Decktamer Reviews

Great game inspired from eldritch crater dungeon theme like Made In Abyss. Would be a good game for those who are into these type of theme and also monster taming action.

The game is really fun and original. I love the deckbuilder genre, but frankly I found few games that I really enjoyed. I'm happy to say Decktamer is one of them. The game art and atmosphere speak for themselves. The setting is intriguing, monsters are cool and interesting, gameplay is fun and allows for experimentation. Didn't pay attention to the lore as I don't like to be reading on my roguelites (In the small chances devs are reading this, I don't read in any games so don't take it personally). I found the game well balanced, even to the point of easily being op to the player on standard difficulty. Beat the full game (the major 4 bosses) in around 4h30 hours on Standard difficulty. Not sure why some people complain about the rng and difficulty on standard. I beat every major boss on my first try. Maybe because I love deckbuilder games and I'm A10 on Slay the Spire 2. This game, as it has some monster collection inspiration, maybe attracting a different audience from STS? I don't know. What I do know the boss fights in my opinion are the most fun I have in any deckbuilder. The bosses match the abyss theme very well, are super interesting and fun to fight and are not easy at all. I think the main campaign was worth my money but for those that want more, the game has new game modes and the deckbuilder aspect of the game makes you want to try again with different combos. I’ll probably never play the other game modes (as I never do in any deckbuilder) but I’ll try the hard difficulty exploring new monsters I still haven't used. Without major spoilers, the features the devs made to combine monsters and skills to build your synergies on top of your deck are very fun and give room to a lot of experimentation and replay value. My only problem I found in 6 hours playing: The devs should add better lighting on the settings of the game. In the mid to late game I reached an area where the mood was so dark it was hard to read the cards. The corners of the screen were so black I could not find the whistle or the backpack. I had to increase my PC brightness to see it. It restarts once I start a new run. (For the devs: it happened when I fought [spoiler] the psychic octopus that copies other monster skills late in the game in the 3th boss run [/spoiler]). Amazing game for a team of two. Congratulations devs.

I've been looking for something to fill the hole left by mtg and hearthstone, well here it is since I enjoy monster taming. This is an amazing card game hybridization with monster taming, quite fitting. Just don't get too attached to any of them!

It's an okay game. it was fun for about an hour. However, it became to be really repetitive for my taste.

Hidden gem. Should be more popular. Don't know how this was not on my radar until now. Plays like the mainline Pokémon game series meets Slay the Spire. Mechanically interesting and great card variation. Dev feedback: Would be nice to have a longer mode as acquired teams feel like you have a very short time with them, would like a 20-30 game mode rather 8. And a game mode option to save teams from previous runs for a no tame run. Would happily pay for some DLC.

I noticed there were not that many reviews with a playtime above 100 hours. To me, the default Pioneer difficulty is a great mix of making my decisions matter and a fair challenge vs individual bosses. When I am aware who the boss is gonna be, I can tune my deck to beat that particular boss. The rest is just making sure to get through the first 7 fights. Some runs will be easier, some harder. So how does an average game session of mine looks like? 1. Selecting one of the bosses (I always do them in the same order of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) 2. Taking best Starters from the ones offered. If the best starter is not available, I pick the next one on my personal tier list or based on my other preferences. 3. Focusing on fights that will have 1, 2, 3, or even all 4 of the following: a) offer me monsters of great value b) keep my food varied after the fight c) feature a great special reward d) will bleed my party less 4. Deciding who will be my main damage dealer, my tank, my support. Preferably, all syringes I have will be used to make these monsters better in those roles. Many evolved Starters and the Aberration reward have stats high enough to be used as my main damage dealers. The syringe step can often be delayed until the 7th fight is shown. 5. Removing the unnecessary monsters from my deck. By the time I reach most Bosses, I like reducing the size of my deck to 5 cards only. Depending on the strength of my deck, I might cull the unwanted cards earlier, to make the 6th and the 7th fight more predictable. If I have a good reason to, like completing bestiary while facing a weaker Boss, I might consider taking more monsters with me. 6. Adjusting my Deck based on what the Boss and his minions are capable of. Here is a couple examples: a) Eye of the Abyss dies to pretty much anything that is not terrible. 7 speed allows me to act before the Eye of the Abyss. It is an excellent threshold if I want to put him to sleep, thus denying him his turn. b) 6 speeds is enough to be faster than the Former Pioneer and his minions. Time Paradox can be countered with Tentacles, Sleep or slowed down by killing his minions. Taking an extra monster and using his as sacrifice can be a valid option too. c) Weakness, Sturdy and almost any way to scale strength over time farms the first and the second phase of the Sons of the Abyss, if you keep one of the minions alive. d) Sleep, Sonar, Smoke Bomb, Vulnerable, Multi Hits, Strength buffs, High Health, Sturdy, Armor, Healing and more. The Colossus can be grinded out in so many ways. This is also the only Boss where my speed stat is usually irrelevant. e) The Secret Boss is heavily scripted. The easiest way to beat him is using the Implosion move first, followed by finishing off the Boss' Amalgamate with Multi Hits. Other common alternative I use is sniping his Lightbringer with a any 7 damage attack, on a monster with 7 speed and attack priority (Sonar and the Slow debuff would also work). Multi Hits can often be improved with Strength buffs and/or giving vulnerable to the enemy. This is my secondary way of dealing with the Boss' Amalgamate. Otherwise, his Rocky Shell can be a problem. If there is one bad thing I could say, is that sometimes this game does feel draining. One error in one fight can lead to being less prepared for the next fight and so on. At the Pioneer, you are heavily encouraged/rewarded for playing optimally all the time. It is almost impossible to avoid all errors, ranging from very small ones and those that might lose you the run. Frequent double checks, before ending your turn, and heavy planning lowers the chances for the errors, but some can still slip through.

