Deck of Ashes is a deck-building card battle adventure game developed by AYGames and published by Buka Entertainment and WhisperGames.
The story follows the Outcasts, a group of rebels that were wronged and hated by society. In retaliation, they sought to kill the rich and the poor. On their journey full of corruption and greed, they learned of the Ash Box — an artifact that can grant unmatched power. However, driven by madness and greed, the Outcasts fought one another in hopes to gain the Ash Box for themselves. In the end, the artifact shattered to pieces and the Ash Curse fell upon the world, cursing the world and the Outcasts themselves. Now, in order to rid their sufferings, each of the Outcasts must journey with the Ash Master and his crew, battling monsters along the way, to defeat Lady Death — the owner of the Ash Box.
I actually really enjoyed playing Deck of Ashes. I’m usually not a very big fan of card games but I like this one. There are a few modes you can play through: tutorial, campaign, epilogue, and Badlands. You can even toggle the difficulty: wanderer (easy), adventurer (medium), and martyr (hard). The tutorial follows Lucia, the Ash Master, and the rest of his crew so you can only play as Lucia. But in the rest of the modes, you can play as either Lucia, Sly, Buck, or Magnus. I like that you can play as all 4 of them. Each of their stories is unique so it felt like I was experiencing a whole new adventure as I switched characters and played their route. You get a whole new deck of cards for each character (as they all have different powers).
Lucia is a Pyromancer so her cards surround fire. Sly blends into the shadows granting him speed. Buck has lots of strength and Charon — an adorable and strong companion. Magnus applies curses and can summon phantoms as well as control minds. Out of all of them, I like Magnus the most. He was originally the weakest among the Outcasts but I think the Curse gave him a lot of power because he’s definitely strong. I liked being able to summon a phantom to fight along with me because of his ability to make the enemy do damage to themselves.
Each character has their own story cutscenes and they’re all fully voiced! I found the story very interesting and it’s one of the things that made me really intrigued while playing. You essentially follow antiheroes on their redemption journey, which, to me, is a fresh perspective.
Gameplay-wise, Deck of Ashes is relatively simple but there’s a lot that you can do. As you travel you can mine for resources, open chests, go to dungeons, and fight beasts. The main objective is to strengthen your character as much as possible by gathering resources (herbs, relics, ores, keys, ash), crafting the best cards, and upgrading your character before the Ruler finds you aka the big boss fight happens. I don’t believe there’s a limit to how many cards you can have in your deck. It’s just you might not have enough materials to craft the cards since many card recipes need at least 20 ash to craft (which you can get from defeating monsters).
Every time you use a card, it gets thrown into your discard pile making it unplayable in the battle until you use some of your health to make them playable again. After each battle, you have about 7 rest points that you can use to brings cards from the discard pile to your deck (the playable cards in the next battle), increase your health, or craft recipes.
The further you get from camp, the better the resources but the more dangerous it gets as at camp you can spend coins to heal, purchase items, craft recipes, and make all your cards playable again.
I would rate Deck of Ashes a 9.5/10. The game is really well made. The story is really interesting, the art is amazing, and the voice acting is top-notch. I think it’s cool that you can experience the journey of each of the main characters and figure things out as you play multiple routes. The developers definitely played a lot of attention to small details which I appreciate. For example, when you use items/consumables, there are sound effects for each of the items as you pick them up and use them. I thought that was really neat. The screen actually shakes when the Ruler makes some paths inaccessible which was cool to see. I also noticed you can earn training cards too which is a nice touch.
Along the way, I found some bugs. Sometimes the descriptions of some of the cards disappear which confused me since I relied on the descriptions to know which cards to play. It only appears once in a while and then goes away after you finish the battle and move around.
I wish you could cancel ending your turn or using a card that makes you discard another card. Sometimes I accidentally click on the card and then I’m forced to discard a good card that I didn’t want to throw away or I accidentally end my turn too quickly. Overall, I enjoyed Deck of Ashes .
Check Out the Deck of Ashes Trailer:
Deck of Ashes is available for PC via Steam. For more details, please visit the official website, join the game Discord channel and follow the game on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
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Steam Review
I'm a sophomore studying Computer Science at the University of Michigan. I'm really interested in how technology can impact lives through game development. One of the things that I really like about gaming is that, not only is it fun and relaxing, but there are so many ideas you can incorporate into games and their storylines such as meaningful lessons/messages.
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