Nadir: A Grimdark Deck Builder is a card-based battle game that puts you in the role of a cursed soul who travels through the pits of hell to gather resources. Featuring deck building, multiple attack methods, and never-before-seen combat mechanics, you’ll have to balance your attacks against the threat of enemy retaliation.
The backstory is that you are a historical dead man, starting with “Jeanne” (Dark) and later unlocking Vlad (Tepes) and (Hernan) Cortez, trying to build their own power base in the land of hell. It’s a strange choice to put St. Joan in the same company as those two men, let alone hell, but here we are.
Each character has a small core deck of cards and hit points. Jeanne also starts with armor points that the other two can earn through play. She has 4 realms of Nadir that she can travel to, but 2 of them are locked until she has collected enough resources.
Each character and enemy realm has its own style. Jeanne is a straight-up combatant who uses her attacks to pierce enemy defenses. Vlad specializes in weakening enemies with debuffs. Cortez can summon her wraith to attack or increase her protection.
On the enemy side, depending on the type of demon you’re fighting (classified as one of the 7 deadly sins), you can fight creatures that try to drain you, bleed you, or straight up crush you.
An important part of the battle is how you play your cards. Both the player and the enemy have (generally) three cards each, divided into red and blue effects, with the enemy’s cards either completely red or blue. effect, there is a red effect underneath. Additionally, these effects cost him 1-3 and can only be played if the enemy shows the required number of that color. Therefore, if you want to make his 2 point attack for blue, the enemy must see his 2 cards of blue.
This is where things get tricky. Enemies do not attack alone. By playing cards, the enemy’s cards will be charged until they are full, and will be activated at the end of the turn. So if an enemy’s red card has his 5 dots (strong attack), he can play up to 4 dots worth of his own red attack before coming into play.
Another level of complication is that when you play cards with multiple dots, they are evenly split between enemy cards. If you’re not careful, he may come back with two or three attacks at once.
Players can also “delay”. That is, flip all the cards and draw a new set, flipping the faces and colors of the opponent’s cards. This is useful if you’re trying to dodge a massive attack, but the flipped card won’t disappear. Just wait until the other side is full or delay it again and it will come back.
The game also features many buffs and debuffs that can affect both you and the demon. Rust disintegrates armor, Bleeding causes hit point damage each time you make an attack, and Counter grants a free attack after an enemy attacks you, in addition to healing and armor improvement attacks.
Defeating enemies gives you resources. Then fight more enemies, buy effects for new cards, combine them with old ones, and descend into lower-level hell. You’ll be given the option to return to your base with what you’ve collected by then.
You lose most of your resources when you die, so retreating is a wise option, especially when you first start playing. But even if you don’t die, you’ll lose everything but your basic card set when you return to the base. When you go down again, you only have the most basic attacks.
Building your base unlocks bonuses such as other characters and realms, card options to collect, and healing abilities between levels.
The fun of the game lies in the repetition. In your first few playthroughs you are very underpowered and get killed quickly. Next, learn attack styles and progressions.
A big problem with the game is that it feels unfinished, with bugs being fixed during updates. There isn’t much documentation about this online, so I’m still not sure what resources you’ll need to collect to unlock the final set of buildings. or continue fighting for better resources.
That said, it was fun picking up on the nuances of Nadir: A Grimdark Deck Builder. Unlocking all cards for a character allows you to not only choose coercion Different playstyles can be found with the upgrade cards provided. In one round, Vlad got a ton of bloody debuffs, but in another round, the bonus his cards offered forced him to play differently. But the positive choices I made in combat, combined with the consequences imposed on me, provided a compelling puzzle to solve each time.
