Trials of Fire (2021)

Felt deceptively boring at first, almost refunded it, but it became quite addictive, one I learned how to play better. Now I'm at 23 hours and can't stop playing it.

One run may take 2-4 hours and sometimes two unfortunate (or badly planned) turns in a row can mean a game over. This feels especially frustrating if it happens at the final boss, who is usually a lot stronger than your regular enemies. I wish there was an option of manual saves.

That being said, I only lost a handful of runs, once you learn how to play, the game feels manageable and mostly fair.

Art style looks interesting. Had to completely disable sound, due to annoying ambience. Deck building is streamlined well, you rarely feel overwhelmed by too many choices, but still have opportunities to build good synergies.

Even in Early Access currently, this game has given me a solid 18 hours of gameplay just playing around in the first scenario. I'm sure it could get tedious over time, but given this is just the early access build, I still haven't unlocked two characters, and there's more characters and likely a good amount more content to come, I think this game will easily pay itself off and then some.

If you like roguelike games, "deckbuilders" (this isn't a completely straightforward deckbuilder, decks are built with equipment and leveling, rather than directly sticking cards in a deck), and/or tactical games, I'd definitely recommend giving this a look.

I don't want to give this a 5/5 stars, because I tend to save that for truly stand out games, but I definitely think 4/5 stars falls short (I always prefer an out of 10 system because that feels like there's a lot more room for nuance in my ratings, especially since most things I'll even play will probably fall at around the halfway mark or higher because I play them because something about them interests me in the first place).

But I definitely recommend this game, even in its Early Access state, but if you're the type to want to avoid that sort of thing, I'd at least advise keeping an eye on it.