Lost Portal CCG 9+

Great deck-builder. Good variety of cards and plenty of options to upgrade. Fairly easy to learn, but still enough depth of play to keep it interesting.
I don’t give it a full 5 stars because the randomness of card draws seems…off, I guess. I have built and rebuilt my decks and still get fights where I draw literally nothing but all my mana cards. Other times, all minions and no mana. My last game, I bought 3 new cards and I drew them ALL on my first hand. Hmmm.
I get that this happens in card games, but it doesn’t feel right here. Often matches come down to who has a good draw and who has a bad one and if you have a bad draw there is little you can do about it to turn it around; might as well start over.
Still recommended though.

I love this game; been playing it for years. It's fun, engaging, and interesting, with a ton of cards and great gameplay. The developer keeps patching it and adding to it, which is amazing to me, and it keeps getting better, with a new expansion added just a little bit ago despite this game being several years old. The randomly-generated areas accessible through a portal are an excellent touch for replayability, and I absolutely love that the developer recently made the special cards unique to each opponent drop more frequently, cutting down severely on grind.

Buy it if you like single-player, easy-to-pick-up card games with no microtransactions, no lag, good mechanics, and continuing love and attention from its creator. To say so, I favor gameplay over story or setting for something like this, so it doesn't bother me that the writing isn't tight, but if you're looking for that it's not here, sorry. Just battle after battle, with some occasional "Please help my brother!" which, of course, translates to "Go fight ______ in a dungeon colored thematically but which is otherwise essentially the same as any other!" The enemies are different, though, with interesting combos and deck composition tailored to them, and their own aforementioned special cards you can get when winning.

If he ever makes the spaced-themed game he appeared to be working on, I'd be psyched to play that too, I'm sure.

Never written a review before - had to for Lost Portal. Great CCG for a player who likes a challenge. Easy to pick-up and put-down to fit in throughout the day, so I’ve played a lot!

I had to work my way up to the hardest mode and “lose cards or gold” penalty, but the challenge is worth it. Really have to intelligently utilize all the tools (smith, shop, level up) available to win.
I haven’t yet gone into the ‘past main storyline’ stuff, but I’m looking forward to it. For the price the game is fantastic.

Not game-breaking, but a couple bugs I want to point out in case the developer wants to know:
1. For any battle, if you shut the game off before the penalties (gold/cards) are dealt fully, the battle is reset. I used this exploit to work my way up to handling the hard mode on a early playthrough and avoid penalties.
2. For the card penalties, you can “lose” cards that were placed in your graveyard through the battle. Effectly nullifying a penalty. Interaction only happens if you have cards like Torakal, Master’s Will, Death Undone, in the deck that can steal enemy cards.

Lots of interactions to discover and decks to build. I definitely feel like the game was built for someone who takes CCGs seriously, as on easier modes you kind-of become super powerful and rarely if-ever lose, and eventually don’t have a use for the shop & smithy. But that hardest mode is frustratingly challenging in the best kind of way. Great game!!