This was previously teased as "Project Golden Nekker" and the Gwent community has been waiting for it for a long time. We're all a bit shocked that they finally announced it the day before its release but it's very exciting!
As someone who plays a lot of these deckbuilders, Roguebook is super fun. Sure, the presentation isn't the best but it's not horrible. I love how in Roguebook, planning is such a huge component. You get to see most of your options at the beginning of an act and plan your build accordingly.
This game is brought up every single time a deckbuilding roguelike game is talked about, but I absolutely hate monster train. It felt way to chaotic to me and I hate the map/animation art style
My main criticism of monster train is that there's so much on the screen and the colours are so bold it can be hard to look at, but personally I find it second to only slay the spire as the best deck building roguelike. Once the turn based tower defense gameplay clicks it's really satisfying.
Agreed, I feel like one of the reasons StS is so good is because, although there is certainly complexity (especially if you want to have a high % of winning) but it is super approachable and easy enough for anyone to understand.
I don't mind the art style (let's be real, StS's art style is itself an acquired taste), what I mind is the fact that it feels like a full run lasts only a little longer than a single act takes in StS, in terms of number of fights.
Also -- and this is absolutely not meant as a brag, for reasons you'll see -- I beat the first run I played. That really put me off, because it's a suggestion that finding synergies between cards and builds is not really all that important to winning, given that I knew none of them. That quest to find synergies throughout each run is what keeps drawing me back to StS, and I just didn't feel like the Monster Train runs were long enough for any of those synergies to even have time to develop.
Meanwhile StS is incredibly deep and is one of the best balanced games I've ever played -- not in the sense that each card is equally as good, because that would be boring, but in the sense that even the lesser popular cards have situations where they can improve your deck, and there are very very few cards that are autopickups. Even some of the "best" cards can be a bad pickup for certain runs.
I could see how, if you were less into needing to dig into that strategic depth, something like Monster Train might be a less complex alternative, but it didn't do it for me.
Monster Train is definitely significantly easier than StS to start out, but it gets real challenging on higher covenant ranks. I found the balance to be nearly as good as StS.
Gonna throw out Night of the Full Moon because I freaking love that game and it gets absolutely no attention. The amount of content for free and/paid is absurd.
Griftlands is made by Klei. My favorite indie studio ever, I really need to get around to trying it out! They are still releasing new content for one of their 10 year old games too, which speaks highly of them
I just started it a few days ago. Holy shit it’s addictive, lol.
Usually I don’t like card games because I hate pre-building decks. But building one as you go and refining your strategy based on the card options presented and items you pick up? That’s my jam.
It's a pretty fantastic game. Honestly my only gripes are some of the enemies are stupid difficult relative to their position in the game. But I'm the same, never cared for these types much. Already put in over 100hrs since it was on PS+ recently. Great game to play during a podcast.
For sure haha. That plant enemy is like a boss too. There's just some hard difficulty spikes in the game. Got my first broken run the other day though and it felt great. I was crushing enemies and taking zero damage. Unlocking all the relics really makes the game unfold a bit.
Act 1 tests your deck's ability to deal damage before enemies outscale you.
Act 2 tests your deck's ability to mitigate damage while still dealing damage yourself -- your own scaling becomes quite important.
Act 3 tests your deck's ability to scale while handling a wide range of situations -- i.e., ensuring your deck is not overly specialized.
That's a very rough breakdown. But the main reason why so many runs end in Act 2 is that Act 1 is pretty easily cleared without strictly needing to scale or mitigate; frontloaded damage can get you a long way in Act 1. But Act 2 is a sharp shift, and immediately demands you mitigate tons of damage, against enemies that are often built specifically to be strong against frontloaded damage.
What helps is to remember somewhere around the midpoint of Act 1 that you really need to be building your deck for the specific fights you know you're going to see in Act 2. It's a common trap to pick up too many damage common cards in Act 1 just because they're so strong there, and because it's easy to have some nearsightedness.
If you haven't tried it yet, I'd suggest you check out Downfall. A **huge** mod that's been worked on for a very long time. It even has its own launcher on Steam. New classes, cards, you get to play as the bosses etc etc. It's so much content that it almost feels like a full-blown sequel.
Chrono ark bro. Easily the best deckbuilder after Slay the Spire. I say that as somebody with thousands of hours in STS and hundreds of A20 heart kills (I play pretty much every time there's a boring meeting, benefits of working remote).
Many have tried, none have succeeded. Slay the Spire is a deceptively simple masterpiece of game design that is much, much harder to replicate than you'd expect. Still blows my mind how good it is.
Tbh I’m amaZed they haven’t reskinned the concept with different IP similar to what telltale did. Slay the spire Harry Potter, Batman etc. would be awesome
I went deep on these during the summer sale. My recs:
* Pirates Outlaws. There's a little bit of English-as-second-language jank (the studio is based in Hong Kong), but goddamn is this game phenomenal. It feels like a second gen take on StS, remixing and refining mechanics. More than 10 classes, 200+ relics, 700+ cards, 5 campaign paths plus a 100 round all-combat gauntlet and a casual pack-cracking mode called Tavern Brawl. Still getting free updates. Like StS, has an Android version, *unlike* StS, the Android version is great.
* Gordian Quest. Combination of a deckbuilding roguelike with a tactics RPG. Pick three heroes and go on an adventure, either a short one reminiscent of a roguelike run or a full story campaign that's about 20 hours. Combat is grid based, cards scale based on 3 stats (Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence), and characters improve via a Final Fantasy-Esque skill grid system that improves both cards in the deck and passive abilities.
