r/deckbuildingroguelike

after 5 years of development……damn……

I love getting to the end of a roguelike, looking at my pile of cards, and seeing a weird mess of synergies I had never played with before.

Sometimes you find a playstyle you like and you gun for it as often as possible. I love Body Slamming builds in Slay the Spire. But experimenting and finding those playstyles is one of my favorite parts of playing roguelikes. I wanted to really maximize the exploration phase with my game, and here's how I went about that... (TLDR at the end, this was longer than I expected).

I started, like many card game developers, by copying notes from Magic: the Gathering. Specifically, I looked at the way you can combine any number of colors in a deck. Immortal Coil's five color domains are Teal (slow and steady), Pink (ecosystem engines), Purple (scrappy spell slinging tempo), Gold (I hit hard), and Rust (control). Each color has its own variety of mechanics and importantly each color combination forms their archetypes.

For instance: Pink can discard cards from hand for Rust to use as fuel or reanimation targets. Teal's lingering spells make it easy for Purple to trigger its spell chaining mechanic. Gold's sacrificial tribute mechanic makes triggering Rust's on death keywords a lot easier. Add in another color, or do all five, and there are a ton of ways for these colors to do all kinds of wild strategies. (My personal favorite is a slow, drag-out control deck with Teal, Purple, and Rust)

You start a run by picking two 10 card starter decks and combining them. These can be the same color or two different colors, and they will determine what cards you can trade for in bazaars and battle rewards (when a card is traded, it must be traded for a card of the same color). Over the course of three acts, you will expand your deck with three new offerings of 10 cards. You can stay in the same colors, or you can branch out eventually gathering all 5.

You might be thinking- 50 cards, that's a lot! It is! Having so many cards certainly keeps each battle feeling distinct, but it is also brings a lot of inconsistency. So my game gives you another consistency tool: for each 10 cards in your deck, you also have 1 Icon Slot - the Icons go in a secondary deck which you can draw from every three rounds of battle. You might put your key synergy cards here, or maybe fill the Icons with removal cards, or maybe Item cards to reliably equip your units. In addition, each time you expand your deck, your starting hand size increases. You'll have opportunities to duplicate important cards. And of course, you can thin out your deck over the course of a run.

As you play, you'll unlock new starting decks (there are 30 total, 6 per color) and you'll unlock new cards to find in bazaars (73 per color, 365 total). You'll find Augments (the relics of Immortal Coil) to build your decks around. You will also pick one of three Edicts (cooldown abilities) at the start of each run.

Even after a year and half of playing, I am still finding new strategies I hadn't considered. I'd love to go into more of the mechanics of each color and their crossovers, but this is already really long.

Having a lot of playstyles is great, but to keep the process of experimentation meaningful, I also designed this game to be challenging. You will lose runs, even with great decks. But you will still sometimes find that absurd combo that tears through everything. My design philosophy is that powerful cards/combos should still require clever play to pull off.

TLDR - Lots of starter deck combinations, 5 colors to mix and match, thick decks with consistency tricks, and lots of hidden synergies.

Demo coming soon!

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3858030/Immortal_Coil/

G'day mates,

I've been obsessed with Puzzle Quest since 2007, and Slay the Spire basically ruined me all over again. Spent the last year in Godot trying to scratch both itches at once. The result: Gembound, a match-3 RPG where your gem satchel IS the deck.

The core idea: instead of the board refilling randomly like in Puzzle Quest, it deals from a 121-gem satchel you built yourself. Both you and the enemy match from that same finite supply. When gems are matched they go to a discard pile and reshuffle back in when the satchel runs out, exactly like Slay the Spire.

That means the color spread you see mid-fight reflects the satchel you brought. Stack red gems and red stays plentiful all combat. Ignore blue and blue stays scarce. No lucky streaks bailing you out.

