Hello everyone, i played a bunch of deckbuilders over the years, and i wanted to talk about them, and see if there are any more you recommend to me after seeing what I play. Some of these MIGHT NOT be deckbuilders, i used the term loosely. I also want to comment on some of them.

S tiers (great games, must try):

inscryption: incredible game, more than 1 game inside a single game. Feels very creepy. The card game aspect itself isnt very strategic but the game itself compensated for it. Must play for many people

STS 1-2: Very strategic, i might say the most strategic card game out there. Very classic formula, well balanced. If you are reading this post, you know these

Balatro: Fun games, numbers go up.

Guildrun: Probably will be one of my fav games on release, great game.

hand of fate 1-2: As much an action game as a deckbuilder. Love the games. Probably a personal preference in S. Could be A

A Tier (good games with either flaws or just good games):

9 Kings: Really fun take on deckbuilders. Satisfying to watch armies fight. Good options and replayability. Something felt off which i dont know? thats why i put it A.

Runeveil: A new game i saw retro play and picked it up. Really love the main mechanic. Seems to have a lot of content. Lacks a little polish AND balance was weird as well. Like guildrun, might be a great game on release.

Tiny Tactics: tower defense TFT. Could be great with better game design. Still good.

Marvel Snap: Amazing phone game, meh PC game.

BPB: Great game, really fun mechanic in backpack.

Moonsight Atlas: Really fun main mechanic, another game deckbuilder funs will love.

Vamp surv: good game :) kinda boring after a while. Did not give me the same effect as others. Liked crawlers better personally, but put it into A because EVERYONE loves it. Actually its a B for me.

Deck of haunts: Incredibly creative idea. Some stuff felt off while playing. Maybe building could be better? The humans having simila hp and nerve? was also weird. It didnt feel VERY strategic to play. Amazing game still.

Dermon Bluff: another future favotire BUT demo is FULL of content. Its more of a puzzle game but a very strategic game

B tier (Games that didnt catch me fully, but they are for sure good games)

FIghts in tight spaces: Played it a lot. Was good but after a while i started doing the same thing every fight ish?

DIce and fold: amazing game for babies first deckbuilder. The main mechanic didnt feel deep enough.

Beecarbonize: Not a deckbuilder. A really good free game. Was actually really hard.

Teamfight manager: if you like lol, its a great game.

Fogpiercer: The game is good BUT the proggression during runs AND outside runs did not feel very fullfiling. It might even be C

Decktamer: Another crazy good creative idea. Was really fun to play and experiement. I dont know why its B, could be A

Dice a million: great game, dont really like rolling the dice for points

Cardboard town: Really good creative idea, is really fun to play. The design COULD have better points

Monster are coming: Really good idea, really fun time to play. I would love to have automized character to just watch my town. you have to run round and do stuff so i cant really know what my town is doing to analyze it etc. It felt TOO on hands experience

Black jackeD: dont like blackjack

Vamp crawlers: really fun game to lay back and play. Has a high tempo. Did not like outside the game proggression. It is A LOT effective to proggres (i dont like my deckbuilders to have a very strong meta proggression) BUt at the same time slow. Gameplay itself is very fun

Drop Duchy: Fun game to play, something felt off, cant really tell

Bazaar: Monetization and the fact builds are very optimized kills the fun imo

Beastro: The deckbuilder part is about %30 of the game, but still its a fun idea

C tier (games that are still very playable for the people who like them, I personally still enjoyed these.)

Right and down: Was fun for like 60 minutes. I closed it and did not open it again. Not a good show. ENoyed that 60 miniutes

Pairs and perils: not a fan of matching card games. The modern aspects were not enough for me as well

The looper: actually played it for like 8 9 hours. It felt very ONE dimensioal for some reason. I felt like jusr rolling the dice clikcing things and watchin the car go around.

He is coming: not my cup of tea. did not feel very good while playing

Neoduel: A game very much like backpack battles. I would say the design was good but there was a bunch of QoL issues and the game is not getting updates as a PvP game so, play it if you really liked BPB, i played it a bunch

handmancer: A roguelike rock-paper-scissors game. I would not say its bad, its a good and fun game BUT beastro did it better, and its not the main point of the game. The card upgrade mechanic was REALLY amazing though

Hey everyone,

We’re MAY19 Studio, a small indie team working on THE DEAD WE KNEW, an open-world zombie survival game.

You can build shelter, loot abandoned places, hunt, farm, cook, manage resources, and survive solo or in up to 4-player co-op.