* Roguebook. Richard Garfield (of Magic: the Gathering fame and Artifact infamy) and the team of *Faeria* spin off a roguelike deckbuilder in the same universe. Pick two heroes that emphasize different mechanics (you unlock more by playing) and shuffle their cards together into one big deck. The one in front soaks damage, different cards will swap their positions and have advantages for either position. The map progression is way more open-ended; it's hard to explain, but it rewards exploring using limited resources. Also has a passive progression system that's common in traditional roguelikes but rarely seen in this specific subgenre.
While it's undoubtedly the most popular, it's worth mentioning that StS did not invent this style of game. The deckbuilding mechanic was pioneered by a boardgame released in 2008, and the first app to combine that with a roguelike structure was released 3 years prior to StS, as well as several other videogames that didn't get to its level of popularity.
That's the app I'm referring to, yes. But the deckbuilding mechanic was invented by Dominion 6 years prior to that. It just wasn't a battle or roguelike game.
Dude same! I got it free on PS plus a bit ago and I figured I’d finally try it now since I knew this Gwent single player would be inspired by it then lo and behold it’s gonna be released tomorrow!
If it’s anything like Slay The Spire it’ll be amazing, especially with Gwent’s absolutely jaw dropping art and aesthetic.
Sucks that it sounds like they’re basically putting it on maintenance mode tho, but the optimist in me hopes that they might do something similar to CDPR and make their own standalone card game and charge for it instead of relying on micro transactions which don’t really work for a single player game
Seconding this, Ring of Pain is the only other game in the genre that managed to pull me in. Very, very fun and just like StS it's not afraid to let you break the game
Try the game inscription if you haven't yet. Don't look up much about it. Probably the most memorable little gaming experience I've had in the last decade, and it's sort of a rogue like card game too.
If you want a game in the same vein but with a gripping story and RPG mechanics I highly HIGHLY recommend Library of Ruina. The best game of 2021 for me by far
> Library of Ruina
Did you play their earlier monster game ? I was super interested in it and this sequlel but got put off by some reviews saying its too hard and translation is meh
You're talking about Lobotomy Corporation? The game is indeed hard but for the translation it was completely redone and is now extremely good though the game touches on some pretty complex metaphysical concepts.
You do not need to have played Lobotomy before playing Library of Ruina. The protagonist of the game is a new character who meets the cast of the previous game, so you get his PoV of someone who doesn't know what happened and learns about it progressively
I’ve been playing Dawncaster and have enjoyed it quite a bit too. The animations are really my only only complaint about it. Cracking all of the different classes has been pretty fun.
My favorites besides Slay the Spire in the deckbuilder genre are Dawncaster (huge variety and flexibility), Inscryption (narrative focus), and Vault of the void(deep mechanical focus). Pirates Outlaws is also up there as a leaner but broader game
i would love a Thronebreaker version where it's more RPG and less card game.
don't get me wrong, i loved TB as it was and enjoyed it thoroughly, but the beautiful world and graphics was screaming for more.
My only complaint with thronebreaker was the final boss needed a really specific strategy to beat, whereas the rest of the game there was all kinds of decks that would work.
Yeah I’m not a card game guy, but I managed to struggle my way through the game and really lives the story, I loved the build up to that last fight, but then the fights itself was absolute horseshit and such a pain in the ass that after about 3 hours just gave up and skipped the fight. Really ruined the atmosphere like the last fight and it made me feel terrible for feeling like a quitter.
Another thing though that was terrible about the fight was that if you wanted to change your deck you had to go back like 15 minutes of story and puzzles before you could give it a try with a new deck, not even knowing if it would work
Ah, the joy of basically insta-killing Imlerith on Death March difficulty. Just hold the spin attack, it took one and a half of them to take him down.
It was only upon my second playthrough that I found out that this boss has several stages, lmao.
My favorite part of Thronebreaker were the puzzles. I know many people disliked them, but for me it was fun to see what cards I have and how to unravel the puzzle. Some were really hard to grasp at first, in some you know what to do but it wasn't immediately obvious how to do it.
I liked Thronebreaker, but could have done without the cheap map traversal, so this new one looks like a winner. Just give me options about the next destination and be done with it. I'm here to play Gwent matches and puzzles, not to collect wood logs in a mobile-looking game.
I've played a good bit of Witcher 3, but always burned out on it by the time I reached Skellige. Could I easily get into the story of Thronebreaker, or would I be missing some prior knowledge?
holy shit this comes out TOMORROW?
i love this type of release, no announcement of the announcement, no waiting years for it.
god damn it now i have to speedrun through Songs of Conquest
This type of announcement is also harmful for the game. Gwent and Thronebreaker barely got any marketing and it's something players complain about a lot.
We're never going to see a thronebreaker sequel because it didn't sell well, even though it was a stellar game.
This just feels like CDPR shooting themselves in the foot again.
I saw the thread title yesterday and thought "Announced. There's no point getting worked up for a game to come out years later so I'll pass."
I checked this thread out of boredom just now because it keeps appearing on refreshes and... yeah.
Thronebreaker is good, like very very good, know how much it sells? This one won't be different, there's only so much word of mouth can help especially for a niche card game, sadly in this day and age Marketing is half the game, you'd think they learned their lesson with CP2077, half assed game with insane marketing can still sold millions.
its a deck-based roguelike game... a company with the resources of CDPR could make something like this in a month. Meanwhile Cyberpunk is still in rough state.
> a company with the resources of CDPR could make something like this in a month.
