This is an excellent roguelite deckbuilder with a smooth, streamlined, no-BS interface, charming retro graphics, and a snappy pace. It's focused on deck building and combat tactics. I'm enjoying it a lot. The only problem I've found so far is that it seems way too easy. To keep it in line with the roguelike tradition it aims to honor, it should be much more punishing, instead of allowing for dependable builds with cards that return to your deck, even if they've been destroyed in combat. This is, however, nothing that the developers, who seem to be committed and on the ball, can't solve in future updates. Kudos to them for their excellent work so far!
You're a lich necromancer, getting rid of troublesome, oppressive rulers across the lands. You wield magic that costs mana to summon skeletal legions and magical attacks. All to reclaim what is reightful yours.
In this wonderful game you begin with a limited pool of cards that represent different types of skeleton warriors that you can bring forth to fight for your cause. They have different costs, which you use a replenishing pool of mana to call upon your skeletal allies to fight at your behest. Once on the battefield they move on their own, you just choose where they deploy.
Speaking of the battlefield, it consists of 4 different zones. Your skeletal companions fight to defeat all your foes, that appear in waves in a futile attempt to stop you. Sometimes you must confront the opposing despotic ruler of teh realm. These false kings appear at the end of zone 4, and your legion of skeletal warriors will have to beat back your foes to get to them.
Regarding mana, you start with a modest pool of the source of your magical abilities, and it replenishes over time every turn. You may chance upon the wander swamp spirit while you venture forth across the lands. The swamp spirit can increase your mana abilites, as well as increase your starting hand size from 3 up to 5. Besides adding 1 card into your hand at teh beginning of every subsequent turn, you can also draw additional cards at the cost of mana, but you have a maximum hand size of 10 cards.
There is another wandering spirit out there as well, the forest spirit, and this spirit can supply you with additional cards. You can also find addtional cards through battles, search forgotten graveyards and cemetaries. There are even burial mounds where you can unlock more powerful skeletal allies and magical spells. These mounds do require rare treatures to unlock these powerful allies, and great feats are required to delve deeping into even greater skeletal warriors.
You know those games where you summon units from the left and they slowly move to the right to fight the enemy's base who does the same thing?
This is like a card and turn based version of that, though thankfully more compact and faster but otherwise having many of the same gameplay, strategy, pros and cons.
Note that while there is a "real time" play option, I found the pause + next turn to be so much better for both strategy, and understanding how the units interacted.
It took about 10 plays to get through the base game(s) with the first one taking maybe 15 minutes but last one clocking over an hour.
Overall, an interesting game that is well worth the low cost.
Some gripes about the game-
It eases you in by starting off with very basic units, both for you and the enemy, but with each win, becomes progressively more varied and difficult.
However, while the enemies automatically become more advanced, you need to grind mid bosses to unlock your full roster.
Additionally, the game tries to scale with earlier battles having less units/waves, it doesn't scale very well for all of the enemy types. Some are way harder/easier depending on when you fight them.
And unfortunately, the "rescue your units" mission is one of them. Which is salt on your wounds as this means you just lost beforehand.
Despite you being a lich and fighting the humans, the story is pretty simple and not that interesting. The roles could be reversed with minimal changes.
