The Simulacrum

Honestly in every regard but probably mechanical The Simulacrum is leans from non-impressive to bad. The most prominent art, the card art, is likely wholly AI-generated, which admittedly is necessary for the nature of this game, but really isn't a selling point anyways. The UI is as simple as it gets, yet can still be pretty buggy and laggy alot of the time. Still, the concept of playing the roguelike mode to collect randomly generated cards to duel difficult bosses once you're out of the roguelike mode is pretty engaging to me. I wish The Simulacrum had a lot more work into making it a more lovely game, as what's there works, but it just barely slips into a recommendation from me. Definitely a 6.5 to a 7 out of 10 sort of game in my books.

Excellent! This is the best execution of the "card game with randomly generated cards" idea I have played to date. The matches themselves are fun to play, while the randomization goes beyond novelty and succeeds at providing massive amounts of replayability. There is a nice synergy going on between the game modes. The main one, called Delve, is a deck-building roguelike, and the cards you draft during a run get added to your collection, which you can then use to construct decks to play with in other modes. There are Bosses, which are matches against specific gimmick decks, that will often require you to bring your own deck that can out-gimmick the gimmick. Beating Bosses in turn unlocks new characters to play as in Delve. Then there is Gauntlet – a mode that requires you to win multiple matches in a row with a single deck – and its even more interesting sibling, auto-Gauntlet, where it is the AI that plays in your stead, meaning you need to put together a deck that is straightforward enough to use. Obviously, you can also just play single matches against either the AI or other players with your constructed decks. One tiny annoyance is that a good part of the generated cards are total garbage – the game will generate a card that has weak stats for its costs and will compensate by also giving it an effect, but more often than not that effect will actually be a detrimental one. The result is that drafting or constructing a deck feels a bit like browsing through trash – you are picking out usable cards from a mass of ones that have absolutely no use. That is the only thing I can nitpick about, however. Between all the game modes and all the random, even after playing for over 100 hours, the game still feels fresh. Strongly recommended.

A fun deckbuilder with randomly generated cards. The card randomization is done really well, things still feel thematic and coherent and also rarely broken. It keeps multiple plays fresh as you keep hunting better combos. Delve mode is roguelite similar to Slay The Spire. One great feature is you get to keep a copy of all your cards every time you beat a boss, adding more consequence for defeat and reward for victory. It also makes Delve mode a very efficient way to unlock cards. Boss fights present preconstructed thematic decks for you to fight, encouraging you to make special decks to take them on. Battle AI is just a generic fight against randomized decks. Gauntlet mode is similar except you're rewarded for multiple wins in a row, and you have the option of letting the AI play your deck for you (which was more fun than I expected). A few flaws hold this back from being a truly great game. A few bugs need fixing, the worst being how once in every long while a card decision won't display correctly and will lock up the game. The deckbuilder UI is good but could use a little love, especially the favorite/ignore feature and the way search sometimes fusses over key words making you search for them alone. Delve mode could be improved - more events, fixes for some events that have too much downside (witch and "cool" guy), more relics, boss order randomization. Overall I had a great time with this and if you like deckbuilders and card collectors this is a good one, especially if you can tolerate or enjoy the chaos of random card gen.