I think I've played enough to give my opinion on this game. I like it. I don't want to stop playing, I got that "just one more turn!" bug.

Quick note before I go further, this is a PC port of a phone game, so if you are biased against phone games you might want to keep that in mind. However, I think there's a free version out there you could try to see if you like the gameplay. And if you want to complain about having to pay for something that is free in a different format, I'd like to remind you that on Steam this game has trading cards which you can sell to make back some of your money. And the price isn't bad, $5 seems right. If you have issues about price, then wait for a sale.

This game is a tactical turn-based card game. You have a deck of cards with fighter charcters (and animals), weapons and armor, and other items that affect buffs and debuffs. There is a main story but there's also online PVP. So far I've only been playing the story against the AI.

In this game you lose if your commander gets killed, so guard him (or her) carefully. It's like the king in chess. Checkmate and it's game over. You can choose who the commander is when you start each level.

Characters have various levels of attack strength, movement range, etc. Some can only attack in four directions (up, down, left, righ) while others can attack diagonally also. Some have to be right next to the enemy to attack, others can be one space away to attack with a bow. You can equip armor and weapons if you get those cards drawn. At the start of the game you get 5 cards and one card each turn. It's random so you never know what you're going to get. Part of the difficulty is that some of the characters are better with specific weapons (the archer gets a bonus for using a bow) but if you didn't get the right cards you might have to give your archer a sword or else wait and hope you get the bow card.

There are also animals that fight for you. You start with pigs (sow). They can't equip anything, except if you get the collar card later on. I just got another animal or creature but haven't gotten to use it yet.

As you can see from the screenshots the gameplay takes place on a grid. The colors represent where your characters can move. There are barriers that you have to move around, though remember some characters can attack diagonally and what seems to be a solid line of mountains actually might have a gap.

You get money (gold) after each level. Use that to buy card packs to get more cards. There is also crafting to level up your cards. I haven't experimented much with that yet because I haven't gotten many extra cards yet.

Graphics look kind of old school. If you don't like that sort of look, then you can decide from the screenshots. I personally don't care what a game looks like if the gameplay is good.

I can't think of anything else to say right now. I might update this review later on as I play more of the game.

This game looked stupid. And then the first video - BARF! super cheesy. But a reference to Card Hunter (dig it) caught my eye, so against my better judgement I gave the game a proper look. The game "sounded" solid, and the second video seemed to like it, so I honestly don't know why, but i bought it.

I'm shocked. Halfway thru the campaign and my impression is that It's good. It doesn't appear to have the same depth or polish as Card Hunter, but it's a worthy comparison. For me it captures the same engaging strategy thinking in ~15 minute chunks without being punishing or tedious.

Pro's:
Price - It's well worth $4
UI - Easy to grasp and efficient. Adding extensive mouse-over text would take it from good to excellent.
Tutorial - Sparse but effective. The "pass" mechanic (npi) seemed gimmicky at first, but now I see at as important to the flavor of this game.
Quality - The writing and card descriptions are sharp. No major bugs. Only one crash and it even told me why (failed to adjust resolution) and crashed gracefully.
Gameplay - It's deep enough to not be casual, and simple enough to not be hardcore. I'm fine with the amount of RNG so far.
PvP - Haven't tried it yet, but if anyone else is playing, i look forward to it.

Cons:
Marketing: The first impression (before buying) was so bad that I'm afraid not many others will buy it.
Graphics: I'm not a fan of the overall appearance. It doesn't detract from gameplay, but I find it amateurish. Reminds me of Dungeons of Dredmore which I also liked despite disliking the visuals.

Card Hunter fans should enjoy this, it's better than it looks,

Other dumb looking games that are fun:
Srututu (RPG/board game - not on Steam)
Bravada (Battle of Tiles/TBS)

I was surprised there weren't more reviews for Steamalot so I decided to write this in support of this small game. This game is quite fun despite being a phone port. Gameplay is simple square grid turn based strategy, which can be difficult at times though never overwhelmingly so. There are a few things I would like to point out that I don't think have been said already:

1) Deck sizes are 20 cards which seems to limit some of the possibilities for customization (though it probably also keeps the levels from going on for too long)

2) Card packs are purchased with coins that are won from battles or won from completing certain battles. You can buy more expensive packs with guaranteed rarer cards, but I found that just buying the cheapest pack with 5 random cards provided enough uncommon and rare cards to be a better purchase, especially since the extra common cards can be sold for coins or used to level other cards.

3) The developers have posted all the card creation combinations on their website. If you want to create cards, check out the list there. The combinations would otherwise be too difficult and time-consuming to figure out on your own.

4) Leveling cards is not necessary to beat the game on normal mode. Leveling more than a few cards to their max seems like it would take too much level grinding for coins unless you want to sacrifice some of your uncommon and rare cards that you only have a single copy of. Only recommended for completionists and extreme PvP players.

Overall, Steamalot is a fun, short strategy game that can be played in small bursts. I'm already hoping for a sequel.

An interesting mix of strategy, crafting, card game and turn-based strategy.
Even though it looks like it has simple mechanic and graphics, this game actually has that "one-more-round" effect.

Extremely addictive...what more would you want form an indie game!

Tags: Tactical
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library

TLDR: Ghetto MS paint medieval assets. TCCG elements to build tactical squad. No proper fullscreen. Removed multiplay but useless button remains.

The gimmick here is that you can TCCG your way to a better roster of tactics fighter by grinding coins and then going to the fake cash shop to buy ghetto booster packs. Upon closer inspection it is not all that fundamentally different from the traditional way of simply hiring people based on available ressources, and maximizing party synergy. While it is not a bad gimmick it does not save the title's value.

Being a battle card player, I really wanted to like this game. However, this game is confusing and not intuitive at all. Games like Magic the Gathering are much more complicated but the game flow and rules are so much more intuitive than this game. Sadly, I can't recommend this game.

Interesting strategy/card building game, a bit on the repetitive side.