So initially, I really loved the game. Eldritch Pokémon creatures in a card game with a creepy story? I'm in. Played the first 4 bosses that they have available and surprisingly won each one first try. Then I got the ending credits which was entirely a surprise because it felt like there was more. At that point I had only unlocked 8 journal entries when there are so many more than that which I thought was suspicious. Then it turns out that there is, in fact, a secret final boss. I have theories about who/what it is, but I'm literally just going to watch it on Youtube and read the entries online somewhere if that's even an option since the wiki itself is so lackluster. I'm only doing that because in order to go against this secret final boss is to beat all of the other bosses at just about the hardest difficulty. It's not that there are new moves or mechanics, it's just you have more handicaps applied to you. No healing between matches, rewards are worse and worse, only a certain number of undo's and rerolls, etc. If that floats your boat, by all means. To me? That entire system could have been additional. There is no additional fun to be had by ramping of difficulties on the same battles and wasting an hour at a time trying to get the best things to line up or just randomly appear. So with a prohibitively high difficulty level lockout of being able to fight the final boss and the repetitive nature of how to get all the journal entries, this is how, in my opinion, it should have been structured. More bosses. There are only 4 you can normally get to. By having more bosses, you can not only give people something more to strive for, but naturally tell the story without having someone go back and beat the same bosses over and over again. The random nature of the monsters you run into and the rewards you get would still make it difficult. More bosses also makes it so you can naturally feed journal entries to players rather than them going to farm them. The idea that you require everyone to 'git gud' so they can see even the hint that there's a last boss is absurd. I should point out that the only reason I even knew there was a final secret boss was because I looked at the achievements. If they ever update the game to make it inclusive for people who didn't want to spend tens of hours trying to beat higher difficulties, I'll update this review and change my outlook, but as of now, I can't do it. Would not have bought this game knowing about 6 hours is what this was basically boiled down to if I didn't try to beat those bosses at the higher difficulty settings.

found gameplay a bit shallow, cool art but not what i was expecting. monsters keeps getting rotating, to quick to feel attached.

Terrific game but I wouldn't call it a deck builder. Sure you collect cards and you draw them randomly but you can lose those cards very easily, and they can be used multiple times in a turn. It's more akin to roguelike pokemon with permadeath.

I'm an artist and a horror fanatic, so the creature designs immediately lured me in. The art is absolutely fantastic, and it even does a bit of heavy lifting as I'm not sure the game's tone/atmosphere would succeed without it. I like how creatures go from recognizable/fantastical (reminiscent of real animals) to absolute nightmare fuel the deeper you venture into the map. I think the majesty and the power levels of the monsters scale appropriately, and some of the strongest monsters are inspiring in a really gnarly way. I'm extremely pleased to note that the game comes with a trypophobia toggle setting; there is one specific creature that just SUCKS to look at, and I was hesitant to submit feedback about censoring it (as it's a horror game, and expecting artists to curate discomfort for every single player is unreasonable). But! Before I thought too hard about it, I dipped into the settings and found that I didn't need to submit any feedback at all. I'm not sure if the option was always there, or if the devs responded to an earlier request from a player, but either way I'm very happy about that. Gameplay-wise, this is enjoyable so far with about 15 hours under my belt. If you're on the fence about this one, and you like deckbuilders, I will say that this isn't really like StS or Wildfrost; a deck with synergies and a collection of specific "types" of cards isn't exactly doable here. I'm finding that it's less about organically finding cards that link together, and more about Manually frankenstein-ing monsters into powerhouses that can take a lot of damage, deal a lot of damage, or mitigate debuffs. Taming every monster IS a priority in terms of filling out your bestiary, but you don't want to tame every Tom, ♥♥♥♥, and Harry in a run. A useless monster may have a REALLY good skill or attack that you should take from it and inject into another, better monster. Some really powerful looking monsters have abysmal skills even if their health or speed stats are good. Decktamer really encourages you to slow down and read carefully. There IS a lot of text/information to take in, especially with cards that have like six different abilities stacked on them. Not paying attention to detail has cost me a couple runs. That being said, I really LIKE how meticulous it can be. I love deckbuilders because I don't feel like I'm mindlessly and passively doing something. Decktamer slows me down and asks me to engage with it appropriately. I like the "explorer's field journal" feeling it provides. It just feels very unique. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, it doesn't have me completely hooked. The loop is satisfying but maybe not necessarily addictive (for me personally)!! I would LIKE to complete the bestiary, but I'm not sure if I'll be doing 50-100 runs of this like I have with some other DBs. I genuinely wish I could put my finger on why it doesn't quite give me that "just one more run" high, because it was clearly made with a lot of love and continuous effort. I appreciate the devs for sticking to such a specific vision; the love for monsters definitely shines throughout the game. Good game! Happy that it's getting updates! Would like it to circulate more amongst horror fans. If you're unsure about the formula, maybe get it on sale?