Info about Abalon: Roguelike Tactics CCG:

Official game description:
  
Abalon (formerly Summoners Fate) is a roguelike adventure that fuses tactical turn-based combat and card strategy. You're tasked with the challenge of guiding your heroes through perilous quests in search of hidden secrets, powerful cards, titanious team members, and mutated rabbits.  
The world of Abalon is inspired by traditional tabletop environments, stretching from its frozen peaks to barren deserts and colorful woodland to dingy dungeons. Each world offers its own characters to find, mysteries to unravel and bosses to slay.  
Abalon draws its inspiration from classic tabletop games like Hero Quest, Dungeons and Dragons, and Magic: The Gathering, combining tactical combat with thoughtful events decided with the trusty roll of a D20. Exploring Abalon is done in real-time, allowing you to uncover lore scrolls, shop for powerful cards and even attend a goblin's birthday party (don't forget your gold).  
Combat brings Abalon into a turn-based game where unit positioning is as important as your spell casting. These tense encounters play out in arena-style maps where the environment isn't just for show, it's a key part of the battlefield. Equip powerful armor from a statue mid-fight. Slam your foes into a wall of spikes. Transform a tree behind enemy lines into an allied fighter. How you control the battlefield is your choice.  
In between the DnD style events and slaying of enemies you'll be collecting cards, lots of cards. Every Summoner is linked to two classes, including Arcane, Celestial, Nature, Void, and Chaos. These classes offer different playstyles: Chaos contains a lot of fire AOE spells for big damage whereas Arcane provides the ability to mind-control your enemies.  
Your deck in Abalon is capped at 20 cards, so you can collect all the cards you like knowing they won't hinder your current build. If you wish to change your playstyle halfway through your adventure then simply roast some marshmallows on the campfire and chat with the Cosmic Tortoise.  
Abalon offers an ever-changing adventure so it's important to adapt to the situation. The Battle Mode allows you to build a constructed deck from the cards you have discovered during your adventures. Bringing this deck, along with two allied units you can test your might against the toughest of foes!  
*   5 Worlds to explore, each with its own events, characters, and bosses  
*   20 Summoners to guide through an adventure, each offering unique abilities for you to master  
*   Over 50 characters to meet through world events, all of which can join your adventure  
*   Over 400 cards you can collect on your quest to build the perfect deck  
*   PvE Battle mode, the perfect arena to master your favorite Summoner

Release date: 11 May, 2023

Categories: Roguelike, Turn-based Combat, Deckbuilding, Tactical RPG, Single-player, Character Progression, Exploration, Party-based Combat


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Highly Engaging & Replayable Gameplay (weight 1): Players overwhelmingly praise the game's fun and engaging gameplay, highlighting its high replayability due to strategic depth, unique mechanics, and diverse content. The game's blend of genres, particularly deck-building and tactical combat, is frequently cited as a refreshing and addictive experience. Many reviewers also appreciate the game's unique art style and quality-of-life features like undoing moves.
- Exceptional Developer Support (weight 0.3): The development team receives significant praise for their active engagement with the community, consistent updates, and responsiveness to feedback and bug reports. Players feel the developers genuinely care about the game and are committed to its long-term improvement, which greatly enhances the overall player experience.
- Rich Content & Build Diversity (weight 0.22): The game offers a vast array of content, including numerous unique cards, diverse summoners, and a wide variety of playable characters. This extensive content allows for deep strategic customization and encourages experimentation with different builds and playstyles, contributing significantly to the game's replay value.
- Balanced Difficulty & Progression (weight 0.09): The game features well-balanced and scalable difficulty options, allowing both new players to learn easily and experienced players to find significant challenges. The progression system is also well-received, providing satisfying goals and unlocks that encourage continued play and exploration of higher difficulties.
- Excellent Steam Deck Compatibility (weight 0.05): The game is highly compatible with the Steam Deck, providing a smooth and enjoyable portable gaming experience. This makes it a convenient option for players who prefer to game on the go.

