In the years since the Roguelike deck builders first shuffled onto our screens, we’ve seen all sorts of different takes on this cardboard inspired genre. I’ve played dozens of these compelling titles, ranging from dark sci-fi adventures all the way to a whimsical cartoon pig deck builder. There are a whole lot of Roguelike deck builders that I’d describe as having a generic fantasy theme though, and Dragon Front Adventures absolutely belongs on that list. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a bloody good time though.
Regardless of its familiar theming, Dragon Front Adventures does a lot to stand out in the deck building space. Battles involve champions (the leaders of each side of the battle) aiming to attack each other, with three slots to place their units between their foe. These are the cards you’ll draw, and once you place them you’ll take turns attacking and then defending. On the attack phase each of your units will attack the closest enemy one by one, dealing damage to their health and taking damage back in return. With clever placement and the use of a few abilities your warriors will hopefully survive, and will carve a path to the champion in doing so.
When it’s time to defend you’re basically in the opposite position, attempting to survive incoming attacks. Battles will go back and forth until one champion loses all their health, and if that’s you then the Roguelike run continues. It doesn’t take long to feel comfortable with the battle system, but there’s a lot of depth to play around with too.
Often the position of units is rather important, because of their effects. For example one early unit I used a lot healed the warrior in front of it at the end of every turn, so by combining a bulky fella with this I’d be able to take a whole lot of punishment. Some units will gain extra health or strength if they’re placed last, others will deal damage to enemies the moment they hit the field. The effects are incredibly varied and fun to play around with, and that’s before you start slotting gems into their cards.
As you’d expect from any deck builder, you are given more and more cards for your deck as you progress through a run. Often more important than this though is using gems to upgrade your current cards with powerful effects. These come in all shapes sizes, from shield gems that allow your units to take a free hit in battle to double attack gems that ensure they can carve through the enemy with ease. You can equip three gems to each card too, which means you can create some ridiculously badass combinations that ruin the lives of other champions.
The back and forth of combat in Dragon Front Adventures is incredibly compelling, and part of that is because of how impactful your non unit cards are. Since you can only have three warriors fighting for you at a time you need other stuff in your deck to swing the battle in your favour, and boy do these cards do that. Basic cards that deal damage to units are great at ensuring your army can power through to the champion, and cards that draw more cards will keep your army topped up after a rough skirmish. My first successful run hinged pretty much entirely on stun cards that let my army walk all over the enemy, and these are but a tiny slice of the cards you’ll find on your adventures.
Because Dragon Front Adventures is a Roguelike deck builder, it is contractually obligated to feature branching paths which dictate the battles, rest points and upgrades that make up a run. In an interesting twist it doesn’t allow you to see too far ahead along the web of roads, which adds a little bit of mystery and random chance at least. I loved risking it all by taking on tougher elite encounters for higher reward whenever they popped up, but I won’t pretend this always worked out for me.
Playing through my first run of Dragon Front Adventures took well over an hour, which I will admit is longer than I was expecting. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that there were a whole four other factions to play through the game as, each with multiple champions to unlock that change the way you’ll play entirely. This is a deep Roguelike deck builder with a shed load of content, which could easily stay installed on your Steam Deck or laptop for years to come.
Dragon Front Adventures really is a wonderful addition to this ever popular genre, and I don’t have many complaints with it at all. I think the biggest issue is how massive each run feels, which makes it a bit daunting to start a new one. Failure in a Roguelike is often rather painful, but because of how much time you put into runs here it’s worse than ever. I do also have to mention the theming being rather generic too, which doesn’t really matter when you’re deep in battle but is a bit of a shame.
Dragon Front Adventures is a Roguelike deck builder that you could keep playing for years, with engaging combat and plenty of build options. It does just enough to evolve the genre to ensure it feels fresh and fun every time you jump into a new run, and there’s always something to work towards unlocking. I’m so glad I didn’t judge this book from its cover, because its content is top notch.