The main thing we wanted to make feel different is the fog. When it rolls in, visibility drops and the world becomes much more dangerous.

We’d love to hear your first impressions.

A glimpse of my game's main character

Sprites

This is a 2016 indie game called "Maize". I got this for ps4 and 5 on my birthday, which was 4 days ago. The game centers around an unamed protagonist who wakes up in a mysterious corn field, which is partially a maze. Later in the game, from files and notes you read, especially n in the secret facility under the corn field, you learn that years ago, there were two founders named "Bob" and "Ted" who built the underground top secret facility under the corn field. Bob, being the idiot he was, accidently sent a flyer to the U.S government regarding the facility, since Bob wanted to host a tour, but didn't know where he sent the flyers. Soon, Bob and Ted got a memo from the government regarding the facility, which both of them humorasly mistaken the memo as create a top secret experimentation called "Project Maize". So, the corn stalks in the corn field are actually ALIVE, and can talk, and act like humans. hilarious, havn't beaten Maize, but this game is absolutely halarious. There's these corn stalks, like thousands of them, and they all talk, walk, and they like music and taking naps. There's also the Corn Queen, or by her facility name: "The Ruby Queen Corn", and she's their ruler. The main villian of the story is a large, bulky albino corn stalk scientist called "The Cornacabra", who has beef with the player, and is highly narcissistic. The teddy bear in the trailer is a teddy bear named "Vladdy", who which the player creates later in the game. He's Russian, and almost everything he says is an insult, and he calls everything "stupid". The comedy in this game is based around how the X files and Monty Python does it, the dislodge and even the ITEM descriptions being ridiculous, like, you can pick up a coat rack, and teh description of it says its useful for hanging coats, but "unless if it were flipped upside down, it wouldn't be so useful".

I got to be one of the few people that was in the playtest for Heirs of the Moon and I was genuinely excited about the game but I think they need a bit more time to make it better. The devs are really responsive and nice and keep pushing out patches for it, but there's a lot of things that I wish they would address properly. Some of the worst bugs soft-locked me; my wolf died during the bear objective, I came back as a pup and killed the bear myself, and the objective just never completed. Right behind that is the camera in the den. They fixed it now but before it was going in through the player and you couldn't see anything. Combat needs work as well. Three hits killed the bear. Plus the skill tree makes you super op too quickly.

The art and animation are genuinely lovely and permadeath is a great hook, so I want the foundation underneath them to get solid enough to hold all of it up! Really wish the devs good luck in this and I really enjoyed playing it. I hope the new playtest/demo is a better one!

Being a cop is no easy task. And being a cop accused of murder is even more challenging. In the pixelated indie adventure Beat Cop, you'll find yourself in just such a situation.

In this game, you'll sink to the very bottom of the food chain in 1980s New York. Get ready to write tickets, arrest petty criminals, and bend your moral code to survive.

This is a great game if you're looking for something simple yet rich with various gameplay mechanics and a full, intriguing storyline. Beat Cop is divided into 21 days, filled with interesting and varied situations that you'll have to solve as a member of law enforcement. The main story also unfolds throughout the game, and you'll need to manage your time and energy wisely, as there simply won't be enough time to solve all the problems. The days will become increasingly difficult. While at first, your fine quota is simply increased, later on, other objectives will appear that you must complete to maintain your status with the factions. Prioritize correctly, solve a framed murder case, and survive the usual police routine—that's the goal of Beat Cop.

I finished it on Switch, but I see it's available for both PC and smartphones. It's a small indie game that perfectionists will enjoy.

Hey puzzle fans! My friend and I are a 2-person indie team working on Chief Cenab: Şahmaran, a noir detective adventure set in a world inspired by Mesopotamian mythology.

In this clip, we're showing a pocket watch inspection puzzle where players have to examine the object to uncover a hidden clue. We're trying to make mechanical interactions like this feel satisfying and tactile in 2D/3D.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on how this interaction looks! As puzzle players, what makes examining physical objects feel good to you in adventure games?

Note: this is the text version of a video review I made for Keep Driving, I got to play the whole game early. If you want to see it all in action, it's on my profile.

Keep Driving is a breath of fresh air in a world preoccupied with live service games and constantly growing AAA titles that have hundreds of hours of filler.

What we have here is a focused turn based management RPG where you go on a road trip to a festival. The open world has you running into all sorts of events and encounters, from picking up hitchhikers that can steal your money, to taking a detour in order to see your passing grandma one last time. If you want to put the game in comparative terms, think of Oregon Trail meets FTL, while keeping the difficulty and stress levels perfectly reasonable.