Common complaints:
- Limited content and replayability (weight 0.19): Players report that the game quickly becomes repetitive and boring due to a lack of diverse content, including limited maps, enemies, events, and a short, unengaging story mode. The roguelike elements do not offer enough variety for replayability.
- Bugs and clunky mechanics (weight 0.11): The game suffers from numerous bugs, including visual glitches, unstable performance, and mechanics not working as intended (e.g., turn skipping, free action state). Combat and UI interactions are often described as clunky and unintuitive, leading to frustrating experiences.
- Unsatisfying card system (weight 0.1): The card system is criticized for its discard mechanic, small hand/deck size, and lack of strong card synergies, which hinders strategic play and combo execution. The tutorial also fails to adequately explain core card mechanics.
- Uneven difficulty scaling (weight 0.1): The difficulty curve is uneven, with early stages often feeling too hard due to strong enemies or unfair RNG, while later stages can become trivial. Higher difficulties often rely on meta-progression rather than strategic changes, leading to tedious optimization.
- Overpriced for content (weight 0.07): Many players feel the game is significantly overpriced for the content and quality it offers, suggesting its current sale price should be its base price. The initial visual impression is also noted as mediocre.
- Slow progression and performance (weight 0.05): Progression feels slow and grindy, particularly for experience and unlocks, requiring repetitive play. The game also experiences performance issues, including slow loading times and FPS drops, especially on Steam Deck.
- Unappealing art style (weight 0.05): The game's art style is polarizing, with some players finding it simplistic, odd, or even off-putting. The top-down perspective and character design are specifically mentioned as unappealing.
- Excessive reliance on RNG (weight 0.04): The game's reliance on randomness (RNG) for card draws, enemy encounters, and events is a major point of frustration. Players feel too often at the mercy of chance, leading to unfair losses and a lack of strategic control.
- Guardian unit issues (weight 0.04): Guardian units have issues, including feeling useless (e.g., Manticore), being vulnerable to 'destroy minion' effects, and frustrating mind-control mechanics. There's also a lack of meaningful interaction between units.
- Tedious map exploration (weight 0.02): Manual map exploration is described as tedious due to slow walking animations and an open map design that can lead to constant struggles with routes.

Gameplay feedback:
- Unique Genre Blend & Strategy (weight 0.36): The game is a unique blend of roguelike, deck-building, and turn-based tactical RPG elements, offering deep strategic gameplay. It emphasizes exploration, character progression, and discovering powerful card synergies, providing high replayability.
- Distinct Card & Deck System (weight 0.26): The card system is distinct, with cards going to a discard pile after use and only being refreshed by resting at campfires. Players manage a limited deck size (up to 20 cards) and collect new cards from various sources to build their strategy.
- Persistent Party & Unit System (weight 0.12): A key feature is the persistent party system, including 'Guardians' who are permanent companions revivable at camps, and 'Loyal' units who stay until defeated. This allows for strategic unit outfitting and meta-progression.
- Tactical Grid Combat (weight 0.11): Combat is tactical and grid-based, where unit positioning, movement, and special abilities are crucial. Units have unique parameters and actions, and summoned units can act immediately, adding depth to battles.
- Challenging & Varied Modes (weight 0.09): The game is challenging, even on easier difficulties, requiring players to understand its mechanics and strategy. It offers multiple game modes and difficulty levels, with individual battles being quick but full runs potentially long.
- Player-Friendly Mechanics (weight 0.08): The game offers player-friendly mechanics like mid-game saves, the ability to retreat from battles, and options to undo actions or reset dice rolls. This allows for experimentation and reduces frustration, enhancing replayability.
- Accessible Demo Available (weight 0.04): A demo was available, allowing players to experience the tutorial and the first chapter of the adventure mode with a limited selection of characters. Many reviewers played and enjoyed this demo.
- Charming & Accessible Design (weight 0.04): The game is praised for its charming, stylized art, humor, and accessibility. It's easy to pick up and enjoy, feeling reminiscent of a board game, despite its underlying strategic depth.

Performance notes:
- Good Steam Deck performance (weight 0.04): Players report a generally positive experience on the Steam Deck, with many stating the game runs perfectly or at least acceptably. Some initial loading issues were noted but seem to be isolated.
- Stable and smooth performance (weight 0.03): Many players praise the game's overall performance, noting a lack of significant bugs or issues. The game is described as running smoothly for a large portion of the player base.
- Mobile-like graphics, low requirements (weight 0.02): The game's graphics are described as being similar to mobile games, which contributes to its low system requirements. This makes the game accessible to a wider range of hardware.

