Cardaire

I love the collectible card game (CCG) loop of getting more cards, having more deck concepts become viable, and then perfecting your newest concept. Roguelike Deckbuilders are great because you always get to start from scratch and work with what you can pull together... but you always start from scratch, so you don't get that final feeling of perfection. Of course, perfecting a deck in real life costs a ton of money and I hate the gambling encouraged by actual cardboard-based CCGs -- I'm still mad at how much money I gave Decipher buying packs for their Star Wars and Star Trek games growing up. For whatever reason, there really aren't that many options out there for CCG adventure games that have the full loop, without being exploitative like IRL games. Cardaire is absolutely one of those few full-loop options. Cardaire has a very cozy, Saturday morning cartoon vibe to it. You arrive at the Card Frontier and have to battle the elite four or something, and everything in the world is somehow powered by card shards. Ya know, Pokemon-like world logic. The soundtrack is chill and the character portraits are enjoyably cartoony, while the characters are goofy and fun. Good vibes all around. The card game itself is decent. I'll give the brief shape of how it plays. Each turn you draw a card, and then you get the option to discard a card to increase your available energy. Then you play cards (souls and spells), and then you attack. The soul cards have attack and defense values, and there are 5 slots to play them in. When you attack, you can attack other souls or go for the players health bar. Souls in the center slot protect the player and must be removed first. Some boards have a slot with a field effect on it that can have various effect when a soul is played to it, such as altering their stats or healing a player. You win by reducing your opponents health to 0 or if they run out of cards in their deck. That's the jist of it. The cards themselves are generally straight forward and what you'd expect of the genre. Given that you have to discard to generate energy, draw power is even more important than most card games, which is saying something. Overall, the mechanics are maybe a bit safe and familiar, but enjoyable nonetheless. There are a couple of big problems, though. The AI misplays constantly in very obvious ways -- discarding an expensive card they can afford for energy only to play a cheaper, less valuable card for example. I only ever lost by drawing too much and running out of cards and that was with a really bad deck. I didn't lose to any of the late game challenges, and I was generally quite safe for most of them to boot. Aside from the lack of difficulty, the game plays out rather slowly taking 5-10 minutes per bout. Further, most bouts only ever reward 80 card shards when a pack of 5 cards costs 100 -- so even if you're playing fairly fast, there's about 10 minutes between packs. Outside of the bosses, even the hardest opponents give the same reward as the very first one you fought, so it feels rather unrewarding. On the other hand, you can fish to get card shards, which just involves walking up to a water tile and pressing space and then waiting for a minute or two. With the best rod, that nets about half a card shard per second, making it 2-3x faster than actually playing the game. When I was trying to get a new deck concept up and running, I chose to just put the game on a second monitor and fish while eating or watching a show. When the rewards are so much greater, it's a bit hard to not optimize the fun out of the game. All of that said, I did enjoy my time with the game consistently. I think there's a lot of value to a game that's good vibes and a chill experience, and you'll get that here.

Well worth the $4 I spent while it was on sale. Getting all the achievements took me around 10 hours and I don't really expect to replay it any time soon as getting all the achievements allowed me to explore most if not all of the side content. The secret final boss was probably the only challenging opponent in the game for me so I'm hoping there are more difficulty spikes like that in the game's upcoming sequel. Overall, an easy, casual experience for those who like CCGs and RPGs.

Great game! Charming dialogue, unique art, and fun gameplay loop. The AI could definitely use some work, but it's definitely great for a Yu-Gi-Oh-like setting. It's a hidden gem and I hope the squeakquel has more eyes on it.