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I’ve played a lot of card games; it’s my favorite genre. There’s just something addictive about drawing cards, sculpting the perfect hand and creating synergies that work well together. Here at Fountaindale, we have quite a selection of great video games, including some of the best deck-building games around. Check them out below!

The most well-known deck-building game is Slay the Spire, the gold standard of rogue-like deck builders. Most games in the genre tend to follow at least some part of the formula set by Slay the Spire and will inevitably be compared to it.

In Slay the Spire, players choose a character and start with a deck of cards for that character. Players advance their way up a path of enemies and encounters, gathering new cards, upgrading cards, and grabbing relics along the way. When fighting enemies, you see their intent above them and use your cards to block their attacks, buff yourself, debuff the enemy, and attack the enemy. Each card costs energy, typically 0–3, and the player starts with three energy.

When you beat an enemy, they drop new cards you can add to the deck. Elite enemies and bosses drop relics, which are powerful modifiers that help you in various ways. This can be as simple as giving you more max health or something unique like the stone calendar, which does a bunch of damage after seven turns.

Encounters are random events that will affect your run. Sometimes, they will help you; other times, they will directly harm you or put you straight into a fight; most of the time, they will offer you modifiers and upgrades at a cost.

Bosses in Slay the Spire are more than just damage sponges. Each boss and many elites will need to be dealt with properly, or they will end your run quickly. Don’t worry if you die. Dying and starting over is no biggie in this rogue-like. It’s just another chance to get lucky and play smarter.

This game is an excellent combination of RPG, deck building and turn-based tactics. One of the biggest appeals of this game is controlling iconic Marvel characters. You can blast your way through baddies and feel like an unstoppable hero. It took me a bit to warm up to the combat, but I eventually mastered it and felt like a real superhero as I chained together combos.

Midnight Suns is a full RPG, rather than the shorter rogue-likes and rogue-lites that many deck builders tend to be. This means you get the chance to customize your characters and their decks. There are lots of different heroes with their own decks with plenty of options to craft them to your liking. Traditional RPG combat can be a monotonous routine of spamming the same moves over and over, but the deck-building aspect of Midnight Suns forces players to make use of the cards they’re dealt. This makes for exciting gameplay and breaks up the classic RPG combat monotony.

Whether you’re new to deck builders, familiar with the genre or love the Marvel lineup, Marvel’s Midnight Suns has something unique to offer.

Foretales focuses much more on the narrative than any other deck builder. In Foretales, each level is like a puzzle to solve. Every choice you make matters, and some will drastically change the path of the game and story. Cards are exhausted after use, and to get them back, you must rest, which always comes with consequences.

There are still battles in Foretales, but unlike other deck builders, they are not purely rewarding. You have to pick your battles carefully and avoid them when you can. Rather than simple choices, each level presents you with a narrative that you interact with by playing various cards. Most puzzles have multiple solutions, and the game will play out very differently depending on some of the choices you make along the way.