A pixel art, roguelite card game that fuses Solitaire-style game mechanics with monster battling, Solitomb is available now from itch.io, where it can be played for free in your internet browser.
Solitomb may look simple, but looks can be deceiving; it’s actually a pretty tough game, with some mechanics that give it a bit of a steep learning curve. But once you get your head around how it works, it becomes an incredibly compelling and surprisingly deep experience.
Created by Jakub Wasilewski, in Solitomb you are an adventurer, tasked with clearing out a dungeon of its monsters, after making a pact with a demon. To achieve this, you’ll shift cards around on the Solitaire tableau, with the familiar mechanic of being able to move a lower valued card onto one with a higher value (though you can also move a card with equal value onto another one too). Every time you move a card, the “demon clock” counts down, and once it gets far enough along, the demon will take chunks out of your soul, ending in a game over if he devours it all!
You can move up to five cards from the tableau to the demon clock to appease it, however, using Poker hands to turn the clock back and stop the demon from getting to your tasty soul. Different suits of cards can raise your attack or defense, or cause the monsters on the cards to engage you in battle.
Some monster cards carry gems, and these can be used to aid in your escape to the next floor of the dungeon, as can clearing columns of cards to open the way to the exit.
The current version of Solitomb is not the full game; rather, if you download or play the current version (which is technically free, but is offered on a pay-what-you-want basis) and pay for it, the funds will go towards the development of an expanded edition, which is planned for launch on Steam. It will be known as Seal of Solitomb; you can already add it to your Steam wishlist, despite there being no release date revealed as of yet.
Want to check out other digital card games? Take a look at the list of games included in the nostalgic compilation, Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection, or Pokémon TCG Pocket’s Mythical Island set.
