Foretales and Cardpocalypse

Games with card based mechanics!

Foretales

A simple job to steal a magic lyre very much goes sideways when the thief Volepain (that's you) starts getting visions of the future after touching it. From then on its a race to try beat the many "doom clocks" by undertaking story based missions and the way it works is really clever. Each party member has their own deck of cards and your hand is made up of a combination of them, and as they function both in combat and in exploration it becomes a balancing act of spending things to advance your mission or hanging on to others for upcoming fights (which you can often win without fighting - depending on your foe).

Nice bright art, nice tutorial, good characters, and interesting puzzles are a big draw for this one - but then they had to go ruin it. Instead of being a branching story based on your choices, you are eventually made to go back and repeat missions to... extend the game time? Sorry, that one design choice killed this for me - but I did enjoy it quite a lot before that point. Not sure if I would recommend...

Cardpocalypse

As a new student in school you quickly discover that all your peers play the uber popular Pokemon PowerPets card game that involves two players battling each other using an animal themed card deck with the objective of defeating the opponents "champion" card who always starts on the table. On each of your turns you can add minions with varying powers to the board (depending on the amount of pet food available). The tutorial is pretty good in this one too in introducing basic mechanics but the art style is weak compared to Foretales, and the main gameplay loop of constant battling gets tiring quickly.