A roguelike deck builder with plenty of customization, cute character designs, and excellent pixel art? Sounds like my kind of game, but after more hours than I like to admit, Dungeon Drafters is one thing first and foremost: a hardcore experience for masochist.

Pros:
+ excellent pixel art and character designs
+ deck building offers plenty of customization
+ changing between playstyles is quick and easy
+ checkered world design is intuitive and quick to understand
+ five different biomes with diverse challenges are available from the start
+ town quests invite and reward experimentation
+ curio system offers even more approaches to situations
+ final dungon can be tackled at any moment
+ bosses are diverse and smartly designed
+ side-quests and minigames are fun

Cons:
- difficulty curve is extremely steep
- initial pick of starter deck is extremely important
- town portal is not available from the beginning
- enemies and hostile gizmos are too plentiful and powerful
- most curios are useless or even increase the difficulty
- bonus room unlocks are important but impossible for most builds
- final area and boss are frustratingly difficulty
- jazzy soundtrack is unique but repeats too quickly
- plenty of glitches, UI, and game logic issues
- rough technical performance on Switch

Playtime: Over 40 hours, with most curios, cards, and quests unlocked. Regular ending acquired.

Magic Moment: Unlocking a late-stage card that allows to kill many enemies in one turn, only to realize it works not as intended. Finally beating the final boss of countless of hours, only to realize there is a hidden ending that I can just look up.

Verdict:
Dungeon Drafters offers a unique mix of 16-bit visuals, deck building and roguelike elements, but its extremely high difficulty curve and lack of hand holding makes it a real challenge that delights and frustrates in equal measure. Facing a dozen enemies in small rooms and and having to check the attack patterns and sequence of action on each enemy becomes cumbersome and time consuming quickly, and elements intended to allow for greater customization like curios or health increase items don't scale quickly enough with the ever-increasing challenges. A round of fishing or playing a logic minigame helps take the steam off, sure, but the next death is always around the corner.

In short, this is a hardcore experience intended for players willing to deeply engage with its systems. Everyone else will be killed by the now-obligatory tutorial boss, only to realize that they are in for a world of cruel randomization, icy floors, and pain.

Check it out if you like the look, but don't say I didn't warn you.

This is clearly a game that has a lot of depth to it. There are five different deck archetypes with substantially different play patterns, which can be either mixed and matched or played on their own to create a stunning diversity of builds. For better or for worse, I mostly didn't engage with those builds. I just beelined to the most broken thing I could find and smashed my way through the rest of the game.

To be clear, this isn't a complaint. I love a game that gives the player the tools to break it in half, and my experience even once I'd found a few infinite combos was far from rote. Between extra enemy health bars, death effects, and combo-disrupting status ailments there was still plenty of strategizing to do on my way to killing the final boss in a single turn. And the fact that I was able to strategize, overcome those obstacles, and win so thoroughly even so is a mark of quality.

I do still think this game does put a bit too much of a thumb on the scale towards the power of its high-end cards in story mode. Every color has at least a card or two (rare and demanding though they may be) that completely cracks open the economy, and since you carry a single collection through the entire game this means that most players will eventually have a deck of tremendous power even if it's not quite as broken as mine. In a way, the card set seems more tuned towards a run-based game than a collection-based game.

It's possible that this actually does address that issue. There's a run-based mode that I never got around to trying, and it may be that that's where the game balance most thoroughly shines. But if that's the case, why hide it away?

NOTE: only played the demo

another fun contribution to the genre, with just enough to make it stand out. the artstyle is nice, and i think the idea of having established characters is great, and i love the idea of character-themed decks.

unfortunately, something about it just didn't click with me. i think it was the feeling of drawing and using cards not satisfying me enough; i frequently found myself wishing i could do more with discards and draws. positioning also felt more like a chore than additional tactical depth.

maybe you see those features in the full game, but the demo didn't make me want to find out.

Anfangs war ich eher abgeneigt, weil die Karten selbst kaum aufeinander aufbauen. Stärkere Karten machen schwächere Karten grundsätzlich obsolet.
Aber das sorgt dafür, dass man Stück für Stück ein besseres Deck zusammenschustert, bis man endlich die Dungeons abräumen kann.

Am Ende braucht man jedoch starkes Glück, da bestimmte Situationen bestimme Moves voraussetzt.
3 Fernkampfgegner und du hast nur Nahkampfkarten gezogen? Pech gehabt, du bist leider sofort tot.

Eingeengt und du kannst du nur schießen? Pech, mal wieder tot.
Dazu ist die Hubworld MMO-RPG Freewaremäßig. Niemand sagt etwas sinnvolles, von 5 Leuten bekommt man Quests, also rennt man die ab und lässt den Rest stehen. Hätte man sich auch schenken können.

Great artwork and music.
I'd rather it was a normal rogue-like without persistent deck building. Because of that there is a giant powercreep and you have to grind booster packs.
Enemy design sucks though, gl spending 10 minutes in one room becuase of infinite reinforcement with revivals and self-destructs.

UPD: it gets better after a few runs, give it a chance