Recommendations:
- Highly Recommended Game (weight 0.22): Many players highly recommend the game, praising its value and quality. They believe it's worth the price and a must-try for fans of the genre, often giving it perfect scores.
- Try the Free Demo (weight 0.12): Players frequently suggest trying the free demo to determine if the game is a good fit. Many found the demo compelling enough to purchase the full game immediately.
- Great for Genre Fans (weight 0.11): The game is strongly recommended for fans of specific genres, particularly deck-building roguelikes, turn-based tactics, and dungeon crawlers. It appeals to players who enjoy strategic depth and varied builds.
- Desire for More Content (weight 0.07): Players express a desire for continuous updates and more content, such as new maps, cards, and challenges. They appreciate the developer's responsiveness and plan to support the game throughout Early Access.
- Suggestions for Improvement (weight 0.03): Players suggest potential improvements like co-op functionality, addressing tedious optimal play, or refining the combo system to enhance the overall experience.
- Highly Addictive Gameplay (weight 0.03): Players report high engagement and addiction, indicating they can't stop playing and anticipate sinking hundreds of hours into the game.
- Tips for New Players (weight 0.02): Reviewers offer specific advice for new players, such as starting with the 'Scribe' character once unlocked or beginning on easy difficulty to learn mechanics.
- Specific Card/Character Recommendations (weight 0.02): Specific card and character recommendations are provided, such as the Ice Mage with freeze cards, Fire Phoenix, Snow Monster, or low-cost insect swarm for beginners.
- Reconsider with Open Mind (weight 0.02): Players are encouraged to revisit the game or approach it with an open mind, letting go of prior prejudices to fully appreciate it.
- FPS Issue Noted (weight 0.01): One reviewer noted an issue with FPS that they hope will be resolved.

