Game styles
Game style

Deck Builder

Your abilities are cards, and the deck itself is the thing you build.

In a deck builder you never press a movement key: everything you can do is a card, drawn from a deck you grow and shape as you play. The real game is not any single hand, it is deciding what your deck becomes.

The rules

  • Your moves are cards drawn from your own deck.
  • A small hand at a time, so every turn is a little puzzle.
  • Rewards are new cards, and each one changes what your deck can do.
  • Played cards cycle back around: the discard pile becomes the next deck.

Games like this: Slay the Spire, Balatro, Dominion.

Play a 60-second sample: Deck Builder

Lessons that build this style