Aces & Adventures Reviews

Got this very cheap in a sale (like 3 euros), but wow, this is a nice game! The only thing that bothers me is that the story takes a bit too much time (since you have to manually skip like 4-5 times between each fight). In a rougelike game that seems a bit excessive.

It was on sale for just a few euros, but honestly probably worth full price. Love the deckbuilding aspect and the narrator's voice. You'll have to try out a few times to find a tactic that works for you, but all part of the fun!

It's OK? Maybe I need to complete all the content to get to that "wow" moment, but I haven't had much of a "wow" yet. Putting together a tiny engine is neat, but it does remain tiny. The number of choices seems relatively small, compared to competing games. Hands are small. Runs are short. There does not seem to be enough there there for things to come together, although maybe there is more after you grind to level 30 in a class or tackle the later campaigns. If you like bite-sized gaming: this operates in very small units before you reset into a next run. You may expect a poker game. This is not that. Poker hands are used (but not two pair), but there are not enough cards in your hand to do anything Balatro-like. GIven how quickly cards flow into and out of your hand, they are more like dice you are rolling. You may expect a roguelike deckbuilding dungeon-crawler. This is mostly not that. It is rogue-lite, not rogue-like, meaning you unlock and advance between runs (and at least as much between runs as within). There is a card-based mechanic for upgrading within runs, kind of like getting artifacts/relics in other games, but interestingly from a fixed pool per level. The game is constructed deck with (almost?) no deckbuilding within runs. Each campaign is a fixed set of forks in the road. This has a lot more writing than most comparable games. It is fully voice-acted. If you are looking for that, the witch will in fact read her text to you. The interface is fairly poor. There are a variety of minor issues and inconveniences, like what is *not* shown on menu screens and needing to wander around the between-game menu screens to upgrade. Within runs it seems pretty sufficient. Maybe there is a "wow" if I keep unlocking things and leveling them up, but nothing really grabbed me in the first hours of playing. This is a crowded market in which I find myself more compelled to try another run in a more exciting game than to explore this one further in hopes that it sparks.

Interesting, but I don't think it quite succeeds in its concept, and goes way overboard in the graphics department. At the core, this is a "narrative deck-builder" with very mild poker-inspired mechanics (where attacking and defending depend on the poker value of hands - but some hands are arbitrarily disallowed (because of "design/balancing reasons, the game claims) and the "abilities" aspect of the game often bypasses all the poker hands). One thing that makes it stand out is that the narrative is also told in the form of card drafting. There is a narrative deck, with each card providing a short narrative scene (fully voice-acting and with sound and visual effects to match) with either a new encounter or a choice (level up/heal, go to the caves or try to go around, etc.). I think this is a very cool idea, but it is just a pretence - there is no actual randomization (at least in the main campaigns) or any different mechanics brought about by the "deck". It's really just a simple, on-rails, choose your own adventure (and the "choose" is very very limited). It would be cool to see the narrative aspect explored in a deeper way. The campaigns are very short - often under 10 minutes, with maybe 5-8 encounters. They are also very different. This is an aspect that I like, in part, because each one can provide a very specific challenge without feeling unfair, without "screwing you over" with an unpredictable challenge. I mean, it can, but since you've only lost 10 minutes, it is fine and you can plan better the second time. The game also features a bunch of genuinely different classes. Maybe 7 of them? The combination of these two aspects is great - because different challenges can encourage different classes. ... Except. The game is too easy. And I'll qualify this. There are extra difficulty modes you unlock after you beat the easiest one. The issue I have is this: on the first mode, I won almost every time on first attempt. Sometimes I had to change classes. Sometimes I felt completely screwed over by RNG. But one or two repeats were enough. The thing is that I never felt like I had lost because of poor strategy - the runs are too short for any significant strategy. Instead, I lost because of an unfortunate draw, or because I had an especially wrong class for the task. But I got through the game almost exclusively with the Mage, occasionally using the Hunter/Thief. The game didn't push me to different approaches. And I didn't feel compelled to tackle the higher difficulties precisely because I felt the "bad draws" were the main cause of my defeat. Higher difficulties will only increase those, without providing much additional depth. My hunch is that the campaigns were designed to be beaten with all characters - hence their low difficult. If this is correct, this is a very poor design decision, imo. Maybe some players will enjoy trying to beat every campaign with every character, but I'd much rather have a single target to hit, and a toolbox to explore until I hit it. Another thing - I don't like the fact that the game has "permanent" progression. As you play, you fill up XP jars you can then use to level up characters. These include some "side-grades" (like a different choice of ability on level up) but also flat upgrades like more HP, attack, etc.; In my view, this dilutes the main value of the "specific tactical challenges" of each campaign. It instead encourages grind - did you lose because you made poor decisions, or because your character wasn't strong enough? Finally - the game features 2 rogue-lite modes. I only tried one for a bit. I am skeptical of them for the reason mentioned above - bad draws. Bad draws are fine in short runs. You can iterate quickly to figure out the "key" to the puzzle. In rogue-lite modes, it sucks. It's never good for you to lose a good run because you poor luck with the cards. I also don't know how well the game does the narrative there. Maybe they are good. But the game's uniqueness seemed to come from the small campaigns (and those are at the forefront of what the game presents), and the rogue-lites seemed an afterthought, so I didn't feel like investing time and attention into those. I didn't have the deepest experience with the game. It is an interesting idea, but completing all campaigns on the first available mode (i.e. easiest, but it's not like it's a choice) didn't encourage me to play more. It was enjoyable, but rather shallow.

