Game Reviews

Card Crawl

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iOS
| Card Crawl
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Card Crawl
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iOS
| Card Crawl

Card Crawl is an interesting single player boardgame that mixes aspects from a bunch of different genres to create something that's pretty entertaining.

It might not have the depth of some of the other boardgames on the App Store, but it's got a neat snap to it that means it feels better suited to mobile play.

The only problem is that there's not a huge amount to do here, and once you've beaten the game of monster Patience a few times there's a chance that you won't come back for more.

Card battler

The game is all about cards. An ogre creature sits across from you at a tavern table with a deck of 54 cards that represent your adventure. You need to get rid of them all without dying.

There are only ever four cards in play at once. Some of them are monsters, some of them are items of equipment you can use to fight, defend, or heal, and some of them are bags of cash that count towards your score.

Once you've cleared three of the cards, three more are dealt out at random to you. You've got three slots where you can equip items along the bottom of the screen - two hands and one bag.

You drag cards down to your slots to use them. Potions in your hands are used instantly, and items in your bag can't be accessed until you switch them to your equipment slots. When you drag a monster down it attacks.

Cash gets pocketed, but you can get rid of items by dragging them to the shop. You'll get some cash for selling equipment, but coins are considered a gift and don't count towards your score.

The monster cards that are dealt have a numerical value attached to them, which represents how much damage they'll do to you. You can cut this number down with swords, or absorb some of it with shields.

Dungeon crawler

There are extra layers of depth as well, with special cards that confer different abilities, and a surprising amount of strategy to to sucked from the simple gameplay.

Some might find their interest waning after they've won a few rounds, but there's a surprising compulsion here, generated by the random nature of the deck of cards, that could well get its claws into you.

Card Crawl

A brilliant distillation of the dungeon crawler, Card Crawl is well worth a look
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.