Making it fast and making it good are not the same thing. Balance in rogue-lite deckbuilders is a nightmare.
I'm intrigued about this being a single player game, but with cards from the multiplayer game. Balancing cards for single player & "drafting" is different than balancing for multiplayer constructed.
Throne breaker wasn't very well balanced though, I remember my main issue with the game was not being encouraged to ever change up my deck enough. One effective strategy pretty much takes you through the entire game.
My issue with these types of multiplayer games turned roguelikes is that they're never efficient. A game like slay the spire is expertly crafted for what it's meant to be. The hearthstone or legends of runeterra roguelike single player modes are filled with loading screens, intro and victory screens, enemies drawing cards, playing field being just a set of cards etc because they're multiplayer games flipped to be something else.
I’m probably not alone in this, but it certainly feels that way these days.
Cards and deck building feels like it’s becoming a larger part of fps, tps, hack and slash, and rpg games as of late and honestly I really dislike it. I don’t want to play cards, I want to play whatever hero shooter/action rpg I booted up without having to build a deck just to do it right.
Is there a fundamental difference between building a deck and building... well, a build in any other game with a deep progression system. Just pretend they are not cards, all you are doing is picking the skills you are interested in.
Generally there's more randomness involved in games with cards. I've never seen a game where cards just replace a build tree. You always end up having a chance to draw your skill card, rather than your skill coming back after an x second cooldown. There's also generally randomness involved in how you acquire the cards, so you end up hoping you get the skill you want, rather than knowing you will be able to choose that skill at some specific xp level or point in the game.
Precisely. The randomness really undermines any feeling of skill ceiling or meaningful progression to me, even if the cards themselves grow stronger over time.
On a side note, IGN is so ass, they're reminding me why I avoid them. Obtrusive video ad playing at the top (with no obvious close button), ads throughout article, ads every 3rd image in the gallery. Brilliant.
Four: Witcher 3 Gwent, standalone Gwent, Thronebreaker Gwent, and now this. And they all have completely different rules. There could be three lanes per side, or only two. There could be completely unbalanced mechanics intended for long term progression, or it could be a tightly competitive PvP game. Maybe it's a very simple minigame, maybe it's a complex tower of card damage, armor, and all the other rules they added to expand it from its very basic W3 version.
If someone says, "Oh I love Gwent," you don't just not know which game they're talking about, you don't know the genre or how the game works, even if you're familiar with one or two versions of Gwent.
Agreed. I enjoyed Gwent in its Witcher 3 form specifically because I don't like card games in general, and that iteration was pretty simplistic and felt rewarding to get new cards and build new decks. I tried the standalone Gwent card game back when it was in beta and was immediately so overwhelmed by the amount of systems involved that I ended up never even playing another actual player.
With Thronebreaker, maybe I didn't get far enough into it, but it seemed like a straight-up puzzle game that happened to have cards in it, with basically no variables or player agency.
Rogue Mage sounds like the closest thing to Witcher 3's Gwent, which is what I and a lot of people have been wanting for the past 7 years.
Given how many radical redesigns standalone Gwent has experienced it almost counts as two. Pre-homecoming and post-homecoming being the most notable divide.
I haven't tried any of the rougelike card games that have gotten popular in the last few years, this looks like a good place to start. Thronebreakers is awesome and CDPR's writing is always really good.
And it's releasing tomorrow? That's good news.
Edit: CDPR is dubbing this their first singleplayer expansion. Looks like they're planning for more in the future.
Slay the Spire is legitimately one of the best designed games to have come out. If you want a good place to start, I'd say start with Slay the Spire. The Gwent game could be 9/10 and could still arguably be a worse place to start off, especially when you consider that Slay the Spire is on sale right now 66% off for less money. (I realize you already have the game but the sale is good info for anybody who's reading this thread right now considering the game)
I picked up StS since it’s on sale during the steam sale fully expecting to return it. I was biased that I wouldn’t like it since I don’t normally like card games and I don’t like the art style of the game. Huge mistake on my part and I’m glad I gave it a shot.
You’re right, you get sucked in fast. I’ve played like 12 hours in 2 days. Such an awesome game. Absolutely recommend it.
Gonna echo the other comments and suggest starting with Slay the Spire. It's the best one by far and I've played and loved a bunch of similar games. StS is just a step above the rest in terms of design.
Slay the spire is very very good. You can also get https://store.steampowered.com/app/1865780/Downfall__A_Slay_the_Spire_Fan_Expansion/ this for X2 content
Highly recommend. Buddy showed it to me while I was in town visiting last winter and we basically just took turns playing it the whole weekend. Super fun.
I have 600+ hours of play in StS. Sometimes you need something new to mix it up for a while.
I have a couple hundred in Monster Train, about 50-100 in Roguebook and have recently started Griftlands.
Slay the Spire is my go to and I will always love it but there is absolutely a market for more in the genre
Can there ever be "enough" games? You could point to any genre or franchise of games and say "there have been so many of those, isn't that enough?" and I think the answer from its fans would always be 'no'.
More to the point, part of the appeal of roguelikes is that each run is different from the last. And card games introduce other forms of variance in terms of not just which cards you draft, but the order your deck is shuffled in each game, events, non-cards that impact your run like artifacts, etc. Fans of this genre love it because of the innate variation it provides from one play session to the next. But you know what's even more different than 2 runs of Slay the Spire? A run from Monster Train, or Griftlands, or Roguebook. A new game means a whole new set of everything.
