Developer: Righteous Hammer Games
Publisher: Righteous Hammer Games
Rrp: £6.99 (Steam) and £7.99 (Epic Games)
Released: 31st May 2016
Available on: Steam and Epic
Played Using: Mouse
Approximate game length: 10 Hours
A solitare roguelite RPG. Let those words sink in. This game somehow uses solitare as its main mechanic in an RPG roguelite, and y’know what…. IT WORKS! Colour me surprised.
The game uses a somewhat modified version of solitare in the rather than try to create stacks of cards in the same suit you instead are trying to eliminate the stacks that are laid before you. Whatever card you have drawn (and you draw an new one every turn) you can eliminate any card that is the next number up or down in sequence which in turn replaces your originally drawn card. So if you draw a 7 you can eliminate either 6 or 8, lets say you choose to eliminate the 6, the 6 is now your card and you can now eliminate any single 5 or 7 that you see.
Between your turns the enemy takes its turn and performs an action, sometimes this is an attack other times its something that affects the cards that are in the play area. The aim is to remove every card before the enemy reduces you health to 0.
Cards come in four suits; attack, defence, agility and willpower. These suits relate to the type of energy that they will give you should you eliminate them. You also gain a point of energy every time you draw a card. The energy that you have collected is shown in the bottom right of the screen.
This energy is used to cast spells that are shown on the left side of the screen these spells each have different effects, such as attack spells (that are always red/orange) allow you to remove cards.
Many enemies have a random descriptors attached to their name that adds special rules, for example; The colossal prefix will give that enemy two extra stacks of cards.
You gain money by defeating enemies, collecting cards with the coin suit or by having a card streak of 8 or more cards. This money is used in the store that you can visit between each battle where you can buy new spells and items. The items and spells that are available change between combats so you can choose to spend ten gold to hold an item until the next time you can enter. You can also purchase an item called a celestial hourglass from the store, this item allows you to try a fight again should you lose. The catch is that its quite expensive although it can be bought with either gold or wildstone.
Wildstone is a separate currency to gold that can only be spent on improving your deck, unlocking items slots or unlocking new decks. You gain wildstone each time you die with a greater amount being given the further you make it in a run. You can also occasionally find a wildstone card while in combat which will also grant a small amount. It should be noted that wildstone cannot be purchased by any means as there are no microtransactions in this game.
As is usually the case with roguelites when you die you lose all the spells, items and gold you collected on you run, you do however get to keep your wildstone allowing meta-progression.
I’ll be honest I probably would never have bothered with this game if it hadn’t have been for Epic Games Store giving it away a while ago. That being said I honestly think this game is well worth the asking price as I really enjoyed it.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Runespell Overture
Dicey Dungeons
Slay the Spire
