Deck of Ashes Review Summary

Its striking art, engaging deckbuilding, and strong voice and sound are undermined by bugs, instability, poor polish, and severe stuttering and freezing.

Praise for art style: Reviewers consistently highlight the game's art style as appealing, unique, and well-executed, with many describing it as beautiful or stylish.

Engaging deckbuilding gameplay: Players find the deckbuilding mechanics deep and enjoyable, with unique combinations and a satisfying card system.

Overall positive impressions: General feedback is very positive, with many describing the game as good, excellent, or fun overall.

Interesting characters and stories: The characters are praised for their distinct personalities and backstories, and the overall story is considered engaging.

Good voice acting and sound: The voice acting, music, and sound design are frequently praised, with special mention of the Russian voice acting.

Bugs and instability: Numerous bugs are reported, ranging from minor annoyances to game-breaking issues, and some players find the game unplayable.

Lack of polish: The game feels unpolished, with clunky gameplay, mediocre graphics, and unsatisfying combat impact.

Boring gameplay: Gameplay is frequently described as boring, dull, repetitive, and monotonous, with low replayability.

Limited card variety: Players note a severe lack of card variety, with too few cards and many cards feeling similar across characters.

Inferior to competitors: The game is unfavorably compared to well-known deckbuilders like Slay the Spire, offering little new to the genre.

Deckbuilding Core Mechanic: The game is fundamentally a deck-building card game where players construct and customize decks. This is the central gameplay pillar, emphasized by many reviewers.

Roguelike Deckbuilder Genre: The game is frequently described as a roguelike deckbuilder, often compared to Slay the Spire. It combines card-based combat with roguelike progression and randomness.

Ash Card Mechanic: A distinctive feature is the 'ash' or discard pile mechanic where played cards are consumed and must be renewed. Some cards have effects while in the ash pile.

Card-Based Combat System: Combat revolves around playing cards with mana costs and turn-based mechanics. Cards are drawn from a deck and used to attack or defend.

Multiple Playable Characters: The game features four to five playable characters, each with their own unique deck and playstyle. This adds replayability and variety.

Severe Stuttering and Freezing: Frequent stuttering and freezing occur throughout gameplay, including during tutorials, turn transitions, card plays, and when loading battles, with some freezes lasting several seconds and making the game unresponsive.

Crashes During Boss Fights: Players report the game crashing during boss encounters and after defeating bosses, with additional crashes when loading into fights or completing combat.

Infinite Loading and Stuck Screens: Players experience infinite loading or getting stuck when entering dungeons, with loading screens that freeze and require task manager to exit, and the game sometimes stopping loading entirely.

Invisible Mouse Cursor: The mouse cursor disappears after loading screens when no controller is used, and remains invisible when a gamepad is connected wired or wireless.

Poor Optimization and Performance Issues: The game is poorly optimized and runs heavy, with FPS drops, lag spikes, and slow performance even on capable hardware, including laptops and 1K PCs.

Recommended for Slay the Spire fans: Many reviewers recommend the game to players who enjoyed Slay the Spire, Monster Train, or similar card-battling roguelikes. It is positioned as a follow-up for those seeking more variety after the genre's top titles.

Appeals to card game fans: Reviewers repeatedly recommend it to people who enjoy card games, deckbuilding, and strategy card battles. Fans of CCGs and card battlers are the core recommended audience.

Positive overall purchase recommendation: A large share of reviewers simply recommend buying the game and describe it as worth it overall. Several note it is recommended despite its flaws.

Better on sale: Many reviewers say the game is worth grabbing during a sale rather than at full price. Some consider it good value only at a discount.

Suggested alternatives to this game: Several reviewers tell players to play Slay the Spire, Griftlands, Monster Train, or other deckbuilders instead. The game is seen as less fun or less polished than genre leaders.

Community fair range: $10.00 - $15.00.

Game completion: 11.0h.

Session length: 2.5h.

Endgame: 50.0h.

The game is reported to start slowly and become enjoyable only after players get past the learning curve, though some players find it boring immediately and never engaging.

Reported time to anchor: 3h.

Friction: stiff learning curve; slow start and slow early battles; tutorial-to-campaign bugs and locked camp upgrades; restrictive Ash deck renewal mechanic; repetitive random events and grind; poor difficulty balance and few meaningful early decisions.

Deckbuilder Genre Veteran: Benchmarks systems against Slay the Spire-style deckbuilders, experiments with builds, and weighs balance and polish. Motivation: Find a fresh deckbuilder that can scratch the genre itch after exhausting the top titles. Stance: sale.

Dark Fantasy Story Seeker: Plays through campaigns for narrative and atmosphere, uses the tutorial, and tries different heroes and storylines. Motivation: Immerse in the dark antihero story, art, and world. Stance: buy.

Challenge-Focused Roguelike Purist: Optimizes decks for efficient, meaningful combat and rejects grind, slow pacing, or mindless card dumping. Motivation: Get demanding, skill-expressive runs where good play and tight decks matter. Stance: no buy.

Steam Deck: The Steam Deck experience is heavily compromised by launch failures, frequent crashes, broken or cumbersome controller support, input lockout, and small UI text. No external-launcher or battery-drain reports appeared in the filtered evidence. The repeated stability and control failures place this in the broken tier.

Linux and Proton: The provided review is a gameplay comment about building cards and facing a Dungeon in Heroic mode. It contains no mention of Linux, Proton, SteamOS, Wine, Steam Deck compatibility, anti-cheat, launchers, performance, or any Linux-specific launch issue, so no Linux/Proton compatibility friction can be assessed.

Monetization: The review set includes direct evidence of a real-money supporter pack selling heroes that affect gameplay, with players describing the game as pay-to-win. Other feedback focuses on DLC plans or base-game completeness and is not treated as microtransaction evidence.

Frequent comparisons to Slay the Spire: Many reviewers compare the game to Slay the Spire, often as a reference point. Some find it deeper or with more story, while others consider it a clone or inferior.

Russian voice acting and localization: The game includes Russian voiceover and localization, which is noted by multiple reviewers. One reviewer mentions the absence of Russian voice acting.

Game is in early access: The game is currently in early access and has been for over a year. Despite this, it already offers substantial content and continues to receive updates.

Responsive and communicative developers: Reviewers praise the developers for being active, listening to community feedback, and frequently updating the game.

Compared to Darkest Dungeon: Reviewers compare the game to Darkest Dungeon, particularly its art style, atmosphere, and dark tone. Some note it has less pressure than Darkest Dungeon.