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Deck of Ashes
- Developed by
- AYGames
- Published by
- ESDigital Games
$19.99
Deck of Ashes is an adventure game with tactical card combat. One character at a time, lead the cast of antiheroes on a quest for redemption. Explore the cursed fantasy world and hunt down powerful cards. Forge a unique Battle Deck, and crush your foes! Can you rid the world of the Ash Curse?
Consensus
F57.5/100
Steam players71.6% positiveMostly Positive1,070 reviews
Metacritic ↗66/100
VG Insights estimate ↗≈32.1K copies · ≈$398K gross
What creators say
What players say
A dark-fantasy deckbuilding roguelite/RPG from AYGames in which a cast of antiheroes explores a camp-and-map world fighting turn-based card battles where played cards turn to ash and must be paid back with health to reuse.
Deck of Ashes is received as a mixed-to-decent, niche deckbuilder. Steam sits at Mostly Positive (about 72 percent of roughly 1,070 reviews), while critics land in the 6-7 out of 10 band, with a Metacritic score of 66 from 4 reviews and outliers at both ends (Gamer's Palace 93/100 versus Xbox Hub 2.5/5). Nearly everyone praises the art, voice work, character writing and boss fights; nearly everyone dislikes the slow, padded combat, the housekeeping after battles, and uneven polish. It spent just over a year in Early Access (April 2019) before a full PC/Mac release on June 9, 2020, then reached Xbox One, PS4 and Switch in 2021-2022 as the Complete Edition. Recent Steam reviews (2025-2026) still complain about broken controller/menu handling, and the game is now regularly bought very cheaply on sale.
Players love
- Hand-drawn, original art direction and distinctive, instantly readable card art
- Four likeable, flawed antihero characters, each with their own mechanics and story campaign
- Voice acting, music and sound design are strong for an indie, especially Magnus and the Ash Master
- Boss fights feel epic and puzzle-like, rewarding adapting your strategy
- The Ash Deck risk/reward system (spend health to renew used cards) creates real tactical tension
- Badlands mode offers a streamlined, Slay the Spire-style pure card-battle roguelike run
- Dark, grimy tone and narrative give it more story weight than most roguelike deckbuilders
- Good value when discounted; some players report being happy with 7+ hours at a few pounds
Common complaints
- Combat is slow and spongy: trash fights take too many turns even on easy difficulty, and balance is conservative
- Ash (the resource that gets you new cards) is tightly limited, so card acquisition is a bottleneck; other resources feel meaningless until late
- The node/map and camp exploration feel repetitive and boring, with repetitive events and little sense of going anywhere
- Early chapters repeat almost identically across characters and runs, hurting roguelite variety
- Persistent bugs reported since launch: NPC upgrade failures, visual glitches, sound mixing, and debuff balance problems (one debuff reportedly distorts crafting by a large margin)
- Controls are broken for many players, with controller confirm prompts getting stuck and the ESC menu sometimes impossible to close (one reviewer says the problems go away with the gamepad unplugged and mouse used)
- Presentation inconsistencies: awkward font choices, localization/translation errors, uneven voice acting and disproportionate character designs
- Dodge chance and monster first-turn speed advantage feel arbitrary in an otherwise deterministic system, with no action log to review
Can feel tedious
- Paying to renew and housekeeping your deck after every battle is slow and laborious
- Wandering around camp repeatedly gathering resources until a boss shows up
- Long trash fights and padded boss encounters that require extra map traversal
- Camp upgrade system that overwhelms with analysis paralysis
- Recipe-based rewards and unpredictable negative cards that dilute decks instead of giving the satisfaction of picking a card
- Grinding battles early because other resources are irrelevant until endgame
What's unique
- The titular Deck of Ashes: cards used in battle are temporarily consumed into an ash pile and must be renewed by paying life points (strain)
- A camp/survival-expedition structure with resource management layered on top of card combat, rather than a pure node-map climb
- Card recipes and crafting instead of straightforward card rewards, with persistent negative cards entering your deck
- Each character has a unique story campaign, alongside the separate Badlands roguelike mode
- Visual cues often compared to Darkest Dungeon combined with Slay the Spire mechanics, with a narrative-first angle
- One Steam reviewer compares it to a smaller, lighter Gordian Quest (single mention, not a broad consensus)
Players want
- Fix and polish controller and keyboard/mouse input, menu handling and save loading
- Add more playable characters beyond the current four and more variety in early-game encounters
- Speed up combat and reduce spongy enemy health so ordinary fights do not drag
- Make non-Ash resources matter earlier and loosen the card acquisition bottleneck
- Improve the map/node events and camp progression so exploration feels purposeful
- Add a combat log and clearer information about speed, dodge and debuff effects
Summarised from Steam reviews and community discussion.
Steam tags
Card BattlerRPGIndieDeckbuildingRoguelike DeckbuilderStrategyAdventureRogue-liteCard GameSingleplayer
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Tier list Part 1 (2023)
Deck of Ashes is a deck-building roguelike where you play a single character with traditional cards, travelling a node-style map where each stop is an event or a fight. He finds nothing especially unique in it and considers the gameplay pretty basic. He dislikes the art style and the game's overly serious tone that clashes with the goofy visuals. He found it boring and places it in the bottom tier, a D as best the ASR suggests, while acknowledging some people enjoy it.
Liked
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