Decktamer [Review]

Overview:

Combat involves 3 on 3 fights in each lane. Turn order is determined by speed (green number). If speed is tied, both moves take place even if a creature dies. Most fights involve at least 3-4 creatures and all can be tamed as long as you have food. Combat ends when all creatures are defeated or tamed or after you lose all your creatures.

If enemy is at 1 or low health and you have the preferred food, you have a higher chance to tame it. A percent will appear for chance to capture based on what food you intend to use. The key to the game is taming creatures to use for later battles and even sacrificing them to capture the strongest creatures.

After completing a battle, you are offered rewards such as food and items. There are 2 choices of creatures and rewards, so player needs to plan ahead. Complete 8 battles to reach the boss and your team is fully healed fully before the boss. Bosses have multiple phases so player needs to be prepared for that aspect as well.

Pros:

- The taming aspect is interesting with 3 different types of food- meat, fish, and fruit. Most creatures prefer only 1 food and will have decreased taming chance if you use a non-preferred food.

- The hand drawn artwork  with shiny effects. During battle phase, it shows a detailed image of the creature.

- For players that want a strategic challenge, this game rewards players that are able to make the best use of their resources- creatures, syringes, and items.

- Multiple Rogue-like modes that add modifiers to change the gameplay such as Endless and Boss rush.

Cons:

- Progression takes too much effort to unlock 1 new creature making the game feel grindy. It takes 2-3 full runs to unlock 1 creature after reaching level 5.

- If you are not able to tame creatures for syringe transfer or strategy to cheese the boss, your chances of winning on the higher difficulties is near 0.

- After 2-3 fights, the enemies get much stronger and the difficulty spike is frustrating. If you don't play your turns optimally or make 1-2 mistakes, you are out of creatures by the time you fight the boss and have to restart.

Suggestions:

- Add abilities or moves that disable heal moves for a turn. Healing creatures are too strong and require more resources to tame them.

- Add a shop before the boss to allow player to trade food/items for other items. After eight battles, you are left with several food items that can only be used to heal 2, which is not much compared to the health of enemies.

Conclusion:

Balance is the main issue of the game and is extremely grindy to unlock better creatures. If you can overlook the frustration with the difficulty, the game offers an interesting twist on the monster catching formula.

Bosses are unbalanced and the player has to develop a cheese strategy to win, resulting in multiple restart attempts. If you enjoy the difficulty from souls-like games and strategic elements from card games, check out the game or play the demo.

Decktamer is available now on Steam.

Overall Score: 7/10