Review: Deck ‘Em is A Swing and A Miss

Deck ‘Em takes Solitaire, one of the world’s most played games, and puts a unique twist on it.

What I love about video games is the way the industry iterates on itself. Specifically when looking at games made by independent developers there’s almost always going to be a game that immediately pops to mind when you see a new indie roll by.

You play as a newbie boxer who is trying to make their name in the boxing ring. To do so you need to defeat The Champ by outwitting him aka not getting knocked out. The simple goal is to survive a fight against this champion, twelve rounds to be exact.

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Deck ‘Em Review

It plays out like a normal game of solitaire where the main mechanic is you draw cards and allocate them appropriately on your board. For example, you draw four cards, and you can potentially have a block, a champ card, a healing card and a punch or hook. Your play area is on the bottom half and the cards that are drawn are on the top. You have your character and three other slots to place a card to hold for the next round.

All of these cards have a respective number attached to them. For example if a Champ card has a 6, that’s how much health and damage they will deal to you. A block card that you have drawn may have a 4 block and 6 damage on it so when you play that card on top of the Champ’s 6 card you will take the difference of the block and their attack but take down the champ that round since you attacked for their whole health.

If you’re lucky enough to also draw some health aid during the round you can apply that then go to the next one, but most of the time you will just not have any health aids for a round. This is where the biggest issue with Deck ‘Em comes in to play.

The game forces the player to take damage or use cards every round even if it’s going to be a horrible result. Now, a lot of games are like this, but they have other systems to navigate intentionally taking damage or not having a way to heal or block yourself. Since Deck ‘Em is a game all decided by the draw of the card the randomness within never comes across as being fair or even like the game is beatable for that matter. I played the game for a good amount of hours and never won once. Most of the time it just felt like out the gate I was going to lose and there’s not anything I can do about it.

I think Deck ‘Em might be a good game for people who are looking for a time waster in between matches of Counter Strike or something like that but as a game to focus your time into? There’s not going to be anything you get out of it.

Why You Should Buy Deck ‘Em

If you are looking for a relatively cheap time-sink game, this should do the trick for you.

Why You Shouldn’t Buy Deck ‘Em

It’s a never-ending sprint of RNG that can sometimes be very unfair.

What Platforms Is Deck ‘Em On?

iOS, macOS, and Windows!

Is Deck ‘Em Multiplayer?

It is not but it could be a cool addition later down the line!

Thanks for reading this review of Deck ‘Em! Now that you know how we feel about it, why not take a look at some of our other content, such as Review: Smurfs Kart is a Great Karting Game for Fans of the Franchise if Nothing Else and Review: Pharaoh A New Era is a Pleasant Return to the Past! Also, be sure to check out Gamer Journalist on Facebook to stay in the conversation!