You climb a spire fight by fight, building a deck of attack and defense cards as you go and choosing new cards or relics after each win. Each of the four playable characters has a very different play style, so runs feel different depending on who you pick. Losing sends you back to the very start with an empty deck, which is frustrating at first but becomes the whole appeal once you get used to it.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
Why it lands
It more or less defined the modern deckbuilding roguelike, and years later nothing else has quite matched its elegance. A genre-defining achievement that rewards obsessive optimization.
How it plays
Each run is a puzzle of synergy and risk assessment, and the four characters play distinctly enough that mastering all of them takes dozens of hours. Rarely feels unfair, even when it's brutal.
Style and score
Its presentation is minimal but functional, prioritizing readability over flash, which suits its strategic focus. Runs without a single hiccup on Switch.
Who it's for
'Just one more run' isn't a cliché here, it's basically the whole design philosophy. Essential for strategy fans, and a great gateway into the genre for newcomers.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You start each run with a small stack of cards and climb a tower one screen at a time, choosing a path on a branching map that shows fights, shops, rest sites, and question-mark rooms. Every battle is turn-based: you see exactly what the enemy plans to do next, then spend a handful of energy points playing cards from your hand to attack, block, or apply effects before ending your turn. Winning a fight lets you pick one new card to add to your deck, and sometimes a relic that quietly changes how everything works from then on.
The goal is to reach the top of the tower without your health hitting zero, and the run keeps escalating as tougher fights and a boss wait at the end of each act. You spend most of your time deciding whether a new card actually helps your deck or just clutters it, since a bloated hand of mediocre cards is often worse than a small focused one. A single climb takes somewhere around an hour, and losing partway through just means starting a fresh run with a new draw of cards.
Each attempt feels different because the cards and relics you are offered change every time, so you are constantly solving a new little puzzle rather than repeating a memorized routine. It can sting when a run you were proud of falls apart from one bad turn, and newcomers may need a few losses before the card interactions start clicking. Anyone who likes card games or puzzle-like decision making, and does not mind losing a lot while learning, will find it easy to return to.