One of the most common additions to the roguelike deckbuilder formula you see out there is overworld exploration, as opposed to branching path nodes in the style of stuff like Slay the Spire. Normally I dislike these. They offer the illusion of choice while often just serving as nothing more than a resource track to deal with.
Draft of Darkness, in trying to blend with survival horror, is probably the best attempt I've seen. Traversal itself does not cost anything, the idea is to conserve resources for fights. See, most of your cards cost consumables such as ammo or batteries to use at their full power, being subbed with weaker "conservation" moves if you won't or can't pay that cost. Thus rather than frantically looking for the way out you're offered choices in and out of fights as you pick your way through each stage.
The characters and recruitable allies offer a nice variety of different strategies, although their viability is equally variable (looking at you, crossbow lady). Honestly, this is what I primarily come to rougelike deckbuilders for, so DoD gets a big thumbs up here from me.
So why isn't my rating higher? While it nails the two big elements that would be needed to make this combo work, resource management and fun character variety, I think a lot of the underlying details could stand to be much tighter.
Proc gen maps means a lot of those potential exploration choices are going to be robbed from you by sheer luck. Maybe a bunch of enemies will stand in the path you need with no way around. Maybe you'll stumble into a couple hidden by the fog of war. And while most enemies remain stationary on the overworld a few do have limited movement, and it's impossible to tell which this applies to.
Probably the thing I enjoyed the least was the granular detail in damage and resistances. This is another thing developers love adding to their deckbuilders and I'm skeptical of its utility. This in combination with procedurally generated gear (urgh) meant I wasn't particularly excited to get stuck into the weeds of this game mechanically as much as I might have liked.
The overarching story unfortunately didn't grab me enough to keep up with continued runs. So overall a lot of interesting, unevenly executed ideas.
Draft of Darkness, in trying to blend with survival horror, is probably the best attempt I've seen. Traversal itself does not cost anything, the idea is to conserve resources for fights. See, most of your cards cost consumables such as ammo or batteries to use at their full power, being subbed with weaker "conservation" moves if you won't or can't pay that cost. Thus rather than frantically looking for the way out you're offered choices in and out of fights as you pick your way through each stage.
The characters and recruitable allies offer a nice variety of different strategies, although their viability is equally variable (looking at you, crossbow lady). Honestly, this is what I primarily come to rougelike deckbuilders for, so DoD gets a big thumbs up here from me.
So why isn't my rating higher? While it nails the two big elements that would be needed to make this combo work, resource management and fun character variety, I think a lot of the underlying details could stand to be much tighter.
Proc gen maps means a lot of those potential exploration choices are going to be robbed from you by sheer luck. Maybe a bunch of enemies will stand in the path you need with no way around. Maybe you'll stumble into a couple hidden by the fog of war. And while most enemies remain stationary on the overworld a few do have limited movement, and it's impossible to tell which this applies to.
Probably the thing I enjoyed the least was the granular detail in damage and resistances. This is another thing developers love adding to their deckbuilders and I'm skeptical of its utility. This in combination with procedurally generated gear (urgh) meant I wasn't particularly excited to get stuck into the weeds of this game mechanically as much as I might have liked.
The overarching story unfortunately didn't grab me enough to keep up with continued runs. So overall a lot of interesting, unevenly executed ideas.