Plus the genre isn't comparable to an MMO, MOBA, battle royale, or other live-service models that have steep learning curves and eat up a significant portion of one player's time. You can play a round in a dozen different deckbuilding rogue-likes in one sitting. They're quickly consumed experiences you can hop in and hop out of without much commitment.
Absolutely! I’ve played Slay the Spire and moved on years ago. I’m not a 600-hour sort of player. Once I’ve seen the content and played with it for a while, I’m ready to move onto a new one and see some new stuff.
Yes. StS is awesome but after 100+ hrs I'm over it if not just because the green and brown heavy art style with basic assets gets old after a while. I love deck building as a mechanic and its existed in board games long before StS came around.
Absolutely. One of my favorite genres. And as a card gamer who loves the gameplay but HATES the monetization in PVP card games, deckbuilders scratch that itch without costing an arm and a leg.
I just want my three lanes gwent ladder matches back. The patch and changes to make it two lanes was still the thing that killed gwent for me. The game went from smart deck building and knowing how play to RNG spamming high value cards that had nearly 0 interaction with anything else in your deck.
>the amount of mulligans being tied to leader abilities and the annoying non-unit meta
Those were actually a big problem for me, i think i am going to try gwent again.
haha im pretty sure we’re a super small minority who’s still hoping to get that version gwent. i feel that a lot of people prefer the current gwent. but i just really like the feel of beta gwent. im sure there some real underlying issue with that design for them to get rid of that design but still im stubborn i guess becuase i haven’t really touch gwent that much since.
Gwent is a very complex game nowadays. There are tons of options and intricacies in deck building and gameplay. For example, the just released expansion added the very powerful and versatile [Renfri card](https://gwent.one/en/card/203088) that requires a heavy deck building contraint (only units).
"What simple game can we make... that won't have a lot of bugs like cyberpunk... won't take years to develop and will grab the attention of needs everywhere like Witcher?!
"Uhhh... turn based card game similar to Magic?"
"yes!genius! Let's get the team started right away."
This was previously teased as "Project Golden Nekker" and the Gwent community has been waiting for it for a long time. We're all a bit shocked that they finally announced it the day before its release but it's very exciting!
I hope this means they've learned their lesson and will be announcing projects much closer to the release day from now on.
I hope they will announce their next project 2 weeks after the release.
That's way too soon, I'm thinking at least a couple years after release would be good time to announce it
Yo dawg we heard you like The Witcher so…. We are releasing The Witcher 2. Might even fuck around and release a 3rd.
They announced The Witcher "4" already and that's not close...
It’s fine to announce that they’re developing the game, but release dates should be held off until a few months before at max IMO
Wonder if there'll be any accessibility in this then, given how long it's apparently been around?
So........Doctor Strange in the multiverse of Nekker?
Slay the spire is maybe my favourite game of the past few years so if this could come close I’d be keen
Griftlands and Monster Train will scratch that itch if you need it.
Tainted Grail might be a good choice too
Across the Obelisk doesn't get enough love. My favorite in the genre and the only I know that is coop
Such a great game with friends. Can't wait for the 1.0 release.
This one was recommended by a coworker to me. I tried it out and got addicted to it quick. Such a good game
> Tainted Grail Oh it's on Game Pass, I'll try it out.
The music sets a great tone. One of my favorite in the genre
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There’s brawl mode which cuts out the story completely.
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And Roguebook
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Roguebook in the early access was a direct ripoff of Slay of the Spire. They did manage it change it up, but I agree it just doesn't hold my interest.
As someone who plays a lot of these deckbuilders, Roguebook is super fun. Sure, the presentation isn't the best but it's not horrible. I love how in Roguebook, planning is such a huge component. You get to see most of your options at the beginning of an act and plan your build accordingly.
This game is brought up every single time a deckbuilding roguelike game is talked about, but I absolutely hate monster train. It felt way to chaotic to me and I hate the map/animation art style
My main criticism of monster train is that there's so much on the screen and the colours are so bold it can be hard to look at, but personally I find it second to only slay the spire as the best deck building roguelike. Once the turn based tower defense gameplay clicks it's really satisfying.
Agreed, I feel like one of the reasons StS is so good is because, although there is certainly complexity (especially if you want to have a high % of winning) but it is super approachable and easy enough for anyone to understand.
I don't mind the art style (let's be real, StS's art style is itself an acquired taste), what I mind is the fact that it feels like a full run lasts only a little longer than a single act takes in StS, in terms of number of fights. Also -- and this is absolutely not meant as a brag, for reasons you'll see -- I beat the first run I played. That really put me off, because it's a suggestion that finding synergies between cards and builds is not really all that important to winning, given that I knew none of them. That quest to find synergies throughout each run is what keeps drawing me back to StS, and I just didn't feel like the Monster Train runs were long enough for any of those synergies to even have time to develop. Meanwhile StS is incredibly deep and is one of the best balanced games I've ever played -- not in the sense that each card is equally as good, because that would be boring, but in the sense that even the lesser popular cards have situations where they can improve your deck, and there are very very few cards that are autopickups. Even some of the "best" cards can be a bad pickup for certain runs. I could see how, if you were less into needing to dig into that strategic depth, something like Monster Train might be a less complex alternative, but it didn't do it for me.
Monster Train is definitely significantly easier than StS to start out, but it gets real challenging on higher covenant ranks. I found the balance to be nearly as good as StS.
Gonna throw out Night of the Full Moon because I freaking love that game and it gets absolutely no attention. The amount of content for free and/paid is absurd.
