Dreamians: Card Battle Review

Dreamians: Card Battle is a roguelike deckbuilder developed and published by White Vortex Games, which I’m pretty sure is just one person. Taking place in the World of Dreams, where souls drift off to when they're asleep. These Dream Travelers take on new forms and interact with creatures called Dreamians. However, despite how friendly and nice this world can be, some dreamers seek to claim the world of dreams, partnering with Nightmares to help take it over. Now, it’s up to you to stop them. Is this game worth dreaming about or is it better to keep yourself up from this dream?

Oh, right. The game started in a foreign language. I hope you know what "Settings" is in Spanish!

I want to talk about the overall presentation and art style used, because that was what drew my eye. The card designs look like it’s from the 2000s’ card game craze, when every property or up-and-comer was trying to create something that could match or surpass Yu-Gi-Oh!, Magic The Gathering, or the Pokémon TCG. I’m also reminded of other things from that era, like Adventure Quest and Neopets. It's partially the reason why I decided to review this game: a nostalgic style that brought a slight smile to my face. It’s not professional or classically “good”, but it does evoke the feeling of someone making a game for fun and sharing it online. That being said, it does suffer from some inconsistency, as Dreamians and cards look like they’re all from different artists and sources of varying quality. Some look like Neopets while others look like Digimon, and there are some designs that seem to be made with MS Paint or a very limited understanding of Photoshop. It's sufficient, but don't expect works of art.

But how does it play? Well, just like any other roguelike, you’ll be travelling across a map of branching paths full of encounters, events, and shops to slowly but surely refine your deck to take on stronger and stronger foes until you beat the boss of that area. Repeat this five times until you win. Nothing crazy. There are three playable heroes to choose from at the start, who each have their own cards and playstyle: the half-red dragon, half-dog Dragnis; the blue wolf Wolfae; and the nightmare bat Kalek, with an additional two others who can be unlocked later. They are all fun to play with, but I’m not exactly a fan of their… later designs.

Anyways, let’s get into a fight. If you’ve played a roguelike deckbuilder in the past decade, it should be a familiar setup. You’ll be using your limited Radiance (mana) to execute attacks, cast spells, use items, and otherwise do everything you can to get your opponent’s HP to zero.

The most unique mechanics are card fusion and evolution. During a fight, you can use the Save Card card that is standard in every starter deck to add other cards to your Saved Card Pile. If you have the right combination, they'll fuse into a stronger variant. It seems like a cool feature, but I ended up ditching the mechanic as it wasted the resources needed to win and figuring out those combos takes too much effort to be considered useful. You can definitely win without touching card fusions in the slightest; I certainly did.

Man, some of these backgrounds aren't great.

Meanwhile, Evolution occurs once you attack enough, transforming your Dreamian into a more powerful form, and adds special Evo cards to your deck. It's not permanent, only lasting a few turns before reverting, but it can shift the tide of a losing battle. It’s cool, but it does have some drawbacks. For one thing, those Evo cards stay in your deck, which become useless when your Dreamian transforms back to its base form. You can’t use those cards and more are added to your deck each time it happens. It makes you more likely to brick completely and lose from something you can’t quite control.

I found the overall gameplay to be… functional. It works, and can create scenarios where the right cards at the right time can create explosive and flashy moves, but there are flaws that can make playing the game more frustrating than fun, and I found its evolution and card fusion mechanics to be novel at best, and detrimental at worst.

That’s not all the issues I ran into when I worked on getting to my first win. Sometimes, when I tried to play a card, it didn’t work. Couldn’t activate on the enemy or my character, so I had to exit to the main menu or prematurely end my turn. At times, there would be two audio tracks playing at the same time.

The more egregious examples are in the UI elements, such as HP bars overlapping each other, making it hard to see what enemies have if you are facing several at once, and the buttons are hit-or-miss, quite literally. I had to slowly find where to click to skip rewards and such, when it should be as easy as, well, pressing a button.

If anything, the most annoying aspect was the fact that there are no tooltips, so I initially didn't understand the various terms and statuses used. For example, Radiance is mana, Dream Crystals are money, and Limbo is Exhaust, but it doesn't tell you that straight from the get-go. You’ll have to dig through the Help and Gallery to get that information, which is an annoyance that has been solved several times over.

I beat the game in two tries (barring resets). Turns out, doubling strength and using multi-hitting attacks is really overpowered. The real kick up the backside was after the credits, where I found I got an E Rank. That… That feels insulting, I’m not going to lie. It also didn’t take me back to the menu afterwards, so I could start a new run. There are unlockable characters, different scenarios, and card fusions to discover, but I just didn’t have the motivation to try harder than necessary.

Am I being too brutal towards a small dev? Probably.

Dreamians: Card Battle is fine enough, but is largely underwhelming. If anything, it feels like a game that comes from the 2000s’, lacking some innovations and quality-of-life features that have been baked into the genre ever since games like Slay the Spire entered the scene. Still, it’s a good effort made by one person, but it just needs refinement in every area to really make it worth your time.