This is a new game from Playtap Games that is currently available for Android and iOS. I used my iPad for this post. This is an interesting game that unfortunately I could not get into. The game is not bad, there are just a few things that held me back.
After playing for a while, I decided to see what a few others sites had to say about the game. The following three reviews were the ones I thought described the game best.
If I had to pick one to say ‘”ditto” to, it would be the review Brad did at BoardgameGeek.
Card Dungeon is sorta hard to describe, as there are so many aspect to it. You are a warrior and you will need to go through various dungeons and destroy the enemies. As you go through the dungeons, you can find gold, weapons, armor, and potions which you can equip and aid you. It is turn based, so that means you move and then the enemy (creatures) moves.
The way you fight/advance is card based. You can equip up to three cards to your warrior which can help you fight, heal, and defend. As you travel you will find more but you can only use three at a time. Also when you begin your game, you can equip a Good trait and Bad trait (again cards) to your warrior. As you move through the game, you will need to find knowledge gems to unlock traits.
The use of cards definitely adds some randomness to the game, which can be good and bad.
So what is holding me back on the game?
- It only plays in portrait mode
- The camera angles and the use of 2 fingers to try to rotate the screen, zoom in/out really had me irritated.
- You can only more 1 square at a time, and then had to wait for the enemy to move, so it seemed to take quite a while to move around.
- There is no map while in the dungeons so you really are note sure which way to go.
- Tutorial?
Again this is not a bad game. The graphics, music, and general premise is really good but for me I could not get super excited about the game. For more information, see the other reviews above and check out the video trailer below.
Here is some info from the press release (What is Card Dungeon?):
You play as Crusader and need to rid the lands from the horrors of the Nethermist. You do this, naturally, by delving into 7 dungeons and murdering monsters. You have three skill cards on your hand when you start the game and use these to progress through the monsters populating the randomly generated levels. As you progress, you will find new skill cards, inventory cards, and trait cards that change the gameplay as you go along. In one turn you may play as a melee based warrior, a little later you are summoning creatures to do the fighting for you and at the end of the dungeon you may be a full out mage throwing fireballs and freezing monsters.
Card Dungeon mixes the mechanics of both card games and board games and boils them down into a rogue-like. We’ve taken great strides to simplify the rogue-like category for the casual player while maintaining the deep strategy of the genre: Hard choices and consequences for mistakes. To ease a new player into the rogue-like genre we use boardgame-like aesthetics together with a simple card format for all powers while following the mantra “You can only do 1 thing per turn. Choose wisely”. Seasoned veterans of rogue likes will relish the challenge and the collectible nature of the card game while new players to the genre will enjoy the easy to learn gameplay and the gorgeous board game look of the game.
