Cardaire

All the nostalgia of Duelist Kingdom with a fun collectible card game. There's something really charming about the game that makes me want to keep playing.

Very fun, short little indie game. Makes me remember why I liked playing TCGs. Unlike said TCGs, which remind me why I don't anymore.

game good

It's not bad. The AI needs work to make it more of a challenge. I had fun though, it's nice seeing more single player card games coming out.

For anyone growing up with story-driven, single-player videogame adaptations of TCGs (or original card games) - such as Digimon Digital Card Battle, Pokemon TCG for the Gameboy, or dozens of Yugioh titles - this is a really well put-together inclusion to a (fairly niche/dead) genre for a bargain price. The story is simple, but serviceable, with the occasionally surprisingly insightful or entertaining comment or joke. The music is, surprisingly, quite good (the first boss music is particularly good, and I appreciate the added instrumentation layer when it moves from the conversation into the battle itself). The card pool allows for some diversity of strategies, and the pacing of giving new cards that slowly unfold new synergies and options is well-implemented and enjoyable. For certain, this game deserves a bit more attention than what it's gotten, if only for how rare it is to see a card game in this style nowadays. The [i]weaknesses[/i] of the game are almost entirely down to the length and mechanical complexity. I finished the game in as little as 4 hours, including collecting one copy of every card (except for the few 'secret rare' cards that you have to grind for). Shockingly, there's no post-game content whatsoever (yet), even though it seems to be hinted at. And the opponents of the game are so easy (in part due to relatively poor AI) that there really is no point in grinding or finding these secret rares - there's nothing like the Digimon Digital Card Battle post-game with the opponents playing special hyper-powered cards against you. There's only 118 or so reasonably acquirable cards, which feels a fairly small amount, with maybe only about 7 or so real archetypes viable: I'd categorise them (using Magic the Gathering terminology) as something like "Go-Wide," "Voltron," "Aggro," "Burn," "Control," "Dredge" and a special named/tribal archetype. Further, there's no ability to save and load decks, which somewhat discourages you from switching away from whichever deck you've tended towards when it's already beating all of the opponents anyway. Finally, the animations/gameplay feel fairly slow in-battle; I feel spoiled by animation/battle speed settings in most roguelite deckbuilders (or speed-up buttons on emulated older card games). And yet, despite two paragraphs of me pointing out the weakest elements of the game... I still need to leave with stating unequivocably that this was a wonderful trip down memory lane for me, a satisfying four hours, a rare type of video game, and it's a game I deeply hope receives more content or a much larger and more ambitious sequel.

Quick and easy to learn card gameplay. The game lasts for about 10 hours and respects your time. The humor is good and not too much in your face. All in all I loved it and I will buy the sequel for sure! Only critique I have is that you can only have one deck. You can replace the cards in the deck, but you cannot save various deck strategies in different deck slots. If you want to switch back to an old deck, you have to rebuild it from scratch.

To short. Not worth the 10$ i spent, because i'm not getting that much out of it. Wish i knew sooner, like before 2 hours in so i could have gotten my money back. Felt more like a paid for long demo, than a full game at this point.