Aces And Adventures Review (Steam)

by Jim Smale · Published February 27, 2023 · Updated February 24, 2023

For our Aces And Adventures Review, we play a deckbuilding RPG with poker-powered combat. Craft your deck, combining poker hands with powerful ability cards. Journey through 13 fully-voiced campaigns to save the Life Tree, or tackle procedurally-generated runs in this strategic deck builder unlike any other.

Aces And Adventures Review Pros:

Decent graphics.
1.9GB download size.
Steam achievements.
Graphics settings – resolution, v-sync, fullscreen, resolution scale, quality preset, particle/foliage quality, motion blur, depth of field, ambient occlusion, bloom, and volumetric lighting.
Game settings – language, main hand scale, tutorial messages, 3D tooltips, map tooltips, sync the narrative, hover for tooltips, show potential damage, auto select target, and quick mana vial animations.
Can rebind controls for the mouse.
The help section in the menu shows valid hands.
Card battler gameplay.
Four character cards to unlock – Rogue, Mage, Hunter, and Enchantress.
Fully voiced from character interactions to card descriptions.
Attack by selecting valid poker hands from your cards dealt.
Damage is calculated by how many cards you played and not the card’s value.
Defending attacks can be done by matching the number of cards used to damage.
Upon a successful defense, the attacker takes the damage.
Easy to control with just the mouse.
A card’s health is represented by a dice underneath.
Your story is told via cards and is determined by the story chosen.
Level up to get new abilities, rewards, and cards.
Opening tutorial with I going pop-ups.
Helpful text pop-ups, won’t let you do any card hands or play without an attack counter.
Get shield dice that absorb hits before your health dice.
You can fast-forward the dialogue.
Cool card art.
Traits change how a card works.
Guard is a trait that means that character must be attacked first no matter what.
Uses a standard deck of cards with special ability cards mixed in.
Cards can trigger pop-out animations.
Pick up and inspect any visible card.
Multiple choice encounters, especially choosing the route ahead.
Mama is earned at the end of a run and unlocks ability packs.
Sacrifice ability cards to buy new cards in the shop during a run.
If a damage and defense card value match then no one takes damage.
Fast animations.
It’s a very chilled game with simple controls amd laid-back combat.
Very well presented.
Full deck creator for each character.
13 campaigns to unlock and play.
As you fill up a mana container, you can then use that to grow new leaves on the tree.
Handy save and exit option.

Aces And Adventures Review Cons:

The game just jumps straight in and starts a run with story cards etc.
No easy to access cheat sheet menu for legal card hands, instead, it’s a case of pressing a button and going to a menu.
Cards have a habit of repeating themselves a lot.
Doesn’t explain itself very well.
It feels like luck is the main thing, not skill.
Takes a bit of time to unlock a new character.
A lot of cards will shine and shimmer but it’s not always the ideal time to play them.
The defending part of the game takes the most time to learn.
No way to customize the play space.
It really is the first half a dozen runs or so that are the worst as you just play the same story over and over until you get unlocks.

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