Between fights you swap gems in and out, upgrade their quality, enhance, and thin the gems by removing weak ones. Spell power scales off your whole satchel composition, so adding gems of a color makes that color both more matchable and hits harder.

The rest of the game:

- 3 classes (Warrior, Mage, Rogue), each with their own spells and playstyle
- 4 regions, 94 enemies including elites and bosses with passive traits that change the board rules
- 4 animal companions you level up across runs
- Optional Wild Nodes that add game-changing modifiers to both sides
- Roguelite meta: gold, XP, companion bonds, and a persistent gem chest carry between runs
- Full controller support, works great on handhelds.

If you are interested joining a closed testing, please follow the links:

Join the testing group first please (Google Play requirement) https://groups.google.com/g/gembound/

Join on Android

Join on web

Please mind this is a work in progress, hobby/solo-dev project, please treat it as such :)

Looks like I'm learning as we go :) Apparently, even closed testing require paying for the game, which is silly. While in hte closed testing period (Jun 29, 2026 – Jul 12, 2026) you should be able to install the game for free. Thanks for testing, and please let me know your feedback!

Cheers!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2003770/Hunt_of_the_Reptorians/

Our game is a mix of FTL and slay the spire, we have been slowly adding more mechanics to make our enemy harder! Havent tried it yet in a full run, be good to see how challenging it is.

Hi! I'm building a Tower Defense game with RTS elements.

You can move your units around, give them orders, and reposition them during combat.

During each run, you receive upgrade cards that can add effects such as Electric, Poison, Ice, etc. These upgrades are stackable, so you can combine effects like Electric + Poison on the same unit.

After each run, you can improve your units, purchase upgrades, and create builds.

There's also a Combinator system where you can create your own items. You can select or remove individual properties and keep only the effects you care about, allowing you to build items specifically around your strategy.

The game has roguelite progression, with new enemies gradually introduced as you survive more days.

The main gameplay loop is:

Defend → Buy upgrades/items/units → Customize your build → Defend

You can play actively and control your units like an RTS, or play it more like an idle game. Later progression also unlocks a dedicated AFK mode designed for idle play.

I've just released a demo, so feel free to give it a try:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3760000/Shrine_Protectors_Demo

Thanks for checking it out!

https://i.redd.it/vbjmjoabj8kh1.gif

I’m solo developing this project for almost a year. I really enjoy while I making it and hope you guys too.

What do you think if we can upgrade towers with the cost of "ink" ?

Game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5086360

Hi! I've been working on the demo for Crit Happens! and thought I'd share it here!

Crit Happens! is a dice-building roguelike where every turn is decided by a roll of the dice. Equip your dice with special abilities to help take on the enemies that await you! Build up your deck of tools and collect powerful relics in an attempt to push the odds in your favor and conquer this game of chance.

I'm updating the demo quite often following feedback, with new relics, tools and dice faces being added. Any and all feedback is welcome, since the game is far from finished. I've got a Discord Server where feedback can be shared!

The demo is over on Steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/3711540/Crit_Happens/

Thanks for your time!

I'm KuraiHaru, and for the past few years I've been slowly working on a game called Zero Synapse.

This is my first game, and honestly, I'm still learning how all of this works. I'm currently studying systems engineering, and I'm very much a beginner when it comes to coding.

I also want to be transparent about something: AI played a big role in helping me build this demo, especially on the programming side. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. As someone who is still learning, it helped me understand problems, fix things, experiment, and move much faster than I would have been able to on my own. Without that help, I probably wouldn't have reached a playable demo this soon.

But after a lot of ideas, testing, mistakes, reworking things, and probably way too many broken builds... it's finally here.

Zero Synapse is a small roguelike deckbuilder built around one main idea:

You can fuse your cards.

Instead of just building a deck, you can combine cards together to create new interactions, strange combos, and, if everything lines up correctly, some pretty ridiculous amounts of damage.

I've tried my best to keep the current demo balanced, although I'm sure you guys will find combinations I never expected.

