Spelldrifter Reviews

No difficulty settings, and too much a puzzle. Loosing each fight first time just to get an idea what composition might be needed, then just some luck and finding a "correct sequence of moves" for this encounter.

I love turn based strategy and card games, but this one is a total waste of time. Repetitive and boring. Wish I could refund.

Form your party of 3 with your choice of warrior, mage, priest, or rogue. Skills, attacks, spells, and equipment come in the from of cards that you'll build a deck with. Each member of your party has its own deck. As you progress through the game you'll earn more cards to build your party's decks with. Your choice of party members and deck build will dictate how quickly you'll progress through the game as the wrong choices can lead to your defeat; meaning you'll have to retry the mission. Movement and other game mechanics are reminiscent of a tactical RPG. Some time ago the developers had a digital CCG called "Labyrinth CCG". If you've played that game, and played when the developers had the PvE portion of the game running, then you'd be very familiar to this game's mechanics as they are the same. I quite enjoyed the Labyrinth CCG and was happy that the developers released this. It allowed me to experience all the fun I had playing the CCG. It is because of this experience that I can say that Spelldrifter is certainly worth the purchase if you feel this game might be right for you.

I'm recommending this to support the developer because this game does some things very well and I hope they continue working on games like these. Here's what the game does well: - They solved a very hard UI problem, using cards and grid combat together better than any other game I've seen. - The game is visually quite attractive. Visual design of cards, including art, is stronger than other related games. - Its mechanics are innovative, and I applaud them for taking the risk and trying new things. But the game has some big issues that prevent me from enjoying it enough to play it to completion: - It's 50% text dialogue. This feels inappropriate. Turn-based strategy games are already slow, and this exacerbates the issue. The game is boring unless you click through all the dialogue, but then you don't have context to know what's going on. Someone should edit the script and delete three quarters of it, leaving only the bare bones of the story to swiftly move you from encounter to encounter. - It doesn't take enough advantage of being a card game. You can only play 1 card per turn (usually), you draw very infrequently, your deck is small, the total number of cards available to each character is only about 20 and many of them are just bad, there are no booster packs or any random card mechanics, there is no drafting, there is no multiplayer, and there is no ability to create cross-class decks. - The 80s guitar music does not fit the rest of the game. - The description says it "combines the puzzle-like positional tactics of a turn-based RPG with the customizability and replayability of a collectible card game". It is not an accurate description of the game in its current state. It is a puzzle game straight-up, with heavy RPG narrative, but very minimal influence from tactics games or card games. If you buy this game given the pics and description like I did, you will be misled. You should be expecting something closer to Druidstone but with lightweight card mechanics. The game would benefit tremendously, IMO, from adding a roguelike deckbuilder mode with minimal narrative. It can reuse all the same assets. If the creator did that, the game would actually become popular.