Arcanium: Rise of Akhan

Developed by: Supercombo, Inc.
Published by: Rogue Games, Inc.

Sep 21, 2022$19.99

Arcanium is an Open-world, Strategy Card Adventure that merges Roguelite and Deckbuilding genres like never before. Control your party of three heroes, craft your deck, unlock a vast amount of cards and items and save the world of Arzu from corruption!

Consensus

C69.8/100

Steam players82% positiveVery Positive817 reviews

VG Insights estimate ↗≈24.5K copies · ≈$337K gross

What creators say

PepperHead

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Part 1 (Sep 2023) · #18 of 18 in that tierWatch the moment (0:04:14)

Tier list Part 1 (2023)

Arcanium is a deck-building roguelike with a huge roster of playable characters, played as a party of three on a board-game-like map. He finds it very strategic, challenging and replayable, with the fun coming from discovering new character combinations. The outside-world layer is minimal and events repeat, and the animation bothers him a little. He places it in A tier, but only recommends it to people already used to deck builders because of the amount to track.

Liked

Enormous number of characters, giving many builds and combinations
Strategy and moment-to-moment gameplay are really fun and challenging
High replayability from hunting for new character combos
Art shows a lot of effort
Uniqueness comes mostly from the character variety

Disliked

Not a fan of the animation, though he calls it a small thing
Overworld is minimalistic, like a board game, with little to explore
Events are almost always the same
Overwhelming amount to keep track of, unfriendly to deck-building newcomers

Olexa

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Ranked Apr 2023 · #14 of 42 in that tierWatch the moment (2:03:54)

What players say

An open-world, single-player roguelite deckbuilder by Supercombo in which you lead a party of three anthropomorphic-animal heroes across a semi-open procedural map to stop Akhan the Calamity.

Players rate it Very Positive on Steam (about 82% of roughly 817 reviews), with praise for its hero variety, the three-character party and the editable deck, and a polished cartoon-animal look. Critics covered it only lightly: the two OpenCritic reviews (6.5 and 6 out of 10) call it enjoyable but complex, difficult and sometimes restrictive. Recurring complaints are a long grind to unlock everything, a slow UI and run pace, uneven hero balance, weak tutorialisation, and cards that turn out to be samey. It left early access on 22 September 2022 with three new heroes and an Arena mode, and later came to Epic, iOS and Netflix Games. It is a niche, low-volume title today, with only a handful of concurrent players on Steam.

Players love

Party of three heroes with a hand and deck for each, so every turn is a puzzle of splitting action points between characters
Lots of heroes to play with and many party and difficulty combinations, which keeps things feeling fresh
Deck is fully editable outside and between fights, with no forced bloat as in Slay the Spire style games
Semi-open map you can roam freely, choosing which regions to hit for rewards or XP instead of following a fixed node tree
Appealing cartoon-animal art style that draws people in
Lots of unlockables (cards, artifacts, ability customization) and multiple difficulty levels give long-term replay; reviewers with 80 to 110+ hours report it
Fun, approachable casual deckbuilder that is easy to pick up for relaxed sessions
Items and artifacts can be reused after battle, which players found a pleasant surprise

Common complaints

Heavy unlock and achievement grind; meta-progression needs a huge number of runs
Slow UI and very large maps make a single run take a long time, so it is hard to fit in a session
Hero balance is uneven, with some characters strong and others near useless
Explanations are poor: artifacts and effects like Burn are unclear or lack audio feedback, and the game is hard to learn
Card pool per hero is narrow, so builds get samey and depth can be false
UI pain points: artifacts are hard to look up, and cards must be dragged rather than click-and-target
Some boss mechanics (removing action points, damage immunity after a threshold) feel like turn denial instead of interactive challenge
Bugs reported: quest rewards not granted, map nodes becoming undiscovered on reload

Can feel tedious

Unlock grind for heroes, cards and achievements described as abysmal by some players
Runs are long and the UI is slow, so even one run per sitting is hard
Dragging cards on every play is fiddly
Having to manage three hands and many factors per turn is demanding and at times confusing because of poor explanation
Late bosses can shut down your plan through AP loss or damage immunity, which feels unfair to some
Lack of controller support and no undo irritate some players

What's unique

Three-hero party with three separate decks and hands, instead of the usual single-character deckbuilder
Open-world semi-open procedural 3D map where you can travel anywhere and start from any point, and enemies get harder the longer you linger in a province
Completely editable deck with a collection you swap cards in and out of, inverting the no-removal convention of the genre
Hero leveling and ability card unlocks persist between runs, giving it an RPG progression flavour
Arena mode focused purely on combat against corrupted versions of the world's heroes
Distinct anthropomorphic animal setting mixing magic and technology

Players want

Add click-to-target card play and controller support (currently drag and drop only; no controller)
Add an undo option for mistaken moves
Improve tutorials and in-game tooltips or an artifact compendium, and add audio/visual feedback for status effects
Speed up the UI and offer smaller or faster run formats; rebalance the unlock grind
Expand card pools and rebalance weak heroes so builds are more varied
Let players change their ultimate ability mid-run, possibly at a cost, to adapt to found artifacts and cards

Summarised from Steam reviews and community discussion.