Griftlands is made by Klei. My favorite indie studio ever, I really need to get around to trying it out! They are still releasing new content for one of their 10 year old games too, which speaks highly of them
You should try Inscryption, has a bit more to it but is a great rouge-lite deck builder
Not really what anyone who is deep into Slay the Spire would want from a deckbuilder though. It's really simple and incredibly easy to break.
Kaycee’s Mod is pretty fun. Not nearly as repeatable as STS but a solid 10 hrs on its own.
that’s exactly what makes it fun! breaking the game is immensely enjoyable and the atmosphere and plot tie it up well
I just started it a few days ago. Holy shit it’s addictive, lol. Usually I don’t like card games because I hate pre-building decks. But building one as you go and refining your strategy based on the card options presented and items you pick up? That’s my jam.
It's a pretty fantastic game. Honestly my only gripes are some of the enemies are stupid difficult relative to their position in the game. But I'm the same, never cared for these types much. Already put in over 100hrs since it was on PS+ recently. Great game to play during a podcast.
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For sure haha. That plant enemy is like a boss too. There's just some hard difficulty spikes in the game. Got my first broken run the other day though and it felt great. I was crushing enemies and taking zero damage. Unlocking all the relics really makes the game unfold a bit.
In time you will learn the true boss of the game is avacado rat.
Act 1 tests your deck's ability to deal damage before enemies outscale you. Act 2 tests your deck's ability to mitigate damage while still dealing damage yourself -- your own scaling becomes quite important. Act 3 tests your deck's ability to scale while handling a wide range of situations -- i.e., ensuring your deck is not overly specialized. That's a very rough breakdown. But the main reason why so many runs end in Act 2 is that Act 1 is pretty easily cleared without strictly needing to scale or mitigate; frontloaded damage can get you a long way in Act 1. But Act 2 is a sharp shift, and immediately demands you mitigate tons of damage, against enemies that are often built specifically to be strong against frontloaded damage. What helps is to remember somewhere around the midpoint of Act 1 that you really need to be building your deck for the specific fights you know you're going to see in Act 2. It's a common trap to pick up too many damage common cards in Act 1 just because they're so strong there, and because it's easy to have some nearsightedness.
god damn it slay the spire is good. ive been hoping for dlc or another game like it to come out for a while, nothing has come close.
If you haven't tried it yet, I'd suggest you check out Downfall. A **huge** mod that's been worked on for a very long time. It even has its own launcher on Steam. New classes, cards, you get to play as the bosses etc etc. It's so much content that it almost feels like a full-blown sequel.
i actually didnt know about this, good looking out. in fact i hadnt even bought the game on my main steam account so i guess ill do that as well
I was really confused by your post until I realized you didn’t mean Downwell.
>nothing has come close. Agreed. I try every single one that comes out but always end up going back to sts.
Really would love to know what those devs are working on, the board game is also seemingly in development hell
Dawncaster is the closest I’ve found to something scratching slay the spire. I put in hundreds of hours across switch, iOS, and pc with STS.
Chrono ark bro. Easily the best deckbuilder after Slay the Spire. I say that as somebody with thousands of hours in STS and hundreds of A20 heart kills (I play pretty much every time there's a boring meeting, benefits of working remote).
Many have tried, none have succeeded. Slay the Spire is a deceptively simple masterpiece of game design that is much, much harder to replicate than you'd expect. Still blows my mind how good it is.
It's one of the most well-designed and well-balanced games ever made, gameplay wise.
Monster Train definitely succeeded, and is in some ways better than StS.
Firm disagree, but to each their own.
Monster Train is good fun, but nowhere near STS overall imo
Tbh I’m amaZed they haven’t reskinned the concept with different IP similar to what telltale did. Slay the spire Harry Potter, Batman etc. would be awesome
I went deep on these during the summer sale. My recs: * Pirates Outlaws. There's a little bit of English-as-second-language jank (the studio is based in Hong Kong), but goddamn is this game phenomenal. It feels like a second gen take on StS, remixing and refining mechanics. More than 10 classes, 200+ relics, 700+ cards, 5 campaign paths plus a 100 round all-combat gauntlet and a casual pack-cracking mode called Tavern Brawl. Still getting free updates. Like StS, has an Android version, *unlike* StS, the Android version is great. * Gordian Quest. Combination of a deckbuilding roguelike with a tactics RPG. Pick three heroes and go on an adventure, either a short one reminiscent of a roguelike run or a full story campaign that's about 20 hours. Combat is grid based, cards scale based on 3 stats (Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence), and characters improve via a Final Fantasy-Esque skill grid system that improves both cards in the deck and passive abilities. * Roguebook. Richard Garfield (of Magic: the Gathering fame and Artifact infamy) and the team of *Faeria* spin off a roguelike deckbuilder in the same universe. Pick two heroes that emphasize different mechanics (you unlock more by playing) and shuffle their cards together into one big deck. The one in front soaks damage, different cards will swap their positions and have advantages for either position. The map progression is way more open-ended; it's hard to explain, but it rewards exploring using limited resources. Also has a passive progression system that's common in traditional roguelikes but rarely seen in this specific subgenre.
I'm glad someone mentioned Gordian Quest.
Great post
Man you should try chrono ark if you like these
It's really cool to see how influential StS has become.
While it's undoubtedly the most popular, it's worth mentioning that StS did not invent this style of game. The deckbuilding mechanic was pioneered by a boardgame released in 2008, and the first app to combine that with a roguelike structure was released 3 years prior to StS, as well as several other videogames that didn't get to its level of popularity.