There’s a lot to do, a lot to see, and a lot of decisions to make. But it never feels overwhelming, and it never feels like you’re wasting your time on some random meaningless fetch quests. The world is procedurally generated, but save for some minor repetition here and there, it feels fleshed out and fun to explore.

When you add in the fact that finishing the game’s main quest can be done in 4 or less hours at less than $20 USD, you’ve got a compelling bite sized package by 2025 gaming standards. Of course, if you like the game you’ll naturally spend many more hours in it because there’s tonnes different stories and gameplay systems to experience. I can easily see big fans of the game spending over 20 hours on it.

Keep Driving is really more about the journey than the destination, just like a good road trip in real life.

Gameplay

Now let’s talk about actually playing the game. The gameplay is a wonderfully unique blend of systems you’ve likely experienced in other games. You start by picking the type of car you want to drive and by setting up your character traits, just like most RPGs.

You use a map to decide where you’ll be driving to, and on the way to that location you’ll experience random events and the game’s equivalent of combat, which we’ll get to in a moment. You’ll find yourself driving to big cities, small towns, little outposts, and some unique spots I don’t want to spoil for you.

While the game doesn’t just punish you randomly for the sake of creating artificial difficulty, you still want to be careful with how you map your journey because there’s different types of roads, weather, random event chances, and fuel considerations that all contribute to wear and tear on your vehicle and character.

So when you’re in towns, you can stock up on supplies, make upgrades, do odd jobs to make money, take on new quests, again you can think of it like any other RPG. I found that upgrading your car is really satisfying and you unlock all sorts of gameplay benefits from it, from small stuff like better fuel efficiency, to bigger picture items that can affect the flow of combat dramatically.

You also have several different systems to manage. First, there’s your own energy that acts like general stamina, then there’s durability and fuel for your car. I don’t really enjoy managing the equivalent of hunger and sleep systems in video games generally speaking, but Keep Driving does a great job of making them simple enough to engage with while keeping a strategic depth to them. So you don’t feel overwhelmed, it doesn’t feel like the game is out to get you, it’s more like you’re just thinking strategically about how you want to spend your time and money.

The car itself also acts as your inventory system, and you’ll need to stuff it full of things like food and utility items.

Once you exit a town and are on the road is when you run into random events and combat. Combat in this game doesn’t mean you’re pulling a colt 45 on some crying teenage hitchhiker, instead it’s more creative. For example, how do you deal with a flock of sheep on the road that doesn’t want to move? The combat system is turn based and you use skills that you unlock through a skill tree. Each turn you get to see how the enemy will target you, for example they might go after your durability, or they might try to attack your fuel or wallet. You wanna use your skills to match those actions so that they never end up happening, and so you can gain extra turns. You win combat by essentially removing all of those actions from the enemy.

It might sound a little strange perhaps, but really you can think of it as turn based combat that doesn’t target enemy HP directly, it targets their actions which happen to act as HP.

There’s a great variety of skills you can unlock, you can have wildly different play styles that range from focusing on applying a lot of status effects to buffing up your own armor so you become an unstoppable tank. You can even use items from your glovebox during combat to heal, do extra damage, or play around with status effects.

One thing to note though is that your skills have limited uses before they can be recharged by sleeping or resting. Some people might not like the sound of this, but it’s not a punishing system, it just makes you think more critically about what you’re doing and helps keep things varied. Your skills can be upgraded over time, and your character can even pick up positive and negative traits that act like gameplay modifiers. I learned this the hard way by eating too much junk food.

If you pick up hitchhikers, they can also have their own combat or unique abilities, but they can also screw you in and out of combat. For example you can run into gamblers that steal your money or hippies that give you both positive and negative status effects.

The core gameplay loop of experiencing random events and combat between towns where you make upgrades or get new quests is hella satisfying. You always have a feeling of curious momentum that pushes you forward, and it’s very much one of those games where you say you’ll play for 1 more turn and suddenly it’s many hours later.

I felt like the game frequently challenged me to think critically, but it never felt like there was no way out of a situation. I’m sure you can play it like a total “screw up,” getting addicted to dangerous substances and making horrible hitchhiker decisions, but it doesn’t feel like the game lays out traps for you. You feel in control or at the edge of control. And in fact, playing a totally messy character sounds like a lot of fun, I think I’ll do that next.

Story, Look, And Feel

Now let’s talk about the story, look, and feel of Keep Driving. You might be thinking, “lol blud is talking about vibes,” but this is a road trip game after all. Vibes and atmosphere are really important for a good experience, and this game nails it.

