Hunt the Pale Gods

First of all, if you like eldritch things and you like card games, this is it for you. More in depth... first and foremost, the art is amazing. The cards, the arenas, most of the enemies, it's genuinely stellar start to finish. The five card colors/themes/decks are all distinct from each other visually, artistically, and in terms of gameplay styles, but have enough overlap to be worth combining. For example, you might use Umbral cards to keep moving around and get lots of light hits in, alongside Progeny to keep rapidly drawing and shifting through cards, and a touch of Primordial to turn those light hits into sledgehammers. Speaking of moving around, that to me is the piece of this game that distinguishes it from all others. It takes place on a grid, and the game is as much about moving around to get in range and back out of your enemy's range as it is about high damage card combos. The only negatives to me are that there aren't all that many distinct enemies and, common to most games of this genre, a brief stint of bad luck with draws can doom even the best run. So... fairly small and commonplace things, one of which can be nullified in due time if the dev comes up with new enemy ideas. They've already done so once, I have high hopes they eventually will be able to do so again. Edit: I have since found out from the dev's Discord server that he intends to add an entirely new color of cards, which presumably will include new enemies, bosses, and likely one to two new playable characters. So there's that already in the works.

If you have 8 billion hours of Slay the Spire under your belt and want something the same but different, Hunt just might be for you.

Quite hard because you can't upgrade cards directly. Can be very dependent on luck on which cards you draw, and you have to find synergies. Sometimes harsh as you can't move, but it's a hidden gem of a roguelike deckbuilder

Great deckbuilder with a classic Cthulhu theme! The originality is the grid-based movement. The arena is small and it feels like you're trapped with the monster, which fits well with the atmosphere. A typical full run loop is multiple tense hours long. It's pretty tiring to go to the end on ascension 14 when any mistake can cost you half your max life, but success is all the more rewarding. Lots of cards, lots of artifacts, lots of tough decisions to make, the roguelike feel is here :)

Great game. So far the creatures don't seem to be Lovecraftian for some reason. But the cards and artifacts are very unique, and I can see myself playing with for a long time. Unique mechanics and gameplay, that you won't find in other deckbuilders.

This is one of the best deckbuilders I have seen in a while and it's highly criminal that not many people know about it

Hunt the Pale Gods has a wide variety of card types and potential combos and decks you can build. The developers did a great job balancing it so that you can try a different strategy each run. The game play loop is satisfying, but where I think the game is lacking is in story/motivation. I had already beaten the main boss several times before I unlocked a second character, and would have to play many more runs before unlocking the next. For some people that might be enjoyable, but for me there wasn't enough change between runs or advancement of any sort of story line to keep me going. Overall worth the purchase and runs well on steam deck if you use the touch pad.