Gordian Quest

This game is a true delight for Roguelite and Deckbuilder fans - it is highly addicitive and fully absorbed me for lots of hours. I don't understand why this game only has a fraction of the reviews that Slay the Spire has because for me this one is superior in nearly every way. Some games simply have the favour of the crowd despite having more flaws than the lesser known games of the respective genre. Gordian Quest comes with a campaign and a roguelite-mode that you can choose from - I played through the campaign from start to finish which took me around 45 hours. I can see myself playing the roguelite mode some time in the future. But the campaign was already pretty great in and of itself. It also came with several elements of chance / luck (if you like that aspect about Roguelites): you stumble upon several events during your journey through the 4 acts - a lot of them are random, and both your decision and the subsequent roll of the dice will define the outcome. Enemy groups respawn after the passage of time and the appearance of elite enemies can either be your demise or the stepping stones to greater wealth and glory. Getting fitting cards for your playstyle is also influenced by luck, although you can reroll your card draws to a certain degree (the rerolls aren't free and unlimited of course)...and then there's also the possibility of finding legendary items that supplement your skillset. But mind you - the decision between wearing legendary equipment without connected sockets to modify your skills and normal magic equipment with linked sockets that can improve your skills in several interesting ways (think of Path of Exile - if you loved to experiment with the sockets in PoE you will also love it here) can be a difficult (although fun) one... Gordian Quest is a true labour of love - it has so many characters that all come with their large and diverse decks. And it doesn't end there - a lot of Deckbuilder games only offer the possibility to experiment with the cards themselves and with artifacts, but this game has all of that plus the possibility to equip every character in the team with armor, weapons and accessories. And what a broad choice of items there is! Being an ex-Diablo player I was so happy to have all these opportunities to equip my characters in synergy with their builds. With all these gameplay elements (cards, equipment and expandable skilltrees) you never run out of motivations to keep on playing Gordian Quest. There's this "just one more battle" feeling that will glue your attention to the game...always on the hunt for better loot and better card combinations...and the battles are really exciting, there is a large variety of enemies both minions and bosses and all of them come with their own set of attacks that you can study when you hover over the enemy with your mouse pointer. Because of that you can make better preparations for their incoming attack patterns. Position also matters a lot, especially since there can be obstacles like poison puddles, cactuses and barricades on the field that spice up the battles for player and enemy alike. When you are not in a battle, you can visit merchants in the townsquare and manage character-specific acitivities during camping scenes (which are limited by the amount of camping supplies that you have with you). I loved the shopping possibilites and the camping system in this game... ...there's actually only one thing that I would have changed: I don't like the fact too much that you can see every card that a character can get during their card draws...it would have been funnier if that was a surprise but I guess some people will prefer it this way because it offers the possibility to plan your character build in advance... As you can see I can highly recommend this game and I wouldn't hesitate to play another game from this developer since they are clearly very skilled at what they are doing :)