Archon Soul

Very fun and engaging card game, reminds me of Spellrogue (one of the reasons I decided to try this). However, there are many unique features in this game that set it apart. Dice rolling is my favourite RNG mechanic and you can easily manipulate any dice value to be beneficial to you. It takes some time to get used to characters and spell because they are not straight forward like in most games. Graphics style is pleasant and tooltips are informative.

Unexpected depth, the combination of cards and dice is very versatile. Love the differences between characters.

First 5h were fun so far :)

Game is fun, effectively. Lots of options, fun build paths, etc. Would love to see more "bridge" spells to make a few of the different builds for each character more interconnected, but fun game with lots of trade-offs every encounter. Seems like a really good foundation to build upon for a more fleshed out game.

Annoying

To be clear, I played very few games in the tactical roguelike (card/dice) category (slay the spire and monster train) and I have no idea how archon soul compares to the rest of the games in this category (and there are plenty of them). As an amateur of tactical games however, I found the challenge interesting (even at base difficulty). You can’t go through the run hoping you will naturally scale (the game offers an additional dice after each boss). The numbers on the enemies (hp and attack numbers) require a thought-out combination of spells and dice that can defeat the immediate threats and the later enemies (which hit for big numbers). I liked that finding these combinations was non-trivial, and that the game offers plenty of space for creativity and optimization. Now onto the non-tactical part. I have seen multiple videos of other similar games (card-type or dice-type roguelike) and to be honest I never found their overall presentation very pleasing : pixel art, very basic portraying of characters (low effort portraying), spells have very basic illustrations, etc. Their gameplay may be good but I’m still drawn towards good presentation (and good gameplay). Archon soul has a go…