Dungeon Deck Builder

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Dungeon Deck Builder is a free online deck-building roguelike you play in the browser. You start with ten cards — five Strikes, four Defends and a Bash — and three energy a turn to spend on them. Every monster shows the move it will make next, with the exact damage already adjusted for whatever vulnerable, weak or strength is on the board, so choosing between hitting harder and blocking is a real calculation rather than a guess. Clear a floor and you choose: take one of three new cards, or skip the card and rest for ten health. Health never refills on its own, so the whole run is an argument between getting stronger and staying alive. Twenty-one cards, six monsters with fixed intent loops, four status effects that stack and interact, and a Warden at the bottom of the dungeon with a hundred and twenty health and a habit of buffing himself. Every run has a seed: Replay deals the same shuffles and the same card offers, so a run lost on floor seven can be rebuilt rather than merely repeated.

How to play Dungeon Deck Builder

1. Press Play. You start with ten cards, seventy per cent of them Strikes and Defends, and draw five of them.
2. You have three energy each turn. The circle on a card is what it costs; a card you cannot pay for goes grey but stays readable.
3. Click a card to play it. Click a monster first to choose which one a single-target card hits — if you do not, it hits the leftmost one still standing.
4. The line above each monster is what it will do next turn, and the damage shown already accounts for every status on the board. It is never a guess and never random.
5. Block soaks damage and then vanishes at the start of your next turn, so blocking for a turn the monsters are not attacking on is wasted.
6. Press End turn — or E — when you are done. Your whole hand is discarded, the monsters act in order, timed statuses tick down and you draw five fresh cards.
7. Vulnerable makes the target take half again as much damage. Weak makes the attacker deal a quarter less. Strength adds to every hit. Poison burns at the start of the owner's turn and drops by one.
8. Poison burns before a monster moves, so a monster that dies to poison never gets its turn — worth remembering against the heavy hitters.
9. When the last monster falls you are offered three cards. Take one, or press Rest instead and heal ten without adding anything.
10. Health carries from floor to floor and there is no other healing, so the reward screen is the run's real decision.
11. Eight floors, ending with the Warden. Lose and the run is over; Replay this run deals the same shuffles and the same offers, New run deals a different dungeon.

Tips

• Read every intent before you play a single card. Blocking a turn early wastes the block, and blocking a turn late costs you the health.
• Block is not always right. Against nine incoming damage with one Defend in hand you soak five; against a monster on four health, killing it removes the whole attack.
• A thin deck draws its good cards more often. Every card you take is one more thing between you and your Bash, so taking nothing is a real play, not a wasted reward.
• Vulnerable pays off most on your biggest hit. Bash then Heavy Blow is worth far more than Heavy Blow then Bash, and it is the same two cards.
• Poison beats block completely — it ignores the monster's armour and burns before it acts, so it is the answer to the Stone Guard.
• Against two monsters, count both intents together. One of them is usually a debuff or a brace, and the total incoming is often far less than it looks.
• Rest when you are below half, not when you are nearly dead. The dungeon gets heavier every floor and ten health is worth less the later you take it.
• Exhaust cards are one-shot for the fight but they never clog the deck afterwards. War Cry on the first turn of a boss fight is worth more than a whole extra attack.

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