Five Card Quest - If I read your cards right, you're onto a winner

That's because it is a bit different. This is Five Card Quest from Rocket Cat Games, a turn-based, card playing strategy roguelike.

That's the one. But this is a pretty big departure from the pixel-look and action of those games. It's tough, it's measured, and it's an awful lot of fun.

I don't know what that means. The game is a dungeon crawler of sorts. You top to wander round a tile based map, revealing new areas as you go. Some of these rooms are empty. Others are full of ghouls and monsters that you need to defeat.

That's where the five cards come in. Your team's attacks are represented by a deck at the bottom of the screen. There are only five revealed at one time, and you need to use them to whomp, shoot, and generally harm the denizens of the underworld.

Yup. And it is. The limitations of your deck are where the strategy comes from. Your choices are effectively throttled each turn, so you need to make sure that you're getting the most out of the cards you have been dealt.

They do, but the five you get to play with are taken from all of their decks. So while one of your characters might have a strong set of defensive cards out, you might find yourself lacking a useful offensive option. Figuring out the best course of action in situations like that is a large part of the game.

It's actually lane-based. The screen is split into three tracks, and you have various moves that swap your characters around, letting them take on different monsters. Again, it's the tightness of the playing field that the strategy stems from.

Oh it is. In the best possible way. Often battles are desperate scrambles to save that last sliver of your health bar. The cards aren't just attacks here, they shuffle you around, interrupt your foe's swipes, and in some cases make you disappear from play altogether.

This is getting recommended. There's such a wealth of options here, and they all stem from the constrictions the game puts on you. You might only have three fighters on your team, but winning a battle can often feel like you've been through a huge campaign. And that's something pretty special.