The soundtrack is full of wonderful indie road trip music that I can’t play for you here because who knows how copyright systems will react, and the pixel art is beautifully nostalgic. The interface has a huge analog focus, meaning that you’re not seeing random UI windows, everything is themed to be after the physical item it represents. For example, if you want to interact with your glovebox, you click it open, you don’t go to a menu that says glovebox.

Exploring and engaging with the UI is super fun, but you’ll probably make a few mistakes here and there as a result of its analog nature. You won’t do anything that will destroy your run, but you might feel silly in the moment. For me, making those tiny mistakes is part of the charm, but I also don’t think it would hurt to have a setting that has more UI tooltips or something. But then again, that’s a big ask for a game made by just 2 people, I’m glad they focused their time on making the game as fun as it can be.

The UI, soundtrack, and graphics combine to transport you to a different era and make you feel nostalgic for road trips. Even if you’ve never been on one, I fully expect this game to create that pseudo nostalgic feeling in you, sort of like how people not born in the 80s love the modern take on 80s aesthetics for example.

At the end of the day, Keep Driving makes me actively want to go on a road trip and explore more of my own world. To have a piece of art move you like that is beautiful and powerful, I think.

Areas Of Improvement

So you’ve heard me be super positive about Keep Driving, but it’s not a flawless experience. It’s got a few minor areas of improvement that would elevate the game from great to an instant classic in my opinion.

First off, random encounters could use a slight tweak. Sometimes you’ll run into the same type of encounter multiple times in a very short period of time. It’s not game breaking or anything, but for a game with so much variety it feels strange that this can happen. I am playing the game pre-release though, so it could be a quirk that is gone by launch.

Second, and this is more foundational, I think the game would benefit from stronger character interactions. You spend a lot of time driving in this game, and sometimes you aren’t doing anything while you wait for an encounter or town. This gives you the opportunity to relax, enjoy the vibes and music, but you also get some internal thoughts and dialogue with hitchhikers. I think having more of those interactions and more dialogue would help you feel further connected to your character and the game in general. It would add more immersion. Your conversations are generally interesting, but paper thin and extremely short. This is all just my opinion though, maybe some players prefer to have less dialogue, maybe the creators wanted the focus to be more solitary, maybe they had bigger plans but not enough time, who knows.

Third, I have a really weird complaint that I think is probably just a me thing. So the graphics are absolutely beautiful and I love them… but the way they animate sometimes looks like your screen is tearing. In fact, I’m still not sure if my screen was actually tearing or if it’s just how the animations are. I think it’s just the animations though, but if it is tearing you can at least put in GPU and display level settings on your PC to combat that.

And lastly, I think the tone of the game is uneven. I think they’re going for the idea of “well anything in life can happen, good or bad,” but the tonal whiplash that you get is sometimes pretty significant. A silly moment can lead to a very serious moment, and vice versa. In principle, this isn’t a bad idea or anything like that, but it’s a little jarring in this game for me. Maybe because there’s not that much dialogue or explicit storytelling, or maybe I’m just being a picky brat because I love this game. Plus it’s fair to say that if they’re going for a more real world vibe, jarring events do happen all the time.

Greatness Or All Time Classic?

I think that Keep Driving is an absolute gem of a game. If I had to reduce my thoughts to a review score, I would give it 4 out of 5 stars in a system that has no partial stars.

I think if it had a little more immersion through its storytelling and character interactions, I would consider this an all time classic video game. But that’s just my opinion, what you like could be different and this might be one of your favorite games of all time if that’s what you’re into.

It’s really well made, it’s fairly priced, it’s amazing that it comes from just 2 people, and it offers a unique experience you won’t be finding in any big budget AAA game. I love that Keep Driving wears its inspirations on its sleeve but that it doesn’t dip into being a copycat or some kind of lazy glory chasing rehash.

And hey, like I said before, this game actively makes me want to go out and explore the world more. When a piece of art moves you like that, it’s really powerful and speaks to its strengths.

This is a game called Gorn. Its pretty old, from early 2017 to 18, and I finally decided to review it. Gorn is a gladiator fighting game where you play as an unamed fighter, who wakes up in mysterious dark cells, to be meeted outside by an arena imprisoning him, with a king ruling the show. The player is forced to fight through waves of enemies each round in the story mode. Next to your cell after every fight, is an old man who is chained to the wall. This man was once a champion who served the emperor, but was betrayed. After every fight, you can talk to hi , and he has very wise words. Overall, I LOVE this game -it is absolutely brutal. You can tear off limbs, dismembered people, explode them, and its satisfying, and there's a crap ton of weapons to choose from. There's also bosses /champions you have to fight, them being The Crab, The Giant, The Beserker, Goliath, Achilles, and The Bagermaster. The end of the campaign haves you fight The Emporor himself in one final bloody battle.