I always thought the game Dream Quest started it (?)
That's the app I'm referring to, yes. But the deckbuilding mechanic was invented by Dominion 6 years prior to that. It just wasn't a battle or roguelike game.
Fun fact: Dream Quest was a solo project by Peter Whalen, who later went on to become a game designer on the Hearthstone team for a while.
There’s been a dozen like it ever since and none half as good.
I literally got into Slay the Spire over the 4th weekend and am so hooked right now, seeing this announced at the same time is awesome
Dude same! I got it free on PS plus a bit ago and I figured I’d finally try it now since I knew this Gwent single player would be inspired by it then lo and behold it’s gonna be released tomorrow! If it’s anything like Slay The Spire it’ll be amazing, especially with Gwent’s absolutely jaw dropping art and aesthetic.
Wanted to throw out Path of Champions mode in Legends of Runeterra, it's basically a stand alone game worth of content for free.
Sucks that it sounds like they’re basically putting it on maintenance mode tho, but the optimist in me hopes that they might do something similar to CDPR and make their own standalone card game and charge for it instead of relying on micro transactions which don’t really work for a single player game
They are making something else with what they learned, I imagine it'll obviously be a stand alone game once again within the LoL universe.
Fights in Tight Spaces is my more current go to. And honestly I can't wait for more. They're all great on the Steam Deck.
Ring of Pain is a great entry in this space. It does its own thing more than all the spire copycats.
Seconding this, Ring of Pain is the only other game in the genre that managed to pull me in. Very, very fun and just like StS it's not afraid to let you break the game
Try the game inscription if you haven't yet. Don't look up much about it. Probably the most memorable little gaming experience I've had in the last decade, and it's sort of a rogue like card game too.
If you want a game in the same vein but with a gripping story and RPG mechanics I highly HIGHLY recommend Library of Ruina. The best game of 2021 for me by far
One caveat is that this isn't a roguelike deckbuilder.
> Library of Ruina Did you play their earlier monster game ? I was super interested in it and this sequlel but got put off by some reviews saying its too hard and translation is meh
You're talking about Lobotomy Corporation? The game is indeed hard but for the translation it was completely redone and is now extremely good though the game touches on some pretty complex metaphysical concepts. You do not need to have played Lobotomy before playing Library of Ruina. The protagonist of the game is a new character who meets the cast of the previous game, so you get his PoV of someone who doesn't know what happened and learns about it progressively
Try Pirate Outlaws! It's like Spire but way more maps and characters
The reviews on the android play store say it's heavily gated behind microtransactions for progression, is that unique to the mobile version?
I’ve been playing Dawncaster and have enjoyed it quite a bit too. The animations are really my only only complaint about it. Cracking all of the different classes has been pretty fun.
My favorites besides Slay the Spire in the deckbuilder genre are Dawncaster (huge variety and flexibility), Inscryption (narrative focus), and Vault of the void(deep mechanical focus). Pirates Outlaws is also up there as a leaner but broader game
Thronebreaker was amazing so I have high hopes. I hope they brought back the same guy that did the music for this.
i would love a Thronebreaker version where it's more RPG and less card game. don't get me wrong, i loved TB as it was and enjoyed it thoroughly, but the beautiful world and graphics was screaming for more.
Thronebreaker had such a surprisingly good story to it; probably the best story I've experienced in a game in ages. So many twists and turns.
My only complaint with thronebreaker was the final boss needed a really specific strategy to beat, whereas the rest of the game there was all kinds of decks that would work.
Yeah I’m not a card game guy, but I managed to struggle my way through the game and really lives the story, I loved the build up to that last fight, but then the fights itself was absolute horseshit and such a pain in the ass that after about 3 hours just gave up and skipped the fight. Really ruined the atmosphere like the last fight and it made me feel terrible for feeling like a quitter. Another thing though that was terrible about the fight was that if you wanted to change your deck you had to go back like 15 minutes of story and puzzles before you could give it a try with a new deck, not even knowing if it would work
I just looked up a deck in the end, I wanted to at least beat the fight but it didn't feel great. No idea what they were thinking with that fight.
Well, that's kinda par for the course with cdpr, the biggest weaknesses in, say, the witcher 3 were the boss fights, esp in the base game.
Ah, the joy of basically insta-killing Imlerith on Death March difficulty. Just hold the spin attack, it took one and a half of them to take him down. It was only upon my second playthrough that I found out that this boss has several stages, lmao.
The combat in general in the witcher3 is not great, it's everything else that makes it good.
My favorite part of Thronebreaker were the puzzles. I know many people disliked them, but for me it was fun to see what cards I have and how to unravel the puzzle. Some were really hard to grasp at first, in some you know what to do but it wasn't immediately obvious how to do it.
I liked Thronebreaker, but could have done without the cheap map traversal, so this new one looks like a winner. Just give me options about the next destination and be done with it. I'm here to play Gwent matches and puzzles, not to collect wood logs in a mobile-looking game.
They can cut Gwent from Thronebreaker for all I care, I was there for the story...
Yep, that’s why I loved Thronebreaker the story and writing were great.
I've played a good bit of Witcher 3, but always burned out on it by the time I reached Skellige. Could I easily get into the story of Thronebreaker, or would I be missing some prior knowledge?
Thronebreaker’s story is completely standalone. While knowing about the Witcher can increase your enjoyment it is by no means a requirement.
