This is a very serious review, for a very serious game.
Rogue Light Deck Builder is actually quite fun. It's easy to pick up, and is honestly somewhat easy to master. At first, your earnings will be pretty pitiful, and your hammer movement will resemble that of someone that just finished drinking about 5 shots of the traditional Korean poo wine "Ttongsul", and struggling not to throw up.
At first, your movement controls will be a bit frustrating, and you'll be hitting your hand more than you hit perfects. But as you continue playing, you'll slowly start to better understand exactly how the hand movement works in this game, and that hitting your nails "perfect" will net you more cash than hitting them "okay". Which will lead to you hitting your hand more since you will be trying to hit those perfects, and missing.
Once you finish a deck, you'll return back inside with the cash you've earned, and can buy upgrades to help improve your workflow and make deck building much more easier, and profitable. Each upgrade focuses on improving a different aspect of your gameplay.
The hand upgrade improves your hammering control.
The hammer upgrade increases your hammering power.
The nails upgrade nets you more cash per nail, and will increase your chances of getting more unusual nails to hammer into your planks.
The plank upgrade rewards your "perfect nail streak" with more cash, and gives you a higher chance of spawning "cash planks".
There are other upgrades and mechanics in this game, but if I'm going to be honest, I find them to be quite useless, which is what I'm going to use to talk about the small gripes that I have with this game.
The bug upgrade would've been more useful if you were given the option to freely swing your hammer on the planks. You're only allowed to swing the hammer when you start hammering in your nails, making it where you have to wait for the bugs to come to the side of the board that you're working on, and pray that your hand isn't covering up where the bug is travelling. It gets worse when you get given a long plank and a bug appears, making you wait for it to come over, or locking you out of that side since you finished working on it.
The "light" upgrade is also kind of useless, since whenever the lights go out, you still have great visibility in the dark, and are still told where to nail thanks to the indicators on every plank. If the world was made more dark, and the indicators were taken away when the lights go out, then I'd say the lights upgrade is something worth investing into. For now though, it's just kind of a useless purchase, and you should be putting your money into different upgrades.
The "stocks" upgrade also has the feeling of being kind of useless, with it not nearly getting you as much as say max nails and planks with a perfect streak would. Instead of stocks, I would say to replace the "stocks" upgrade with a "Chronograph" instead, which would reward you with more cash depending on how fast you finished a deck instead of giving you a fixed amount of cash every time a deck is finished.
The nail variety is also something I'd like to comment about. Nails like the bomb nail, the glass nail, the alien nail, the clover nail, and the skull/goblin nail are all actually quite nice, and encourage you to pay attention to what you're nailing, and disrupt your hammering flow. My only complaint with it is that human nail seems like a copy and paste of the glass nail, and could be reworked to deduct your cash if you hit it too hard (pay for injuries or sumthing, it's human, it needs healthcare).
Overall, even with the slight problems I have with this game, it is still very enjoyable, and I can see myself putting more hours into it. Rogue Light Deck Builder is very much so worth the money, and I would definitely recommend it to everyone if they want to have a low-stress, enjoyable, hammer smashing good time.
8/10
Also, it would be pretty baller if the key was unlocked as a hammer after unlocking all achievements. Plz.
