Cardaclysm: Shards of the Four

[Admin notice: Please be aware that this review is out of date and may not reflect the current state of the game.] On Jul 26 2021 the 1.1 patch dropped. I immediately noticed some graphical glitches - when spiders were summoned, they would appear on the opponent side of the field, and selection hover boxes weren't on the items in my inventory. There were more interface parts denoting controller buttons. But most of all, the entire UI for the decks was changed. Overall larger visually, but then so were the cards, so I couldn't actually see more cards than before. The book now allowed you to have all the cards you owned in your book of magic, rather than a limited amount, having to store cards in the Chest in the Pub. Except something wasn't right. I went to the pub - the chest was missing, and so were the almost 60 cards I had squirreled away for different decks. They weren't in the Book of Magic either. Some were copies I only had in the chest. Some of them were cards I happened to have in my deck or book, so I knew it wasn't that the cards had been removed wholly from the game. But dozens of max level cards I was holding on to for a different deck build are GONE. I rolled back to the previous 1.02...but clearly the system deleted the data from the save file, because the cards are missing from the save in the earlier version. Guess what really isn't acceptable in a purchased, released game? A patch that destroys content that you have worked to build up and save. Much like you don't make changes to a production server, you don't drop a patch which corrupts or deletes save data without giving the players the information and opportunity to properly back up their save. That is bad QA, and poor communication with players where they are not alerted that a patch will have potentially major, deleterious impact on their gameplay experience and progression. Now it's time to see if I can get my money back.

As card games go, this one certainly is fetching, lots of color and good looking backdrops. Sadly, very little of the visual candy is interactive or adds anything to the game play but it’s certainly easy on the eyes. In terms of the game mechanics, I was reminded of both Microprose’s old Magic the Gathering game and the Etherlord titles. The player moves across an overland map encountering battles and power-ups on the way to building a deck fit for the inevitable boss battles. Freedom of movement is so limited and the environments so static that even with all the artistic glitz, the point-to-point moving got a bit tedious and I began longing for a straight arena format for what is a pretty good card game. The complexities and skill based elements of the game were engaging enough to keep me playing for over twenty hours and I ended up feeling like I got my money’s worth.

Obviously this isn't the greatest indie gem of the year, but is very fun! Unfortunately I saw on steam reviews a lot of misunderstanding about what to expect. This is a very linear game. Not a roguelike, nothing similar to Slay the Spire. Here you play many battles to acquire better cards and itens and slowly grow stronger. Deck combos actually aren't too much present, but the individual cards are what give you power. There are many different strategies and themes to build decks, though. The difficulty can be set trough the "challenge mode" available for individual runs, that requires very precise calculations. The normal mode is very easy. My main critic is the pace. Some grinding is required and you can't change the animation speed.

Cardaclysm is a solid deck-builder game. It has a huge variety of cards and great visuals. However the concept is somewhat flawed, which is most apparent mid-game. 1. As you always have initiative, it's a winning strategy to go for maximum alpha damage. This way you get rid of most enemies before they even have their first turn. This is especially true after you defeated the last boss hunt. You get better and better cards, so nearly all of the early cards you won't use ever again. Etherlords was much more complex in that aspect. Only the final boss sequence is different and challenging, as you need to build completly different decks here, that are not optimized for alpha damage. 2. The deck building is also a bit annoying. While you can save mutliple deck configurations, they dont work well. You can merge cards to upgraded versions, but the decks contain identical cards. Merging a card in the current deck might destroy another deck. Because of 1. this isn't a big problem for gameplay. Also, when you die, your deck modifications are not saved, which is super annoying in the last boss fight sequence, as you need to reconfigure your deck several times (and start from scratch after each death). There are also a bunch of clumsy UI decisions, but they aren't critical. Overall it is a solid deck builder which provides plenty of content. It is not as complex nor difficult as it looks, only the very ending really shines for me.