This game was not for me. Everything about this game is really good. Art, UI, audio, voice acting. However I did not enjoy the game play. I thought it was boring.

[h1]Gameplay: 8/10[/h1] [h1]Graphics & Sound: 6/10[/h1] [h1]Narration: 5/10[/h1] ✔️ Very cool deckbuilding mechanics, with an interesting variety of applications - you can play through the story with a handmade deck, or go for the roguelike mode which lets you build your deck on the go. ✔️ Nice variety of enemies and player mechanics, making sure the game doesn't grow old fast. 💭 Some game design elements feel a bit inadequate - for instance the fact that the upgrade making you level up once at the start of missions also applies to the roguelike mode kinda goes against the principle of a roguelike mode. Instead of having to decide your build around the tools RNG gives you, you have to make a build-defining choice right away. 💭 The character design and the story are pretty corny and feel a bit amateur-ish. Nothing dealbreaking, but in case you wondered it's not a game you'll keep playing for its story. ❌ The onboarding and UX are weird, the players are kinda left to their own to explore the different possibilities of the game, and the menus are a bit clunky and unwieldy. Some UI animations take too long time and can't be interrupted. The 3D aspect of the game feels overall a bit "too much". The game feels pretty unappealing at first and requires a bit of effort to actually grow into liking it. An above-average card-battler with roguelike runs available beside a barebones story mode. I enjoyed playing it but it's a bit of an acquired taste.

Strong recommend. Story-based Slay the Spire with poker hands, great writing and voice acting.

This is an excellent singleplayer fantasy adventure deck builder with strong poker elements. There are many adventures and game modes to try, five characters with customizable decks to play with, and 30 levels worth of new cards and abilities to grind per character. I've played about 7 hours at this point and haven't even tried any of the other characters. I expect to get many dozens of hours of fun out of this game at this rate. Highly recommended!

A masterpiece, nonpareil in a very specific niche. People have been coming up with clumsy solitaire dungeon crawlers based on the physical 52-card playing card deck since at least the birth of Dungeons and Dragons (and probably before). I've read the rules of a lot of those and played a couple runs of a few. They're all pretty mediocre, but for some reason it seems to be a fascinating design trope for countless amateurs who think "if I could just get this right..." This game gets it right. Yes, it's fair to compare this to modern roguelike deckbuilding video games like Slay the Spire (although strictly speaking the core story mode is not a roguelike, and barely a deckbuilder), but actually that gets the etiology backwards. This game revisits an earlier branch on the evolutionary tree, but carries back the lessons and innovations of modern titles into the classical frame, simplifying and refining them with a view towards elegance and restraint which typifies classic board and card games, and presents them with the class of a hidebound edition of Homer from a fine press publisher. If you're already sold, a word of caution: the game unfurls very slowly (which seems to be a theme in Triple B. titles), so it's easy (if you are cynical) to dismiss out of hand the early gameplay, which is somewhat mushy and oversimple, and miss the big picture. This would be a mistake. On top of that, many of the modes, difficulties, and other goodies are completely invisible in the UI until you've unlocked them, which further serves to obscure to the beginner just how much there is to do (it's a lot). The game is paced so that once you've unlocked everything and played for perhaps hundreds of hours, you'll still discover new combinations, optimizations, and ranking (speed) techniques. But you also have a lot of choice, so if you want to completely ignore certain classes, modes, difficulties, and ranking, you can just casually enjoy the refreshingly literate flavor of the austere symbol-laden fairytale story, energetically and professionally voice-acted with pleasingly whimsical illustrations, while playing a few diversionary hands with the simplest starter deck on easy mode. Even if you only did one run to read the story in this most superficial way, ignoring the 90% of the game that remains, you'd still be getting a great deal. And it all retains the aesthetic context of sitting alone at a table with a deck of cards, which puts the player in a headspace of quiet imagination rather than anxious consumption. One gets the impression this is how Carl Conrad Coreander might have busied himself late at lonely night in the backroom of his bookstore. I could go on gushing. This game will appeal to a wide spectrum of players, but if you are the kind of person who collects playing cards for their beauty, and sits around imagining new solitaire variants, you owe it to yourself to pick this game up at any price.

Very fun deckbuilder that uses the basic hands of poker. Will inevitably be compared to Balatro but has a very different feel. The adventures are short with just a few battles each and I can see buying this game at anywhere near RRP not worth it but when heavily discounted it's more than worth your time.