Hadean Tactics
X
Forgot password? Recovery Link
New to site? Create an Account
Already have an account? Login
Back to Login
Join our Discord
About the GameHadean Tactics is a roguelike deckbuilding game fused with autobattler elements to create a unique strategy experience. Use your cards to influence the actions of your units and help your Hero defeat the Six Wings of Hell.
With procedurally generated paths, an assortment of game changing relics, unique units, and a innovative battle system that combines the control of deckbuilding with semi real-time combat, no run of Hadean Tactics is ever the same.
- Recruit souls trapped in the underworld to automatically battle for you, and influence their actions with the cards you find during your run. Combine your cards and relics with their skills and alliances to guide them to victory.
- Explore a new map on each run. Discover the different circles of the realm, and the different bosses that rule it. Experience unique events both outside and during combat.
- Create and play with your own custom Heroes and decks. Manage their stats, combine any skill and alliance, develop and perfect your own synergies and strategies.
Hadean Tactics Early Access currently has:
- 3 main Heroes, with their own unique decks.
- 6 variants for the Heroes, changing their playstyle.
- 250+ cards to discover.
- 34 different units to recruit and build your party with.
- Endless customization possibilities with custom Hero and custom Deck.
- 40+ monsters to defeat.
- 7 bosses (plus a secret one).
- 20 Corruption (difficulty) levels.
- 70+ items.
- 45+ different alliances to mix and match.
- 140+ skills.
- 40+ random events to encounter.
Steam User 60
Flawed gem in need of rebalancing, but with a ton of potential and very high production quality.
Note: After playing the game more, I modified my review to recommended and completely rewrote it.
The pros:
+ The concept of rougelite auto battler with manual interactivity and 4-dimensional synergies (alliances, skills, cards, items) is very strong.
+ There are already a ton of possible synergies in the game, tons of units, alliances, skills, cards, and items.
+ Almost all the 2D and 3D visual elements (cards, units, environments, splash screens, animations) are top-quality.
+ The UI/UX is well thought through and works seamlessly, including A+ camera controls and keyboard shortcuts.
+ The game so far has run without any bugs or performance issues for me (until I overwhelmed it with an infinitely sustained recursive combo, but that's on me).
+ The increasing difficulty levels (Corruption) provide a lot of replayability.
The cons are mainly in 3 big categories:
- The game is too heavily focused on randomness.
- The base heroes have a way too enormous amount of possible cards to give you any chance to be able to pick anything that would fit into a build you want to build.
- Units are also very random, items even more so with even less control.
- Did you want to create a trap-build? Too bad, it's entirely possible you're not going to get any of the build-defining units, cards, or items.
- The custom builds are better since you preselect the available cards to later choose from, but the unit/item issues are the same, and you still have a big chance of still not getting any of the core cards for your build.
- The synergies are completely imbalanced.
- The first issue is that it's very hard not to go with a shield-based enchanter, that's the equivalent of the stealth-archer of Skyrim here. Even if you are deliberately trying to avoid it, you are given so many units and so strong items supporting this build, that you very easily end up with another enchanter.
- There are so many builds that lack the gradual build-up enchanters have. There are no 0-cost traps in the game, there are no trap (or ailment) starting items, so it's a huge gamble if you will survive the battles long enough to be able to start building your build, while other builds can already use their strength from the start.
- Lack of control: These usually tie into the previous ones.
- You can't get rid of your useless cards, so if you have a bad first hand, you might be already dead.
- You can't get rid of items, so if one of them completely ruined your build, that was it.
- You can't really choose a build, especially with base heroes, just go with what you get, which will be quite a frustrating experience on higher corruptions, when well-built enemies wipe the floor with you while you're holding only garbage cards with garbage units because that's what you got.
- This also makes you feel that whenever you win, that wasn't your achievement, since you know it was mostly luck.
- Lack of variety: this one is funny because at first, you feel like there are a ton of options (hence the pro item for the same thing), but when you play for a while, it feels like the same few enemies, units, cards, events, etc keep repeating. This is unavoidable as nothing can have infinite variety, but still, could be improved.
This being said, the game has great potential. It can already be good fun in its current shape, but be warned, you have to be okay with randomness and lack of control. I hope, in the future, it will be more of Hadean Tactics than Hadean Gamble, with more control and freedom given to the player, and the role of luck being downscaled just a bit. But only relatively minor tweaks are missing to achieve that, and I'm optimistic, so here's my optimistic Recommended review.
Steam User 36
Perfect case of doing early access just right.
