Decktamer First Look:
a Dark, Brutal, and Delightful Deckbuilder

If Slay the Spire played Pokemon while on a bad acid trip, the experience would probably be something like Decktamer. It’s a roguelite deckbuilder where you descend into the nightmarish Abyss to see what lies at the bottom. The signature twist, of course, is that you can capture your enemies and add them to your own team for future battles. It has a dark, insidious vibe that is perfect for spooky month, always leaving you slightly unsettled. The different tone definitely helps separate it from some of its influences in a way that makes it feel unique.

The game comes from Horizon Edge, a studio whose previous work includes... checks notes... Plushie Bomber, a basically unheard-of game with a whopping 15 Steam reviews (though, to Horizon Edge’s credit, those reviews are positive overall). Apparently, the second time’s the charm, because Decktamer is already a huge hit: it racked up over 10,000 players in its first 24 hours on Steam and boasts a Mostly Positive rating. The game’s official Discord server is also rapidly growing and extremely active. Best of all, the devs are highly responsive to feedback, and refreshingly transparent about what they’re doing and what they plan to do in the future, making the game's further developments bright.

But enough about ratings, we’re here to talk about the game!

How Do You Tame a Deck?

You start a Decktamer run by choosing one starter monster and a squad of four weaker monsters for backup. From there, the game is just a series of battles. Each battle lets you choose between two different enemy lineups with different rewards, so you’ll have to decide which one looks more enticing… or more survivable.

The combat system is pretty simple. You draw five monsters to start the battle, then one more on each of your following turns. Each side of the field can hold up to three monsters—though early battles only allow two—and each monster attacks the one directly across from it unless their attack says otherwise. You can play as many monsters per turn as you have space for, and freely switch their positions on the field. You can also call back one monster per turn to save them from danger or make room for a different one. When you need an extra boost, you can use items you collect along the way to do things like buff your monsters or inflict status conditions on your enemies. Just remember that you can only use an item once!

Once you’re happy with your setup, just choose some attacks and watch the turn play out.

You can also capture any monster in the game, except for the final bosses, and turn them into allies. Much like in Pokemon, you do this by weakening the monster you want and then using an item, although in this case the items are food instead of magical pocket dimension balls.

There are three types of food items: meat, berries, and fish. Each monster has a preferred food that increases your chances of successfully taming it, though a few monsters like all three types. Ideally, you’ll get a monster down to one HP and then use its preferred food for a guaranteed capture, but of course that’s not always possible—sometimes you just have to take your chances.

You’ll probably want to use your food to recruit new allies as much as possible, but it can also heal your monsters in a pinch. The trouble is, food is extremely limited, so using it to keep your current squad alive feels pretty bad even when it’s necessary. To make things even more fun, your team doesn’t recover between battles, so sometimes that healing is very necessary.

Oh, and speaking of “alive,” I should mention that Decktamer takes the Nuzlocke approach, meaning any monster that falls in battle is gone for good.

One saving grace you’ll have is the Undo button, which lets you roll back to before the last round of attacks and make better choices. The easiest difficulty lets you use this feature as much as you need, while higher difficulties limit how many times per battle you can fix your mistakes. It's a nice way of giving something to the player in a genre that can feel very unforgiving.

However, undo is actually one of my biggest (and only-est) issues with Decktamer, because I really wish it would undo the whole turn instead of just the attacks. If you played the wrong card, too bad, you’re stuck with it. We'll see if it gets updated after all the feedback from initial release gets read.

Finally, while the rules are simple enough, Decktamer is anything but easy. Even the lowest difficulty presents a solid challenge for new players, and Very Hard is downright brutal—I assume, since I’m still stuck on Hard.

A Great Game That Won’t Tame Your Bank Account

Decktamer is a twist on the deckbuilder roguelite genre that I didn’t know I needed. I’d intended to just do a few runs so I could get enough of a feel for it to write this article, so imagine my surprise when I saw that my playtime was already over 20 hours. All this is to say that I’m having a blast with it, and highly recommend Decktamer to any fan of deckbuilders.

With that said, I’m very slightly hesitant to recommend it to people who haven’t played this kind of game before, most notably Pokemon fans who are drawn to the monster-catching theme. I don’t have any concerns about the game’s concept or design, since both are rock-solid. My only misgiving is that an inexperienced player might find Decktamer’s difficulty curve frustrating rather than just challenging.

This game is an absolute steal even at its full price of $15.99, but to make things even better, it’s 15% off until November 10th. There’s also a free demo if you’re still not sure this is the game for you. So, whether you're a deckbuilding veteran looking for a fresh challenge or a monster-catching enthusiast who’s ready to step out of your comfort zone, Decktamer might be just what you’re looking for. If anything, it's been a great game to play on the same week as Halloween.