Card Crawl – A dungeon full of monsters in your pocket – Review

I usually start my reviews by explaining a bit about the game, what it’s about and how you play it. Then, as we go along, I would clarify what I liked, or not, about it. I usually end up with a clear endorsement of the application if I was a fan.

Well, to shake things up, I’m gonna do things different this time. I’ll start up by telling you to go buy Card Crawl, and while it download you will be able to follow along with my review.

When the word “card” appears in a game title, I sometimes cringe. You must understand, there are just so many clones of Hearthstone, Magic, or whatever other popular fighting card games out there. But this time, you simply need to run out the deck.

You don’t play against anyone, but the deck of cards that will be played before you. There will be 4 “you” card slots and 4 dungeon card slots. One of the “you” card slot is, quite literally, you. A card representing your avatar, with your hit points and the amount of coin you will find in your adventure. Your character has 2 hands (yay!) represented by a slot each on your left and right sides. You will also have an extra inventory slot in the form of a backpack, the 4th “you” slot.

The trick here is once you put something in your inventory, you won’t be able to get rid of it, to sell it, or to put it back into the dungeon. You need to actively use it for it to disappear and leave the slot free again. It doesn’t have to be now, it can be in 10 turns if you so need to, but you’ll be stuck with it until then.

So you always need to choose wisely and avoid being too greedy! Sometimes you need a 2 points shield more than you need a 10 coins treasure chest if you want to run out the deck.

It’s a bit of a passive dungeon, in the sense that the creatures will never outright attack you. They will only act once you make an aggressive move toward them. And on that note, the combat system is pretty simple. Those monsters will have a number of hit points and you can hit them with a sword card to hurt (or kill them, depending on the strength of your weapon). You can also use a shield, if you have one equipped, to soften the blow of the enemy card’s attack, the rest will hurt you in the form of lost hit points.

You can always sell loot found in the dungeon (as long as you don’t equip it first!) and thankfully you will find some health potions also along the way to keep you in good shape.

As if all that premise wasn’t already entertaining, you will also find through your adventures ability cards. May be one magical card will change an item of your choosing into a potion to save your bacon at the last minute, or another one will return all the dungeon cards laid out to the deck!

Speaking of the deck, that’s how you win. There are 54 cards in the deck and you need to have them all used, sold to the shop, or defeated, depending on their nature, to win. Your high score is the number of coins you will win as you go through the deck of cards.

Is it finished downloading yet? Go play!