Any bugs reported get fixed within hours (provided devs are not sleeping)
The best auto battler type game for living out that power fantasy. If you wanna see what it feels like to get that extra round after your ultimate combo is assembled, this is it.
Custom hero mode allows you to go completely off the rails, but you can also use the more balanced base heroes.
Steam User 24
Hadean Tactics is a roguelite which combines deckbuilder and autobattler mechanics, where the player must fight through an army of demons and monsters to escape from Hell.
Run structure
• At the start of each run, the player will choose one of three heroes, a warrior, a rogue, or a mage, each of which has access to their own unique cards. You can also earn in game currency to create a custom hero using cards and abilities of your choice.
• Each run is divided into circles (acts), where you’ll need to progress along randomly generated paths of nodes which will look familiar to players of Slay The Spire, or other similar roguelites.
• Fight against common or elite enemies to gain rewards such as gold, cards, potions and relics.
• Make choices during random events to receive various positive or negative effects.
• Hire new minions, or level up a minion in your party, at banner nodes. You’ll start with two basic Draugrs (the equivalent of Monster Train’s Train Stewards) which you’ll want to replace with stronger minions such as Minotaurs, Dragons, Wargs, Mouseketeers, etc. Each different type of minion has stats for health, damage, attack speed, attack range, and mana which is used to activate special abilities to damage enemies or buff allies.
• Chests will give you a new relic which provides passive bonuses.
• Visit shops to buy new minions, cards, relics, potions, or remove a card.
• Camps will let you upgrade a card or rest to heal the party.
• Each circle ends with a boss fight.
• At first each run contains three circles, but after you’ve killed all six bosses at least once with the same hero (across multiple runs), you’ll unlock the endgame which adds two more circles and the final boss.
• Successfully completing a run also unlocks corruption mode, which adds more negative modifiers at each level, similar to Slay The Spire’s ascension and Monster Train’s covenant.
• Difficulty seems quite well balanced, especially if you’re familiar with standard deckbuilder principles like keeping a small efficient deck, and picking cards, units and relics with similar abilities to synergise together.
Combat
• At the start of combat, your active party and several enemies will appear on a battlefield which is divided into a square grid.
• You can change your party’s position before the fight starts, and you can order minions to attack a specific enemy a couple of times during a fight, but they’ll mostly just automatically attack the nearest enemy.
• Combat is a mixture of real time and turn based. While units on the battlefield attack each other in real time, the action will pause every few seconds to start a new turn.
• On each turn you’ll draw a hand of cards from your deck, which cost energy to play. Cards can heal your minions, give them a shield, increase their damage or attack speed, give various debuffs to enemies, damage enemies directly, or push a creature around the grid – which can be used to move one of your minions away from danger, or damage enemies by making them collide with each other.
• After killing a boss you can choose a special relic to either increase your party size, or let you play more cards by giving you more energy per turn, or faster turns.
• So far my favourite tactic involves the rogue’s decay cards, which deal damage similar to the silent’s poison in Slay The Spire. Its possible to stack up decay to simultaneously deal hundreds of damage per second to every enemy, and then I need minions with high health to just stay alive while decay does its thing. And if you can find the card which increases a minion’s strength equivalent to decay damage, they’ll be able to one shot any non-boss enemy. Its a tactic which feels completely overpowered ... until you see how much health the final boss has.
Technical
• I haven’t had any problems with bugs or crashes.
• A successful run should take 60 to 90 mins to complete, but there is replayability in trying to defeat higher corruption levels, weekly challenges, and unlocking achievements.
Recommendation
Hadean Tactics is a fun roguelite which should be enjoyed by fans of similar games such as Slay The Spire and Monster Train. There’s enough content to buy at full price (which is already cheap) or on a small sale.
Steam User 17
Fun Auto Battler mixed with Card Deck rpg, pretty fun gameplay and at a good price. Great for the steam deck and when you are on the go or in bed.
If you are looking for a game that is easy to learn and fun to play this is it right here. I was wanting a game like this after finishing BG3.
Honestly wish i would have heard about this game earlier while it was in Early Access, its alot of fun! I find myself playing it alot in short bursts, 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there, also good to play while you are doing something else or watching something that you are not to interested in :)
Steam User 28
"HELL" YEAH!