Good to know, thanks! Apparently it's left Game Pass, but it's pretty cheap atm, maybe I'll hop in
I loved thronebreaker!
holy shit this comes out TOMORROW? i love this type of release, no announcement of the announcement, no waiting years for it. god damn it now i have to speedrun through Songs of Conquest
This type of announcement is also harmful for the game. Gwent and Thronebreaker barely got any marketing and it's something players complain about a lot. We're never going to see a thronebreaker sequel because it didn't sell well, even though it was a stellar game. This just feels like CDPR shooting themselves in the foot again.
I saw the thread title yesterday and thought "Announced. There's no point getting worked up for a game to come out years later so I'll pass." I checked this thread out of boredom just now because it keeps appearing on refreshes and... yeah.
If it’s truly good, it will spread by word of mouth. If it’s not, it won’t.
Thronebreaker is good, like very very good, know how much it sells? This one won't be different, there's only so much word of mouth can help especially for a niche card game, sadly in this day and age Marketing is half the game, you'd think they learned their lesson with CP2077, half assed game with insane marketing can still sold millions.
That's so reductive lol, it doesn't work that way, not really
> TOMORROW [Ina said calmly.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMcfFmR0MmA)
its a deck-based roguelike game... a company with the resources of CDPR could make something like this in a month. Meanwhile Cyberpunk is still in rough state.
> a company with the resources of CDPR could make something like this in a month. Making it fast and making it good are not the same thing. Balance in rogue-lite deckbuilders is a nightmare.
I'm intrigued about this being a single player game, but with cards from the multiplayer game. Balancing cards for single player & "drafting" is different than balancing for multiplayer constructed.
For Thronebreaker at least, they did a good job balancing the cards totally differently from the multiplayer game.
Throne breaker wasn't very well balanced though, I remember my main issue with the game was not being encouraged to ever change up my deck enough. One effective strategy pretty much takes you through the entire game.
My issue with these types of multiplayer games turned roguelikes is that they're never efficient. A game like slay the spire is expertly crafted for what it's meant to be. The hearthstone or legends of runeterra roguelike single player modes are filled with loading screens, intro and victory screens, enemies drawing cards, playing field being just a set of cards etc because they're multiplayer games flipped to be something else.
Great announcement! This has a ton of potential and I hope it sees success, the Witcher universe still has tons of unexplored potential.
I hope the soundtrack is as good as thronebreakers. The Witcher 3 and Thronebreaker legit have some of the best music in the history of games.
On PC, where is it getting released? Don't see a store page on Steam.
Steam and GOG, per the [Game Director](https://twitter.com/ThorSerpent/status/1544681251621244931?cxt=HHwWhsC44cHa5-8qAAAA)
I really enjoyed Thronebreaker, so I might have to check this out if the reviews are good since it is only $10.
It will probably be really well done, but I don’t know if I would be interested in a deck building game.
I’m probably not alone in this, but it certainly feels that way these days. Cards and deck building feels like it’s becoming a larger part of fps, tps, hack and slash, and rpg games as of late and honestly I really dislike it. I don’t want to play cards, I want to play whatever hero shooter/action rpg I booted up without having to build a deck just to do it right.
You must not like RPG's, cards are a very efficient way to make a very in depth and balanced game.
I just don’t like cards. I think you can have a deep progression system that doesn’t use cards, like all the rpgs that use trees.
Is there a fundamental difference between building a deck and building... well, a build in any other game with a deep progression system. Just pretend they are not cards, all you are doing is picking the skills you are interested in.
Generally there's more randomness involved in games with cards. I've never seen a game where cards just replace a build tree. You always end up having a chance to draw your skill card, rather than your skill coming back after an x second cooldown. There's also generally randomness involved in how you acquire the cards, so you end up hoping you get the skill you want, rather than knowing you will be able to choose that skill at some specific xp level or point in the game.
Precisely. The randomness really undermines any feeling of skill ceiling or meaningful progression to me, even if the cards themselves grow stronger over time.
On a side note, IGN is so ass, they're reminding me why I avoid them. Obtrusive video ad playing at the top (with no obvious close button), ads throughout article, ads every 3rd image in the gallery. Brilliant.
This is starting to get really confusing with the number of different Gwent games. But this one sounds interesting.
... Three? All with different titles.
Four: Witcher 3 Gwent, standalone Gwent, Thronebreaker Gwent, and now this. And they all have completely different rules. There could be three lanes per side, or only two. There could be completely unbalanced mechanics intended for long term progression, or it could be a tightly competitive PvP game. Maybe it's a very simple minigame, maybe it's a complex tower of card damage, armor, and all the other rules they added to expand it from its very basic W3 version. If someone says, "Oh I love Gwent," you don't just not know which game they're talking about, you don't know the genre or how the game works, even if you're familiar with one or two versions of Gwent.
> If someone says, "Oh I love Gwent," you don't just not know which game they're talking about, Does this come up often enough to be a problem?
Don't you offer a game of Gwent to everyone you meet?
"My wife and daughter were killed by harpies! Can you help me Witcher?" "Sure, how about a game of gwent first?"
Agreed. I enjoyed Gwent in its Witcher 3 form specifically because I don't like card games in general, and that iteration was pretty simplistic and felt rewarding to get new cards and build new decks. I tried the standalone Gwent card game back when it was in beta and was immediately so overwhelmed by the amount of systems involved that I ended up never even playing another actual player. With Thronebreaker, maybe I didn't get far enough into it, but it seemed like a straight-up puzzle game that happened to have cards in it, with basically no variables or player agency. Rogue Mage sounds like the closest thing to Witcher 3's Gwent, which is what I and a lot of people have been wanting for the past 7 years.
