School of Magic: Deck & Slash

Tbh, the game isn't even as bad as I expected. I still won't continue playing it because of the awful looking AI art. Bro, just hire an artist and the game would be like actually ok.

It's not bad, but I can't really recommend this for anywhere close to $20. Unfortunately the free prologue is a bit too generous and the paid version is barely any bigger. So you might be expecting more content but there's really not much to see yet. + The deckbuilding mechanics are unique and interesting, but it'd be nice to skip the annoying animations and just show static icons for whatever happened to the spells that turn. - In this sort of game you might hope for some emergent mechanics. You can modify your spells but in extremely limited ways, and not in ways that are terribly satisfying. Leveling up a spell rarely feels like anything decisive, you're constantly just inching up 3% increments - except when the game grants you a 100+% critical chance for the cost of the gold you'd earn in like one battle, as a reward for *beating the first level*. - So yeah, balance is dogsh. Early levels are a little tense but it's very easy to get your HP beyond anything enemies can touch, or have so many summons on the field that you don't need to do anything, or shoot 20 projectiles at a time. It doesn't feel fun because that "power spiral" feeling hardly feels earned. And when you have…

Nachdem ich nun den Early Access durchgespielt habe, kann ich Folgendes über das Spiel sagen: Nicht alle Karten sind bisher ins Deutsche übersetzt. Das ist kein großes Problem, aber es wäre schön, wenn das noch nachgereicht wird. Exploit: Wenn man kurz bevor ein Kampf in einer der kleinen Arenen beginnt außerhalb der temporären Absperrung steht oder mit einer Fähigkeit dahinter geschubst wird (z.b. bei Fähigkeit Summons), spawnen zwar alle Gegner, sterben aber direkt danach – man gewinnt also den Kampf, ohne wirklich zu kämpfen. Ein möglicher Kompromiss wäre, die temporären Arena-Grenzen ganz wegzulassen, um mehr Bewegungsfreiheit zu bieten. Dafür könnte man ein Risiko-Element einbauen: Läuft man zu weit weg, spawnen zusätzliche Gegner. So müsste man abwägen – bleibe ich in der Arena und kämpfe normal oder entferne ich mich, um mehr Platz zu haben, riskiere aber, gegen mehr Gegner antreten zu müssen. Eine Zoom-Funktion (rein- und rauszoomen) wäre ebenfalls wünschenswert, um den Überblick besser zu behalten. Abgesehen davon ist das Spiel wirklich gelungen. Die Idee mit dem Kartensystem – dass Karten zufällig wegfallen, neue hinzukommen und bestehende mit etwas Glück aufgewertet …

School of Magic: Deck and Slash offers a fresh, engaging deck‑building system that rewards experimentation and clever card synergies — once you understand the tools, building powerful and surprising combos is deeply satisfying. My main issue is the opening: the game starts off quite harsh and the tutorial feels unforgiving. I had to repeat it several times, and those early losses felt discouraging rather than instructive. A gentler onboarding with clearer tooltips, guided scenarios, or an optional easy start would help new players learn deck construction and basic tactics before the difficulty ramps up. The core mechanics show a lot of promise, and I’d love to see expanded achievement systems and longer-term progression to encourage replay and experimentation. Overall, Deck and Slash is worth trying for fans of card‑based combat, but smoothing the early experience and adding more meta goals would make it much more approachable and replayable.

Very nice concept. The random cards and discovering new builds and combinations is a lot of fun. The early access version is still relatively short at this stage, but that's mainly because the difficulty level is a little too easy once you get a run with a good card combination. I think it wouldn't hurt to fail more often (I reset my game once when I understood the gameplay and then played through both levels without dying). I had some minor performance issues when I had a build with several summons, which was probably due to their pathfinding? I would recommend a fix OR a limitation of max summons. In general, I would like to see more content and some rebalancing for the Early Access version. Otherwise, it's a really excellent foundation. I had a lot of fun playing through it and will definitely be back for more.

I think its really awesome how this big of an epic game could be done from a solo dev.