IF I get a flush? Or I can just take the +3 per hero and get +9 every single hand. The pets are the most egregious. I can equip any number of pets that provide negligible buffs. Why would I ever care about 1 heal or 1 shield? That’s not even enough to negate a single enemy attack. Conversely there is the stun pet that basically stuns every enemy every round if I put it on sweep. Then there are enemies that permanently reduce your damage each time they’re struck, which is crazy when they have so much health and generally each card only has a few damage each. Worse, these enemies can be encountered before you have a full party. Multiple runs I’ve had all of my heroes reduced to 0 damage. Same with the card stickers, negligible buffs that hardly change the game. Things like “increase damage for every 50 coins you have” which… requires you to get to like the third act to even acquire 1 stack of 50 if you spend almost nothing and win horse races. This has got to be and I’m not joking, the worst balanced roguelike I’ve ever played, and I’ve played most of them. I’ve 100% Wildfrost (the game that inspired this one) twice. And it blows my mind that this dev has clearly played it as well but got so little of the balance from that game down. You either get a combo that trivializes the run (sweep + stun) or you lose. No in between. Normally I’d give some constructive criticism on what to do… but I don’t know what to tell you. The game is fundamentally flawed in a way that makes it clear you wouldn’t be able to balance the game if you tried. Like short of a total overhaul of every single bell, character, creature, and pet in the entire game there’s just no saving this title. I know that’s tough to hear, and once again, no hate from my heart. You tried your best, it just didn’t pan out. I hope maybe next time if you make enough money from this title you can afford to spend more time on balancing game or hiring someone to do it for you. The art is good but clearly derivative. That’s about the only positive I can think of and it stings to be the guy to say it.

buggy

bugs make it impossible to beat