Death Roads: Tournament Reviews

This post-apocalyptic combat racer provides an entertaining experience for 15-20 hours. Unfortunately, like many roguelikes in this genre, most players will grow bored of the game before unlocking all its content. Cards in this game are tied to the driver, the chosen vehicle, and the components installed on the vehicle. Sadly, these features are not equally balanced: some drivers are much better than others, and some vehicles are much better than others. The initial vehicle is one of the worst cars, and so accumulating enough experience to unlock the better ones will be a turnoff for some players. Combat is reasonably well-designed, and a number of different play styles can be successful (though some vehicles are clearly catered more toward bashing opponents than using weapons and vice-versa). The main problem is that there are far too many battles in a standard run that feel very similar to one another, and the occasional encounter with a fellow named racer usually proves underwhelming -- these one-on-one engagements are far easier than the later standard battles where you begin surrounded by 4 or 5 other vehicles. All that said, I did find the game compelling enough to keep playing it until I had unlocked every achievement, which is not that difficult once you have unlocked all available components and know which ones are best. Additionally, you can cheese the game on occasion because quitting to the main menu does not save current battle progress. You can quit if it looks like you are about to lose and then restart the battle from the beginning. It's not a masterpiece in this genre, but for the price and the amount of content, it's a reasonable pickup. It's also low-risk: you will have a feel for the core of the game within the first 2 hours of gameplay, so if you aren't feeling it, you can just grab a refund: if you aren't engaged in the first 90 minutes, the game is unlikely to throw anything at you that changes your first impression.

If deathtrack (from the 90s) and slay the spire had a kid, this is it. It's awesome.

Solid Roguelike Deckbuilder with excellent flavor, but with a couple of flaws. The Good: Unlike most roguelikes (with the exception of Trials of fire) - your deck is entirely tied to your car's equipment - engine, wheels, weapons, utility, and innate car + driver cards. This makes for a unique experience. Equipment can also be swapped in and out as befits the enemies you are facing. Posititioning and movement in the game is very well done, and is an very much a large part of gameplay. Engine and move cards are used to position yourself around the roads, which may have hazards. If you move properly, you can force enemies into obstacles or block their line of sight. The handling system also offers an innovating way of CC and also allows for decision making - do you leave an enemy at 1 handling so they can't do anything, or do you remove it all so they are forced to activate their skid decks? You can make the same decision for your own car on whether you want to gamble on your skid deck or not. And of course there's also the decision of whether you choose to target enemy handling or hp. The Game Captures the mad Max vibe quite well. Aesthetics are very flavorful The Bad: While in theory you are supposed to be able to either focus on bashing or your weapons to win, in practice, it is often much easier to focus on a bash build than it is a weapons build. The 'punch' cards that increase bashing ability are far more common than the 'rage' equivalent for weapons, and solid movement cards to bash with are much more common than the best weapons, such as rockets. The cars are nowhere near balanced. Your Starting Car sucks, and even the unlocked cars are nowhere near balanced against each other. Some are great and some are garbage. Thankfully the starting driver does not suck, but there is far too much rng in unlocking the rest. You need to beat them to unlock them, but if they never spawn to begin with in your run or someone else beats them before you do, then too bad. Cars are at least linear unlock as you play, though it can be a bit grindy. The Escape mechanic, of which you are limited to 5 in normal gameplay, is normally fine. (though quite stupidly the game never tells you how to do it, which is dumb - for the record its to make enemies go more than 3 lengths off screen). For whatever reason however, instead of simply deactivating the mechanic against bosses and challengers, it simply forces an instant game over if it happens. I find this quite dumb, Game should simply disable you from getting far enough away to escape in these encounters.

This game rocks, and I'm astounded that it didn't get all the attention it deserves. I haven't played the board game it's based on, but its boardgaminess and tactical beauty shine through at first sight. It's too early for me to comment on difficulty scaling, but so far, I find it challenging and fair enough to keep me craving many more runs down the road. Little variety, you say? Few events? Look, this is, above all, a tactical game with deck-building mechanics. Chess has only six kinds of pieces and 64 squares—does that make it dull? This game offers elegant deck-building mechanics (with all players having access to the same pool of cards), exciting tactical gameplay, intense roguelike progression, and a powerful soundtrack with visuals to match. It takes me back to the good old days of Steve Jackson's Car Wars and the gritty, wheeled violence of Mad Max. If you enjoy those vibes and appreciate tactical games with a deck-building twist, Death Roads: Tournament is surely worth a shot.

Simple silly fun. Or perhaps not so simple once you get the hang of it, but still fun. Reminiscent of playing Car Wars back in the day.

I managed to win the tournament for my first time in 16 hours with one car and a couple drivers still unlocked. So not a long game to get a win. But also pretty replayable if you like tactics games and like the theme (which I do) and not obnoxiously random. Particularly if it's on sale, go for it!

Just completed my first run. My driver "Simple Bob" was drunk and swerving all over the road in a monster truck. That's how you win on the Roads of Death! 8/10 would recommend!

Much like Monster Train or Slay the Spire, Death Roads: Tournament is a rougelike deckbuilder game, so if you like this genre (as I do) and you're looking for something fresh (as you are), DR:T is a good time. You'll probably want to turn the music off in the game, though, as it quickly gets repetitive as heck. Expect a decent amount of grinding to unlock cards, cars, and drivers. The flavour element of violent wasteland racing is well incorporated. Positioning is everything in DR:T, and your ability to control your car is also your resource to perform actions, leading to a fun game of brinksmanship. Do you want to fire that chain gun one more time, and risk skidding out? Overall, Death Roads: Tournament is a fun addition to the StS card battle genre, and one that I can recommend without hesitation.

Only for lovers of hardcore rogue-likes lovers. You probably will not beat the game on first few runs. But once you unlock 3rd car (Yellow with flamethrower) you might get lucky as with most rogue-likes, sometimes you do it but most of the times you dont. In general I think that game in unbalanced in weapons vs bashing. I win all games by bashing, bashing and using gear that adds more bashing. Pro-tip: control enemies action points even more than you control their health. Enemies left alive with full action points will hurt you, leaving enemies slightly damaged by with 1-2 actions points means they will do nothing and you can whack them next round.

This is a sort of deckbuilder turn-based strategy game, where you are in a deadly race fighting opponents as you go towards the finish, swapping out parts of your car for new ones along the way. So a new engine replaces your old engine, which basically swaps out a subset of cards for new ones. Same with tires, weapons, and gadgets. So you are trying to build a decent deck to take on opponents as you race down a highway to a final boss encounter. You also collect scrap along the way that you can use at shops to buy new parts (cards) for your car or make repairs to the damage you have taken. You unlock new cars and drivers as you play, and each car and driver have a different starting deck so it becomes fun to try and beat with different combinations of cars and drivers. It's a challenge, especially at first. But once you get the hang of it it is pretty fun. It reminds me of a table top game i used to play in junior high called Car Wars.