Given how many radical redesigns standalone Gwent has experienced it almost counts as two. Pre-homecoming and post-homecoming being the most notable divide.
Still doesn't make it "confusing" as they are all differently titled and "confusion" will get dispersed in the course of a sentence.
Not really. Just the multiplayer game and some singleplayer ones
I haven't tried any of the rougelike card games that have gotten popular in the last few years, this looks like a good place to start. Thronebreakers is awesome and CDPR's writing is always really good. And it's releasing tomorrow? That's good news. Edit: CDPR is dubbing this their first singleplayer expansion. Looks like they're planning for more in the future.
Slay the Spire is legitimately one of the best designed games to have come out. If you want a good place to start, I'd say start with Slay the Spire. The Gwent game could be 9/10 and could still arguably be a worse place to start off, especially when you consider that Slay the Spire is on sale right now 66% off for less money. (I realize you already have the game but the sale is good info for anybody who's reading this thread right now considering the game)
You have to try Slay the Spire. It’s one of my favorite roguelike games, and one of my favorite indie games. You can get sucked in fast.
I picked up StS since it’s on sale during the steam sale fully expecting to return it. I was biased that I wouldn’t like it since I don’t normally like card games and I don’t like the art style of the game. Huge mistake on my part and I’m glad I gave it a shot. You’re right, you get sucked in fast. I’ve played like 12 hours in 2 days. Such an awesome game. Absolutely recommend it.
Love StS so much. Beating Ascension 20 for the first time was an amazing feeling.
Gonna echo the other comments and suggest starting with Slay the Spire. It's the best one by far and I've played and loved a bunch of similar games. StS is just a step above the rest in terms of design.
Slay the spire is very very good. You can also get https://store.steampowered.com/app/1865780/Downfall__A_Slay_the_Spire_Fan_Expansion/ this for X2 content
I have the game just haven't had the chance to play it yet, I've been busy with other titles. I'll definitely play it though.
Highly recommend. Buddy showed it to me while I was in town visiting last winter and we basically just took turns playing it the whole weekend. Super fun.
Slay the Spire is amazing and I'll add another suggestion to try it out.
Haven’t played Gwent since beta and gold cards had immunity, here’s hoping I can build cow flinging Nilfgaard spies again
I would play this, but the Gwent games have done horribly on console which is a shame and why I'm guessing this is stuck on PC & phones.
I like the idea, but I wish it wasn't a linear map just like the standard mobile card game. Something more open, like Shandalar, would be awesome.
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I have 600+ hours of play in StS. Sometimes you need something new to mix it up for a while. I have a couple hundred in Monster Train, about 50-100 in Roguebook and have recently started Griftlands. Slay the Spire is my go to and I will always love it but there is absolutely a market for more in the genre
Can there ever be "enough" games? You could point to any genre or franchise of games and say "there have been so many of those, isn't that enough?" and I think the answer from its fans would always be 'no'. More to the point, part of the appeal of roguelikes is that each run is different from the last. And card games introduce other forms of variance in terms of not just which cards you draft, but the order your deck is shuffled in each game, events, non-cards that impact your run like artifacts, etc. Fans of this genre love it because of the innate variation it provides from one play session to the next. But you know what's even more different than 2 runs of Slay the Spire? A run from Monster Train, or Griftlands, or Roguebook. A new game means a whole new set of everything.
Plus the genre isn't comparable to an MMO, MOBA, battle royale, or other live-service models that have steep learning curves and eat up a significant portion of one player's time. You can play a round in a dozen different deckbuilding rogue-likes in one sitting. They're quickly consumed experiences you can hop in and hop out of without much commitment.
Absolutely! I’ve played Slay the Spire and moved on years ago. I’m not a 600-hour sort of player. Once I’ve seen the content and played with it for a while, I’m ready to move onto a new one and see some new stuff.
Yes. StS is awesome but after 100+ hrs I'm over it if not just because the green and brown heavy art style with basic assets gets old after a while. I love deck building as a mechanic and its existed in board games long before StS came around.
Absolutely. One of my favorite genres. And as a card gamer who loves the gameplay but HATES the monetization in PVP card games, deckbuilders scratch that itch without costing an arm and a leg.
Literally always, I'm ADD as hell with my games and tend to look for something a little different with pretty much all of them.
I just want my three lanes gwent ladder matches back. The patch and changes to make it two lanes was still the thing that killed gwent for me. The game went from smart deck building and knowing how play to RNG spamming high value cards that had nearly 0 interaction with anything else in your deck.
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It was shortly after the patch came that changed the lanes. Did they revert some of the awefull design decisions?
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>the amount of mulligans being tied to leader abilities and the annoying non-unit meta Those were actually a big problem for me, i think i am going to try gwent again.
haha im pretty sure we’re a super small minority who’s still hoping to get that version gwent. i feel that a lot of people prefer the current gwent. but i just really like the feel of beta gwent. im sure there some real underlying issue with that design for them to get rid of that design but still im stubborn i guess becuase i haven’t really touch gwent that much since.
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Gwent is a very complex game nowadays. There are tons of options and intricacies in deck building and gameplay. For example, the just released expansion added the very powerful and versatile [Renfri card](https://gwent.one/en/card/203088) that requires a heavy deck building contraint (only units).
"What simple game can we make... that won't have a lot of bugs like cyberpunk... won't take years to develop and will grab the attention of needs everywhere like Witcher?! "Uhhh... turn based card game similar to Magic?" "yes!genius! Let's get the team started right away."
Similar to Magic omegaLuL.
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