Deck of Souls

I've spent enough time with turn-based card games to clock a gimmick pitch immediately, and Deck of Souls had me defensive from the start. Souls-like plus deckbuilder is a concept that sounds like a bullet-point marketing exercise. What pulled me back after the first rough run is that Bigboot Studios - reportedly a one-person operation - actually commits to the hybrid rather than grafting a souls aesthetic on top of a Slay the Spire clone and calling it done. The stamina-based card economy is the mechanical heart of everything here. Unlike most deckbuilders where action points fully reset between turns, your stamina bar carries over in a depleted state, which means the back half of longer fights becomes a careful triage of what you can actually afford to play. Roll cards, which let you dodge incoming attacks, are not just a flavour nod to the souls genre - they are a genuine resource you will wish you had more of. Enemies act simultaneously, so prioritising targets matters, and the rule that limits you to one card per enemy per round forces uncomfortable choices when the screen gets crowded. The weight system on equipment is a clean design touch: load yourself down with heavy gear and you draw fewer cards per turn, a mechanical consequence that actually communicates something about how combat momentum shifts. Three classes at launch cover the main archetypes. The Divine Knight is the straightforward damage-and-block option for players who want to learn the stamina loop before adding complexity. Holy Lich leans on spellcasting and requires more precise sequencing. Saint Talon's poison and stealth toolkit rewards aggressive synergy hunting and can feel dominant once a run clicks into place. Classes each hold their own card pool plus access to class-neutral cards, so cross-class mixing is where the real decision depth lives. On top of the card layer sits an inventory system with weapons, armour, and accessories that can be upgraded at a blacksmith or imbued with boss souls to add passive effects. The moral decision system around bosses - execute them for a soul resource gain, or spare them to potentially recruit them as allies - adds a light but meaningful choice axis to major encounters. The warts are real and worth naming. Starting deck randomisation means some runs begin in a genuinely worse position than others, and the unlock curve has attracted criticism for feeling like mandatory early losses rather than rewarding progression. Stamina drain in the late stages of fights can produce a slog where you are watching turns tick by with no cards you can afford to use. Early access previews noted rough pacing and boss damage spikes that border on punishing before your card pool deepens. The full 1.0 release, which shipped December 2024 after a six-month early access period, carries an 84 percent positive rating across 153 Steam reviews - not a cult phenomenon, but a clear signal that the post-launch patch work landed with the player base. For the strategy-minded: this is not a deep-sim with a hundred variables to track, but it is a focused, mechanically honest deckbuilder that respects the genre it borrows from. If you have never touched a roguelite deckbuilder, the structure is approachable enough that a few failed runs will teach you the language. If you are a genre veteran, come for the stamina-carry system and boss-soul crafting, and manage expectations around content volume relative to the price tier.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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