For now, the demo is available on itch.io, but if the project keeps growing, I'd love to eventually bring it to Steam and other platforms.

You can play it here:
https://noctivagastudio.itch.io/zero-sinapse

And that's pretty much it.

This is my first time putting one of my own games out into the world, so if you decide to try it, I'd genuinely appreciate any feedback you have — whether it's about the gameplay, balance, UI, bugs, card combinations, things you liked, things you hated, or ideas you think could make the game better.

Every comment helps me improve the game and learn as a developer.

Thanks for giving my little project a chance.

I hope you have fun breaking the game with ridiculous card combinations.

We released a major update for our demo based on your feedback!

One of the biggest things we heard was that our card chaining system felt too limiting, so we completely reworked it. You can now play any card whenever you want, with a new optional Combo system that rewards playing cards of the same color in sequence.

We also reworked combat to focus much more on positioning, pushing and pulling enemies, and using the environment to your advantage.

The update is out now, and we’d love to hear what you think! The Vow: Vampire's Curse

Hey everyone. I'm the solo developer for a new deckbuilding roguelike coming out in November 2026 on steam called Guttering Light. If you are interested in checking it out or having discussions about it please head over to subreddit r/GutteringLight.

for content please visit any of the following:

https://gutteringlight.com/#home

https://x.com/Harrowmeregames

https://www.youtube.com/@HarrowmereStudios

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5082760/Guttering_Light/

Demo will be out on steam in the next few weeks. Looking forward to feedback from everyone. Have a great day!

Needless to say it’s really fun as of right now and I feel like it’s real quick to get the hang of (I’m a big balatro fan so I guess my score makes sense)

Most 4X-lite hybrids let you build an economy that just makes numbers go up (more gold, more production). I flipped that: your base building output converts directly into spell cards for a turn-based grid battler. Every Shrine, Building or "War Machine" you build is really a about what your card deck looks like in the next battle. So the base isn't about an economy, it's a supporting how you build the spell card deck that you fight with.

How it connects to your base:

• Mine/generate mana: mana is spent both in the overworld map AND to cast spells mid-battle (one shared pool)
• Buildings unlock/boost spells: types or boost a damage category, so your base layout shapes your deck's identity
• No "gold" or "wood" that's disconnected from combat: everything you build feeds the hero battles you'll actually play with your mana and spell card deck

Battle Overview: You draw 3 spell cards a turn, use them or lose them. Positioning is simple and tactical, where front row heroes have more attack range and back row is more protected from the enemy. Meaning cards and heroes change tactics based on where your hero is standing.

Steam page if you want to see more: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4593190/Elemental_Lands/ (still in early beta / alpha, so it's a bit rough still, and thanks for checking it out)

Disclaimer: coding debug AI assisted usage in development. Art is 100% hand drawn by u/worth-bill-6130

I’m a solo developer working on a indie game.

Current languages: EN, FR, DE, ES, ES-LATAM, JA, KO, PT-BR, PT-PT, ZH-CN and TR.

Would you reduce the number and focus harder on QA, or keep the broader coverage?

(sadly though, I'm still thinking of adding more languages :/)

In Fabulous Fool, enemies attack you with cards, and you counter with a higher card of the same suit, or spend a trump to dodge. Every hand plays out like a small puzzle: match the right card to each threat, then sequence your plays to set up your next big move.

The deckbuilding layer comes from demons, special cards that rewrite how the table works: swap a suit, copy a card, weaken it, or flip a losing hand into a winning one. Stack demons with relics and potions, and a single clever counter can chain into a run-ending combo.

It's set on a fog-wrapped island where card rules are the laws of reality, with a Cursed King, a mysterious Organizer, and a tournament you were never meant to win.

Playtest is currently open (request access via the Steam page) - would love feedback from this community, especially on the counter-card system since it's a bit different from the usual attack/defend deckbuilder loop.

Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3960170/Fabulous\_Fool/