Cards of Terra Review – Going it Alone

Card-based dungeon crawlers are all the rage nowadays, and there seems to be a new one landing every week. Cards of Terra stands out a little, because it does things differently. There’s no deck-building here, just a challenging riff on …

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Card-based dungeon crawlers are all the rage nowadays, and there seems to be a new one landing every week. Cards of Terra stands out a little, because it does things differently. There’s no deck-building here, just a challenging riff on solitaire that sees you clearing boards to free prisoners. 

You drag cards around the board, depositing them on top of other cards. This leads to a scrap. The creature with the most HP will win, reducing its own health by the number on the other card. If the numbers match, both of them will die and clear a space. 

There are different colored cards, and cards of the same hue won’t fight each other. Different cards have different special moves as well – some gain strength every turn, some lose it, some can spread their color to others, some will just flit about the board randomly. 

Every turn costs you some energy, and if you run out of energy before you’ve completed the challenge, you’ll fail. You can also spend energy to clear cards from the board, a move that’s super useful in certain situations.

There’s a puzzling edge here that’s going to keep you engaged, and a decent difficulty level that requires you to think carefully about your next move. But since the levels are so short, failing isn’t the end of the world, and it’s easy to jump back in for another go. 

This isn’t the sort of game that’s going to suck you in with its depth, but it’s light enough that you can pick it up for a quick game whenever you fancy. There are no tough rules to learn, and if you forget anything you can long press on a card to find out what it does. 

Cards of Terra is a neat little slice of distraction. It doesn’t have the chops to compete with the bigger card games available for mobile, but it’s enjoyable enough that it’s worth picking up and trying out. 

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The good

  • Easy to pick up and play
  • The right kind of challenging for short play sessions

The bad

  • Can sometimes be a bit annoying
  • Not super deep
80 out of 100