Decktamer
Game Title: Decktamer
Released: October 27, 2025
Game Length: 20 Hours
Grade: A
Setup
Rules: Before you begin, you need to pick a game mode. You start with the standard "nothing special" run. Eventually as you play the game and earn levels, more modes become available. They can cast certain limitations like not being able to retreat or make things unpredictable with a small chance for damage to do double damage. There is a certain level of customization when you can determine how many creatures you can tame or if you are given a creature after each encounter. Once you reach level 12, you can run endless where enemies gain extra health, speed, and damage as the waves increase.
Challenge: The next option is picking the difficulty. Easy allows you to use your time device to undo a battle that didn't work the way you thought it would play out. Normal knocks this down to two undo moves per battle. Hard makes food only restore one health, syringes do damage when extracting abilities, and you only get one undo per round. If you manage to endure the challenge, you might be able to play on very hard where you can't undo a round, syringes do damage every time they are used, and taming creatures become more difficult. Stars are awarded on the boss you defeat and the creatures that survived the final encounter - bronze for easy, silver for normal, gold for hard, and platinum for very hard.
Boss: The last thing to decide is which of the four bosses will be arranged as your last encounter. Each one has very distinct strengths and weaknesses. One boss you might not be able to lower their strength while another will be bad news if you put them to sleep. After you reach level 12, you can perform a boss run where you fight one after another after having seven encounters. You cannot tame these creatures, but you will be able to receive full health to all your creatures before the final round.
Cards
Starters: Before you begin, you will receive one starter creature (out of nine) and five duplicates of a companion creature (out of six). While it is possible to tame one of these later on, these can evolve after using a silver beetle in battle or receiving a gold beetle after an encounter. They retain whatever status that might have been given to them beforehand and earn much more after the evolution. They are considered special specimens in your journal. Other than the 15 starter creatures, you can also customize an abomination after an encounter, discover and evolve a former human, combine two creatures into an amalgamate, create tentacles with the cavemaw, or use a tadwhale's special ability to evolve into a sky whale.
Creatures: Not counting the final encounter with the boss, there are 7 waves where you fight against a handful of creatures. You get to view and choose between two encounters. The preview of cards are originally hidden from view in the beginning until you see them placed on the table. More creatures will become available each time you gain a level. Your goal is to collect food and use them to either heal your creatures in the middle of a match or attempt to tame the ones you face in each encounter. Your creatures will not be automatically healed to full after each round. You can rename creatures after you tame them or randomly cycle through some preset names. There will be a number of items that you can collect that can help push certain attributes up or down to any creatures on the table. Some creatures will even supply you their own unique items that can help aid you in battle.
Gameplay
Table: When you begin an encounter, creatures will be randomly placed into the slots below. There are two spots available in the beginning but quickly increases to three. If you choose to fight a creature in a special encounter, there will be a single spot. You can use your spyglass to see what other creatures can join the fight once one is tamed or defeated. They will always be placed onto the empty slot other than in boss fights. If there are less creatures than spots, they will slide to the left. What ability they use will then be highlighted. Where they are placed and what ability they use can be completely random with no coordination between their talents.
Priority: You draw a new card every round unless you have five in your hand already. After you place your creatures onto the table, you must choose an ability. Talents automatically occur without taking a turn when placed, after something happens, or upon death. Whoever has a faster speed in their lane will strike first or simultaneously if both have the same speed. The exceptions are the rabbit that makes you go first or the snail that makes you go last. You can increase your abilities or decrease your opponents with special modifiers. Keep an eye on those that specifically say "hits first" or "hits last" within their description. The one in the leftmost position always goes first.
Abilities: There is not a preset ability list for each creature. However, each creature does pull from a list of abilities. One creature may have a talent that automatically increases someone's speed, a move that increases everyone's speed, or not have one at all. The one constant is that every creature always has some sort of attack move. A mutated creature will have one extra ability, one point added to their health, or one point added to their speed. The card will shimmer with a certain icon that reflects their mutation. The range of different abilities available is phenomenal. You can poison foes, heal, strike multiple times, hit creatures outside your lane, create items, attack the target with the most health, put enemies to sleep, reduce all damage to one, and much more.
Syringe: Would you like to customize your creatures? What if I told you that you could pull an ability off one card and attach it to another? That's exactly what the syringe does. You start with a small number and can potentially get more as you dive deeper into the abyss. They can only be used on your creatures that are placed on the table. There are events for special syringes that can provide you with a move, duplicate a move, or pull one off an opponent. Be careful as sometimes these events come with curses. There's only a handful of different kinds that can modify the attack, speed, or defenses of the creature itself or the ones around it to your detriment.
Journal
Bestiary: If there is one thing that really makes the game stand out, it would have to be all the information writing about the creatures inside the journal. However, you have to make progress in the game to unlock each detail. If you encounter a creature, their name and silhouette will appear in the list. Tame one and you will obtain a full picture, habitat, and entry detailing some very specific information about how they live in the abyss. You can learn how they communicate, attack, or eat. Some pages will have some unique features such as a feather from a bird, blood from a rampaging monster, or a yellow stain from a more tame creature. In order to unlock the fun fact, you must tame and defeat the final boss. In addition, a star will be marked on the creature according to the difficulty completed. If you have Trypophobia, there is an option to blur out the one creature that might disturb you.
Diary: As you complete runs and earn levels, entries will be added inside your journal. These entail a narrative of your adventure down into the abyss. Events such as meeting another person, encountering a boss, and evolving your creature are all mentioned. The final entries are rather odd as they seem to occur right before the hidden boss fight. How that battle unfolds determines the conclusion of the story. If things become too troublesome to unlock certain parts of the journal, you can always disable achievements and "unlock all" to see what you might be missing. Simply revert back when you want to resume your gameplay.