Deck of Ashes
"The Outcasts brought Ash Curse upon us all, and they are the only ones who can lift it." – Ash Master. Deck of Ashes is an adventure game with tactical card combat. One character at a time, lead the cast of antiheroes on a quest for redemption. Explore the cursed fantasy world and hunt down powerful cards. Put your survival and resource management skills to the test when upgrading your Camp of allies. The choices that drive your journey – where to go, which resource to collect, which risk to take, and which card to craft – are the difference between success and untimely demise. Features Creative deck-building – collect combat cards that fit your unique playstyle and crush the enemy! Unique hand-drawn eerie art style. Dynamic dark fantasy world – travel through a procedurally generated, changing world in search for cards, supplies and glory! Various biomes that harbour different monster classes – each biome affects the gameplay and offers a unique set of opponents! Survival and resource management – you have limited opportunities to restore health or spent cards, so use them wisely! Camp – strategically improve your base depending on your style of play. Permadeath – unless you use the help of dark magic, then when you die, you die for good.
Game Discussion
Steam User 2
Pretty bad, unballanced, unpolished. Like e.g. the game's main gimmick, the ash cards, are unsuable as the final boss is a hard counter for builds that relay on them.
All being said though, if you like engine builders, it's playable.
Steam User 1
This game would be great if the UI didnt feel like ass.
Honestly the mechanics and the cards and everything is really fun. The aspect of the map constantly changing and you having to gather resources to prepare for the boss coming at you is a much different breath of mechanics than say Slay the Spire where you just hope you got enough. The ability to farm specifically for certain resources and build your deck appropriately is really innovative and fun. Draft mode looks incredibly awesome if you get to know the game.
But the UI and the UX is absolute anus.
Cards and animations are delayed and unresponsive sometimes. The shops most important menu items are TINY compared to the size of potions and purchasables taking up majority of the real estate of the screen. Hovering over cards is delayed and the UX for font is damning to read. The word choice is also sometimes less clear. Playing cards feel really odd as there is forced animation lag even on speed settings. There are massive lag spikes when calculating turn changes and pressing buttons dont feel like youre pressing them until seconds later which creates a really jarring effect on your gameplay where you try to combo out and everything is just delayed. End of Turn effects fail to sometimes play animations and damage numbers are skipped so you arnt sure if something procc'd or not and youre left wondering if the game missed triggers so youre forced to do math to figure it out. I hope the devs figure this out because the UI/UX feels like its from 2005.
The leading competitor from STS plays like butter where dragging cards to attack enemies flow smoothly and just work as you expect. Here its jarring and really sticky.
Also you get jump scared every loading screen since the artwork is really creepy.
Recommended only if you can handle the lagginess.
Steam User 1
Deck of Ashes was my first deckbuilder, and it got me hooked on the genre. It's pretty different from a typical StS clone, introducing a few unique mechanics. Some examples:
reshuffling deck requires spending health points, but your hand isn't discarded at the turn's end, and you can return a few cards from hand to the bottom of the draw pile;
branching path grid is replaced with a quasi-open world map with nodes offering battles, dungeons, resources or random events;
new cards aren't rewarded, but instead you need to purchase or find recipes for them (and then spend a resource called "ash" to craft them);
spiresque relics hunt gives room to collecting resources that can be spent to purchase upgrades; and many others.
Enemies' variety is decent, and boss fights are interesting. (Anti)heroes feel unique, each offering a distinct play style. Finally, there is a cool little backstory that cements all that together. The art style is kinda "love it or hate it", but I find it very fitting to the setting.
On a negative side, the game does feel unpolished, and there are occasional bugs. To sum up, there are better roguelike deckbuilders on the market, but this game's flaws are balanced by the fun unconventional ideas it offers. A confident recommendation to the fans of the genre and a careful recommendation to casual gamers.