Quetzal - Card Battle TCG

Amazing free card game! Inspired by Aztec culture, the art and atmosphere are beautiful and unique. The game offers a lot of variety with different game modes, so it never gets boring. Even though it's single-player only, there's a lot of depth and strategy involved. You can tell the developers put real care into the design. For a free game, the quality is seriously impressive. Highly recommended if you're into card games or want to try something different!

This is one of those games where I wish Steam didn't require clicking yes/no for recommend because I think it REALLY depends on just how into cards games you are. I'd only recommend it to some people but clicking no just feels wrong when I don't think it's bad. Anyways onto the review. Honestly the main reason I picked this game up was due to the focus on Aztec gods because I like when games focus on less popular pantheons. It's a fairly fast paced cars game where single player matches don't usually go any longer than 7 or so rounds. There's less space to play cards than other similar games such as Yugioh and you can only have one trap set up at a time which forces urgency and turn by turn mix ups. The mechanics are more simplistic for better and for worse than other games. For example, there won't e any 15 minute long turns because your opponent is fusion 50 billion cards that chain together, but at the same time the simplicity does result in slight repetitiveness since desirable decks tend to fit more basic archetypes. I played the story mode for about an hour which got a little stale eventually but there's definitely a lot of content to dig through if that's your sort of thing. …

So I think the game has some issues - very little is explained, the cards are quite small on the field so you have to memorise a lot, the keywords are not explained and the in-battle tool tips aren't great, but all that said, it's not a bad little TCG. For those from an MTG background: The gameplay is basically like this, you balance your life points (15 or more depending on your level), mana (+2 per turn capped at 10), and action points (+3 per turn, capped at 5) as resources. The battlefield allows you to play up to 3 creatures and 1 trap card (yugioh style) at once. The only other card type is spells - no non-creature permanents or modifiers as far as I've seen. Drawing cards, playing creature cards, and activating abilities cost action points - so far a flat rate of 1 AP per action, so you can play your heaviest creature on turn 1 if you draw it. Spells cost mana to cast, and trap cards seem to be free. Every creature has 2 activated abilities and one static/triggered ability. Attacking is a creature ability and attacks may be single or multiple, and be either melee or ranged which can trigger trap cards. Creatures can attack on the turn they enter, provided you have the actio…

Quetzal is a card game that immediately caught my attention because it builds its entire identity around Aztec mythology. I really liked seeing gods, creatures and magical rituals turned into cards because it gives the usual deckbuilding formula a different atmosphere. The colorful artwork also helps everything feel much more distinctive than a generic fantasy card battler. The main gameplay revolves around turn based duels where I build a deck from creatures, spells and counters. I have to manage my resources carefully while trying to put together combinations that can reduce my opponent's life points before they do the same to me. I enjoyed this because even simple turns can become interesting when I am deciding whether to spend resources now or save them for a stronger combination later. The deckbuilding is probably my favorite part. I like having the freedom to build around different approaches instead of being forced into one style of play. Upgrading cards also gives me a reason to keep experimenting, since a card that seemed average at first can become much more useful once I have improved it. The progression gives the collecting side of the game a nice sense of purpose. I…