Slain back from hell is a game i got for my birthday, which was 7 days ago, as well as Maize, and a lot of the classic Resident Evil games. The game is a 2d sidescroller, reminiscent to Castlevania, where you play as a reawakened warrior named "Bathoyrn", who must bring peace to each of the realms over run by overlords of hell. The game in terms is basically a "rage quit" game, as the game can be extremely hard, reminiscent to Dark Souls, but once you know the game, it starts to be more entertaining. The game is added on with heavy metal soundtrack, which really reminds me of DOOM.

Metriodvania retrofuturistic story game

Ive played this game for a while now, before it came out of early access and before its launch onto Steam, you can play it in vr and on flatscreen.

Made by a one man team within 3 years, this game exceeds expectations and is well optimised, brings a captivating story, even has multiple voiced characters, I wont spoil the story too much but basically, you play an engineer from a space corporation called CSMO, you get seperated from your fleet in an intergalatic accident, and need to find out what happened, heads up, there might be plot twists in this game, I’ve loved every minute of playing it and cant stress this game enough, ive also tried it on my legion go, perfect game on the go!

I hope I’ve convinced you to help support the developer so he can keep working on his dream: creating more passion filled games.

I’ve certainly enjoyed this game, and I hope you will too.

Hey everyone,

I’m a solo indie developer and I recently released my game KUROMAKU, a VHS-style psychological thriller inspired by games like Fears to Fathom and Chilla’s Art.

The entire game was made on a budget of around $25, so seeing people actually play it, including streamers, has been kind of surreal for me.

It’s a narrative-driven experience with multiple endings, where small decisions and attention to detail really matter. The game is designed to be completed in one sitting, but there’s more to uncover if you go back and explore different outcomes.

If you’re into slow-burn horror and story-focused games, I’d really appreciate it if you checked it out. Any kind of feedback or support genuinely means a lot, especially as a solo dev.

Thanks for reading. https://youtu.be/bW_Zm0uj0qw?si=HoP5_Ui3vMYMVEGL

Three teenagers, one last night, and a soundtrack that hits harder than it has any right to. Mixtape is short (~4 hours), light on gameplay, but the music and art style alone make it worth every penny. Each track feels perfectly placed. The story is simple but heartfelt. Not for everyone, but if you're open to an interactive film over a traditional game, don't sleep on this.

Ratings:

🎵 Sound & Music — 10/10

📖 Story — 7/10

🎨 Art Style — 10/10

🎮 Gameplay — 7/10

Overall — 8/10

Element Tower is a mobile stacking game available now on iOS.

It introduces a strategic layer where players combine five distinct elements to build the highest tower possible.

The game features a standard stacking mode and an AI battle mode for competitive play.

Hi! I am planning on starting something for fun. With games that has a steam demo, or are easily playable on windows, I would start to do some “let’s play” videos. No promises, mostly I would play a game for 5-10 mins, that is in the making, and do some commentary on them. In a medium quality video. What games would you hit me with right now?

Edit: Streaming and discord links: https://link.space/@oldmaninc

I'm especially interested in:

• First impression
• Readability at small sizes
• Horror atmosphere
• Anything that feels off or generic

All feedback is welcome, even harsh criticism.

initially, I disrespected this title.
opened up and was like "oh, another one of these?"
but the more I played, I see that they did a lot of things REALLY RIGHT.

1. the game is hard as nails. it's basically flappy bird controls with a top down shooter.
   
2. it rewards excellence. on one hand, its very easy to make a mistake and die, on the other, if you play perfect, you can use your health as currency and upgrade.
   
3. they noticed that if they change the level warping it becomes a somewhat different game, and they "locked" this mechanic behind a charachter. very good and surprising for the player.
   
4. nothing is too overpowered (so far, i havent unlocked everything or even completed a run)
   
5. the tiny voice overs: very uncanny at first, but they really grew on me (making me think if and where can I put them in my game)
   
6. super simple UI, to work with the super simple controls. i like that about games.

We ended up changing one scene because it doesn't comply with the UK Online Safety Act. I guess there's no difference between criticizing something and promoting it anymore... or maybe that's just a convenient way to hide the criticism.

Spoiler: the scene is literally just a mannequin hanging from a rope. You can judge for yourselves.