My first roguelite autobattler, Hadean Tactics, puts the player in charge of driving their own automation of death. It involves using decision-making to fight your way through a Slay the Spire map. From rags to riches and getting your diabolic conquest canonised while holding all the strings to it in your hands. At least that's how I felt throughout - in control. Typically, such independence seldom leads to success, usually, your party ends up six feet under. Or six thousand? Hell is already deep as it is and I'm not sure if one could go any lower than that. This is how everyone starts out, however, soon you'll see how player-friendly and aimed at delivering horse doses of fun this game actually is. For one, to facilitate the learning process, it doesn't hide anything from you. The UI is simply immaculate. You can, say, pull up information on any of your units even from upgrading or shopping menus. Sounds like a small thing, but I can't recall many games where menus were integrated like that. While I like the look of the UI, I can't say the same about the graphics. Alas, I don't think they sell the game's theme. Here go bunny bears, harpies, fairies... mouseketeers!? These assets belong to any generic fantasy game that could've taken place in Narnia, Neverland, or some bloody Equestria for all I care. Fear the notorious Whimsical Magic Forest, one of the circles of Hell!
But Hadean delivers by other means. Its main idea was to set you up with a fun system that lets you mix and match characters, alliances, cards, modes, and classes with unique abilities. Bearing that load, the game is far from feeling bulky. In fact, it's extremely fast-paced! Combat seldom lasts for more than a minute, and it's an excellent mix of turn-based with real-time. By default, a turn lasts 7 seconds after which you draw a new hand and replenish your energy. During these seconds, you're free to play cards from your current hand to buff, control, reposition, damage, etc. While heroes and units fight by themselves, generating mana to use their specials, ranging from giving everyone a shield to filling the air with fireballs or summoning pieces of cheese. You can pause the action at any moment to, say, cast a precisely-timed spell on a weakened enemy or stun someone mid-punch. As you might imagine, this can turn the tide. On the map out of combat, a barrage of choices doesn't stop. Energy, card draw, or a party member slot. Heal or upgrade, hire or promote, multiclass or not. Pick between units, cards, runes, and relics to attain a monster build or go out with a whimper, succumbing to careless mistakes. The chance to make those is as huge as the amount of options provided.
Albeit, no matter how it all culminates, your feats and failures are yours to own. The map is mostly predictable and there's little to no RNG involved when it comes to combat, just a small number of uncertain damage numbers or specific skills. Only the luck of the draw remains partially out of control. A lot of things can go wrong yet you're never stripped of agency entirely due to the sheer number of locations (15) you get to visit while advancing through each of the 2-4 chapters. There's always a solid chance to create the build you're looking for before reaching the final boss if the route is right. Sometimes Hadean is forgiving, sometimes you survive by the skin of your teeth. And when these things cease to matter at all, when you own every board you're given - this is how you know you've got a classic roguelite God Run on your hands. But even in your darkest hour, there's always hope. A chance to bump into something overpowered that would push you forward, and that gambling element got nailed as a saving grace rather than an annoyance. What dulls the sense of achievement is the difficulty level, a point of contention for some. Hadean isn't a tough challenge, at least before you get to the higher levels of meta, which could take a while. But I didn't find it boring somehow.
Maybe because I was high or maybe I failed to notice the problem behind all the screenshake and gigantic numbers flying out of my enemies in celebration of the punishment delivered? Maybe I got too immersed in filling the board with ethereal armies, engaged in binding, splashing, sacrificing, multiplying, and bumping enemies into each other for massive damage. With a variety of impactful relics and cards, builds in this game happily go out of hand - then beyond the boundaries of Heaven and Hell! And it's by design. So you could enjoy the meaty sounds of heavy hits, synchronously bursting with the colours of total overkill. Hadean Tactics wisely allows you to break it, makes you anticipate blowing its systems wide open. It gives you control, perhaps too much of it, which works for the duration. The game wouldn't last hundreds of hours unless you hunt for all unlocks, but it's able to capture one's attention for a decent amount of time. After playing it for that amount, I was still left with things to do. However, decided to hop off before it began to feel stale. I can recommend it with a clear conscience, it will brighten up your day. This game is a no-brainer, in my book, even if not always in a strictly positive sense. It's still anything but Hell or Hades, though. Pick your assets right or don't make claims, jeez.
My curator Big Bad Mutuh
Steam User 16
A fun combination of autobattler and slay the spire. It's standard autobattler fighting but every 6-7 seconds you will get a chance to play cards to affect the battle, these can be anything from summoning temporary units, buffing/debuffing units or even shoving units around the board and into each other. There is quite a good variety of builds and gameplay, and probably one of the more interesting things is that you can custom build your own hero with and of the alliances, skills or traits of other units in the game (granted you have to purchase these with gold you earn from playthroughs). Quite a fun game overall.
Steam User 16
Auto battler meets slay the spire with character customization. and RPG persistent elements. would recommend if you like games like that