Other player notes:
- Demand for more content (weight 0.09): Players desire more content, including new areas, items, units, and deeper card synergies. There's also a wish for additional game modes like an open-world adventure or co-op features, which would significantly expand replayability and strategic depth.
- Responsive, dedicated developer (weight 0.08): The developer is highly praised for their continuous improvements, responsiveness to feedback, and active community engagement. This dedication has fostered strong player support, with many purchasing the game to contribute to its ongoing development.
- Unique, growing art style (weight 0.06): The game's art style is described as simple and initially off-putting by some, but it generally grows on players and is considered charming or fitting for the game's tone. While not graphically groundbreaking, its unique aesthetic contributes to its appeal.
- Unique roguelike mechanics (weight 0.06): The game offers a unique take on the roguelike deckbuilder genre, with mechanics like card discard that might be polarizing but are ultimately seen as part of its distinct identity. Players are advised to approach it as its own game rather than a Slay the Spire clone.
- Smooth cross-platform play (weight 0.05): The game offers seamless cross-platform progression between PC and mobile versions, which is highly appreciated. However, players note that separate purchases are required for each platform, and there are some inconsistencies regarding DLC unlocks between Steam and mobile.
- Odd character gaze (weight 0.02): A minor visual quirk where characters unnaturally stare up at the player is noted. While slightly odd, it's a small detail that some players find a bit creepy, though an option to disable it may exist.
- Challenging difficulty modes (weight 0.02): The game offers challenging difficulty modes, with some players recommending starting on the hardest setting for a more engaging experience. The difficulty is seen as a positive aspect, contributing to replayability.
- Classic fantasy theme (weight 0.02): The game's theme is rooted in classic fantasy, drawing comparisons to Dungeons and Dragons and Magic The Gathering. This familiar setting provides a strong foundation for its gameplay and lore.
- Engaging and humorous (weight 0.02): The game is engaging and incorporates humorous small scenes, contributing to an enjoyable and immersive player experience.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.3): Players expressed satisfaction due to the game's high quality, deep and replayable gameplay mechanics, and the developers' consistent dedication and responsiveness to feedback. The game's unique blend of genres, effective cross-platform features, and overall polish also contributed significantly to positive player experiences.
- Frustration (weight 0.1): Frustration stemmed from various technical issues like bugs, crashes, and performance problems, particularly on Steam Deck. Gameplay mechanics such as uneven difficulty, tedious grinding, repetitive combat, and problematic RNG also caused significant player annoyance. Localization issues and confusing UI elements further contributed to this negative emotion.
- Disappointment (weight 0.09): Disappointment was primarily driven by a perceived lack of content variety, repetitive gameplay, and issues with game balance and progression. Players also expressed dissatisfaction with pricing, clunky UI, and a general feeling that the game lacked depth or long-term replayability, leading to a loss of fun over time.
- Excitement (weight 0.09): Excitement was generated by the game's high quality, unique blend of mechanics, and strong potential for future content and developments. Players were particularly thrilled by the strategic depth, variety of summoners, and the overall addictive and fun gameplay experience, especially during early access.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.08): Players found enjoyment in the game's varied and engaging gameplay, diverse character and party-building options, and the fun of learning new mechanics and experimenting with card combinations. The overall game experience, including the soundtrack and lore, also contributed to this positive feeling.
- Appreciation (weight 0.07): Appreciation was directed towards the developers for their exceptional care, dedication, and responsiveness to community feedback. Players valued the quick problem-solving, continuous updates, and the overall professionalism and humility shown by the development team.
- Joy (weight 0.03): Joy was experienced through the game's high overall quality, fun and varied gameplay, and engaging combat. Specific elements like enjoyable characters, good music, and seamless cross-platform progress syncing also contributed to a genuinely positive and happy player experience.
- Admiration (weight 0.03): Admiration arose from the game's exceptional quality, thoughtful design, and unique blend of genres, especially considering its early access status. Players also admired the developer's perseverance, creativity, and dedication to crafting a polished and cohesive game.
- Confusion (weight 0.02): Confusion was primarily caused by unclear combat mechanics, difficulty scaling, and specific game systems like the discard pile. Performance issues and unintuitive route planning also contributed to players feeling bewildered by certain aspects of the game.
- Surprise (weight 0.02): Players were surprised by the unexpected depth of the game, sudden difficulty spikes, and the quality of the game despite being in Early Access. The unexpected enjoyment and detailed paper doll updates also contributed to this emotion.
- Love (weight 0.02): Love for the game was expressed due to its overall quality, engaging gameplay, and appealing art style, indicating a strong emotional connection and deep affection for the experience it provided.
- Hope (weight 0.02): Hope was centered on the game's future, including desires for increased popularity, more content areas, and continued improvements and rebalancing. Players expressed optimism for future changes and the developer's ongoing work.
- Amazement (weight 0.01): Amazement stemmed from the developer's exceptional responsiveness, the game's unique and well-executed genre combination, and the impressive depth, diversity, and attention to detail present in the game.
- Anticipation (weight 0.01): Anticipation was driven by the desire for more playtime, future potential including moddability, and upcoming updates such as the artifact system. Players also looked forward to new maps and card designs.
- Relief (weight 0.01): Relief was felt when critical issues were resolved, particularly when bugs were fixed and the game began running smoothly without technical problems, indicating a positive shift from previous frustrations.
- Gratitude (weight 0.01): Gratitude was expressed towards the developer for their support, highlighting specific individuals like 'Ross' for their contributions, indicating appreciation for personal and effective assistance.
- Enthusiasm (weight 0.01): Enthusiasm was evident for the game's high quality, engaging gameplay, and significant replay value. Players also showed excitement for the overall experience and the background music.
- Boredom (weight 0.01): Boredom arose from repetitive gameplay, small maps, and issues with the mana system and game balance. Players found the experience became unengaging after a few runs due to a lack of variety.
- Respect (weight 0): Respect was earned by the developer's consistent engagement and responsiveness to player feedback, demonstrating a high regard for their commitment to the community and the game's improvement.
- Annoyance (weight 0): Annoyance was caused by performance issues and unexpected or frustrating game mechanics, leading to minor but noticeable irritation during gameplay.}