Pawnbarian

In Pawnbarian, you make your move by playing cards, usually based (depending on your character) on Chess piece cards to move/attack on a small 5x5 chessboard. You have a single character to control, and the random cards in your hand determine how your character moves/attacks, but you can play a few cards per turn.

The standard character follows the rules of the chess pieces. Given that not all cards can move backwards, it does make you think more tactically. For example, the Pawn can move forward 1 square, and attack diagonally, but cannot move backwards at all.

Each character also has special moves which means they all play differently. With the Pawnbarian character, you can turn Pawns into Queens when you reach the top of the board. Knight Templar doesn't have "Cantrips" but automatically gets one when playing two Knights in the turn. He also has cards which can "Purify" which clears the blight.

The cards are also augmented with powers. One attacks all cardinally adjacent squares. Another attacks the diagonal squares. There's "Cantrip", represented by a bolt of lightning, which gives you an extra turn. The shield gives you defence against one point of damage.

Completing a floor heals 1 health, and you need to make sure you do well on early levels to give you a chance of taking down the final level on the 7th floor.

You earn coins by completing levels quicker. You spend these coins at the end of each "floor" to upgrade your cards, or health capacity. This shop mechanic is unnecessarily awkward. You can't just select the upgrades you want then leave the store, you have to constantly move using a couple of cards, then move to the exit.

The enemies have traits that almost require these abilities to take down. Some enemies are immune when attacked adjacent, or only vulnerable when attacked adjacent. There are loads of enemies that have abilities that stack against you. There's one with "Nimble" which dodges your first attack, so you have to either attack the same enemy twice or attack them when there is no free space (if they can't dodge, then they are killed instead). Some of these enemies also have "Void Grasp" which moves you in the direction you attacked. So if you have to attack them twice, you can almost guarantee you are gonna receive 1 point of damage due to hitting the edge of the map, and also you will be quite far from where you started. This could be a positive or negative really depending on where the enemies and blight are.

Blight is poison that is left on squares. You will only be damaged if you end the turn in this square, so will take the damage from blight, plus any enemies who are attacking that square. Some enemies leave blight when they move, and others leave blight when they die. So sometimes it is like you are being punished for attacking certain enemies early, and sometimes for attacking them late. You cannot remove blight other than if your character has the Purify ability which most do not.

For the third boss, he has a few tentacles to start with which are individual enemies. He will spawn in 1 every turn if you defeat an enemy, this includes the tentacles. So what that means is, that you have to take out at least 2 per turn. If you kill one, he just replaces it. The tentacles have "void grasp" which moves you in the direction you attacked. If something is blocking that move, or if you take out 2 in the same attack, then you take 1 damage. The board will be full of blight which means if you stay there, then you will take damage. So essentially, you have to attack twice, knowing that can give you 2 damage due to void grasp, then the square you land on could give you 1-4 damage. So unless you have the purify or shield upgrades, then you will quickly kill yourself.

The game does suffer from massive difficulty spikes when the entire board can be filled with squares that are dealing 3-5 damage. You are shown how much damage each square will give you, but with extra behaviours like Void Grasp, it may be difficult to really know where you will end up and how much damage will be dealt to you. It's difficulty spikes like this that often plague roguelike games.

There's 3 Dungeons but then you replay them with different characters and can also increase difficulty with the "Chain" feature. It's already difficult, so unlocking several difficulties seems an impossible task.

It is frustrating when you die on the final level and have to play again. It's very much like Slay the Spire where you can make good progress through the normal stages, then die on the boss because really, it requires a specific deck configuration and the required luck in your hands in order to actually defeat it. It is incredibly satisfying when you feel like all is lost but then come up with an amazing strategy to turn it around.