After spending over 30 hours in the demo before the game's release, I eventually got around to buying the full game -- I figured as bug-filled as it was, I enjoyed it, and deserved to give it a proper review, especially since this subreddit and the Steam discussions are rather sparse, so an in-depth "what the heck is this game" from someone who's now got 60-some hours is deserved. TLDR: Is it worth it? I will echo the criticisms that other people have made: great idea, rough execution. It's a fresh idea for a roguelike deck builder, but it's very rough, and is more something to play casually than really sink your teeth into. It's worth playing if you already like deck builders, want to try something new, and are willing to put up with a game that is both buggy and very loosely balanced. Frankly, that can be part of the fun sometimes, figuring out what combos will utterly break a game, but know what you're getting into. The Good: The concept is simple: you are one of five various dragons, and you alternate between attacking the kingdom and defending your lair. Heroes and armies rush towards you as you rain various flavors of death and destruction upon them. Before each major 'raid' against you, you may choose Boss Mechanics. You are a multi-phase boss, and starting in phase 1, you move into phase 2 and phase 3 as you are injured, which turns off any 1st phase mechanics and turns on 2nd or 3rd phase mechanics based on what Boss Mechanics you chose to equip. While 80% of the time I found myself building all-in for Phase 1, accumulated injuries (especially on high difficulties) mean I might have to switch to using Phase 2 or 3 mechanics before a tough fight. These are not all balanced, and while some are at the power level of "acts like a 1-cost card", some have nutty synergies. Shift the terrain to your advantage, create card synergies like fire+wind or earth+ice to cause special effects that push cards to become more than just the sum of their parts. The Dragons: You've got five dragons, and they each come with some pretty clever little mechanics. From the vanilla Red Dragon, the Void-using Black Dragon, and the Blue Dragon who grows from kid to calamity, they all help keep the game fresh by having different starting decks and using elemental types unique to themselves. These dragons aren't "stuck" in their builds, either. The Black Dragon has a knack for summoning unique black whelplings whenever anything dies, including when their own whelplings die (or are combined). However, Black doesn't have to play just "Whelp Build", the way their unique Void element interacts with lava terrain means doubling down on an "Inhale Build" with breath cards that create fire makes a lot of sense. Blue can also be amusing, as Blue permanently gains attack power the more fights are completed in baby form, growing up when they use their "Rage" ability twice (the first time to be an adolescent, the second to turn into an adult). Pretty neat, as it gives a choice whether you want to stay in baby form for a long time and use cheap cards like a "Meteor Build" under a repeatedly increasing damage bonus, or grow up quickly and get access to one of the most powerful "Enrage Builds" of the five dragons. Gold is broken and has an infinite combo with just their starting deck and a couple Boss Mechanics. Could likely waltz through Arma 40 difficulty with it easily considering you can do 'Turn 1' kills on bosses with hundreds of thousands of health, but not as fun to me as Black, Red, or Blue. The Buggy: Hoo boy, the bugs. -The Fire Knight Heart Boss Mechanic straight up doesn't work on anything but the original Red dragon. - The maps freeze and glitch when you trigger too many abilities at once (Flame Circus, my beloved), often simply deleting the boss without causing the victory screen and either auto-winning on reload or soft-locking you forever. -Quitting and returning puts you back in the same fight, but with different cards and terrain, allowing 'rerolls' of terrain features, or letting you survive a boss by drawing the cards you need. Sometimes, even aspects of the boss like their health and armor seem to change, and once my Blue dragon had reverted to baby form on reload. -Talent tree bugged. I could pick a 3rd level talent, pick a 4th level talent, cancel the 4th level talent, and then I would have access to both 3rd level talents under it, even one I wasn't connected to, letting me avoid talents that were 'duds' to my build. -Game sometimes forgets what phase I'm in. I'm sometimes really relying on a defensive Phase 3 mechanic being active when I'm only at 10% health, but the game won't always realize I'm in Phase 3 unless I take damage -- which might kill me. -...And many more! The Critical: -A number of Boss Mechanics and talents feel built around the Red dragon's Firebreath card, a card which might just never show up for the other dragons, let alone as a card they'd actually want to pick up since they have their own Frost, Dark, and Poison breaths. -Card pool way too big. The pool is cluttered by cards like Radiation, a mediocre Epic-level card that is reliant on exactly one other Epic-level card, "Nuke", to function. There's also cards like the Melee and Meteor cards, which feel largely useless unless you explicitly took the talents related to them, and talents can't be changed mid-run like Boss Mechanics can. -Earth cards underpowered. I always roll my eyes when I'm offered an Upheaval, and given the opportunity to change 4 tiles to earth and do no damage for 2 AP, and somehow that's the power level of most of the Earth cards. You usually need a talent like Reality Warp to make most of these even playable. -RNG. There are a heck of a lot of effects that read 25-50% chance to do X, and there are a lot of relics that can completely make or break a build based on whether you find them in your run or not. Fire Bombs can go from dealing a useless 400 damage, to suddenly doing 1.4k, to over 10k. Meteor effects are largely non-viable unless you specifically take a talent to make them auto-target heroes, and then they're great. -Effect-Salad. In the early stages of the game, you can carefully plan terrain interactions and synergies, but as it goes later, it becomes a mess. -UI is not always the best. As far as I know, I can't even check the starting decks for the dragons, I have to play them to find out. -I love the idea of being rushed by an army, but I feel like there's not a lot of importance being placed on keeping enemies away from me, it's only major for a few mini-bosses like Smiles. I want a bigger grid, and enough mooks running up to me that a few will actually reach me. The Conlusion: Whelp, I've probably made the longest review anyone's ever made (or going) to make of this game, so I'll keep this brief: Great concept, I love it, and I'm hooked on the idea. However, it's the kind of game where I'd like to see remade from scratch, namely to fix bugs and improve stability, but also to rebalance mechanics so that the 5 dragons are acknowledged rather than just the classic Red.