Abalon: Roguelike Tactics CCG

Abalon (formerly Summoners Fate) is a roguelike adventure that fuses tactical turn-based combat and card strategy. You're tasked with the challenge of guiding your heroes through perilous quests in search of hidden secrets, powerful cards, titanious team members, and mutated rabbits.The world of Abalon is inspired by traditional tabletop environments, stretching from its frozen peaks to barren deserts and colorful woodland to dingy dungeons. Each world offers its own characters to find, mysteries to unravel and bosses to slay.Abalon draws its inspiration from classic tabletop games like Hero Quest, Dungeons and Dragons, and Magic: The Gathering, combining tactical combat with thoughtful events decided with the trusty roll of a D20. Exploring Abalon is done in real-time, allowing you to uncover lore scrolls, shop for powerful cards and even attend a goblin's birthday party (don't forget your gold).Combat brings Abalon into a turn-based game where unit positioning is as important as your spell casting. These tense encounters play out in arena-style maps where the environment isn't just for show, it's a key part of the battlefield. Equip powerful armor from a statue mid-fight. Slam your foes into a wall of spikes. Transform a tree behind enemy lines into an allied fighter. How you control the battlefield is your choice.In between the DnD style events and slaying of enemies you'll be collecting cards, lots of cards. Every Summoner is linked to two classes, including Arcane, Celestial, Nature, Void, and Chaos. These classes offer different playstyles: Chaos contains a lot of fire AOE spells for big damage whereas Arcane provides the ability to mind-control your enemies.Your deck in Abalon is capped at 20 cards, so you can collect all the cards you like knowing they won't hinder your current build. If you wish to change your playstyle halfway through your adventure then simply roast some marshmallows on the campfire and chat with the Cosmic Tortoise.Abalon offers an ever-changing adventure so it's important to adapt to the situation. The Battle Mode allows you to build a constructed deck from the cards you have discovered during your adventures. Bringing this deck, along with two allied units you can test your might against the toughest of foes!

Features:

Simple background: Coming to Abalon: Roguelike Tactics CCG, you will set foot in a fantasy world with endless battles. Following a summoner, you will embark on fascinating journeys with strange creatures. Through these exciting battles, you can discover the mysteries that this world is hiding. Defeating all the monsters that appear on the journey and searching for treasures is what you need to experience. What is waiting for you and your companions at the destination? Let’s find out together in Abalon.

Strategy and card gameplay: Abalon has an interesting gameplay with a combination of role-playing, strategy and card elements. The characters in the game consider you a god and what you give is their supreme command. Therefore, you can control the characters to move within their range, and join the fight if you want. Monsters often appear everywhere, so be careful before going one step further into the dark areas.You can also find summon cards while exploring this land. The turn-based combat mechanism can give you more time to think about using these cards. Build a strong deck and explore more lands. A little tip is that you can help your allies heal by dragging the healer to the injured person and attack the enemy with a simple drag.

Deck building in Abalon: There are currently more than 500 different cards in Abalon, including summon monster cards, summon monster power-up cards, and skill cards. With such a large number, players have the opportunity to create new gameplay with their own unique strategies. Although some levels have random card appearances, as long as you have a specific strategy, you can still play in your own style. Normally, the deck you own only has a maximum of 20 cards, so consider choosing the cards appropriately. Choose your favorite monsters to have the most exciting adventure.

Summoner characters of Abalon: Not only does Abalon have a large number of cards, it also has a large number of characters. They all have in common that they are summoners, the only difference is their appearance and fighting style. With their racial characteristics, these characters also have differences in strength stats. Simply like the Orc summoner D’Orc Slayer, Chieftain has more defense stats and health than other characters. However, all of these interesting characters are currently locked and can only be unlocked when you complete a certain level of the game. Some other characters may require you to pay to own them. But they are all worth owning!

Advantages:

Dynamic Command System: Direct heroes in real-time tactical skirmishes using intuitive drag-and-drop controls. Issue attack orders, cast spells, or reposition units mid-battle without waiting for clunky animations.  

Battlefield Chessmaster: Exploit terrain, traps, and flanking mechanics to chain devastating combos. Knock foes into allies’ attacks, bait enemies into environmental hazards, or feint retreats to lure them into ambushes.  

Roguelike Deck Crafting: Build a 20-card deck from 500+ options, blending summons, spells, and equipment. No grind—upgrade heroes through strategic gear swaps and adaptive synergies discovered during each permadeath run.  

God’s-Eye Strategy: Command from a top-down perspective with precise control over unit facing, positioning, and ability timing. Even undo misclicks to test alternate tactics mid-fight.  

Depth Over Complexity: Simple rules hide endless depth: flanking deals bonus damage, elevation grants ranged advantages, and spell combos (e.g., freeze + shatter) reward creative experimentation.  

Unconventional Heroes: Lead 225+ handcrafted units, from psychic lizard shamans to undead engineers wielding steampunk artillery. Each has fixed stats but limitless tactical roles based on gear and team composition.

Strengths:

Simple but attractive plot: Entering the world of Abalon, you will begin a mysterious journey in a fantasy land. The story revolves around a young summoner who carries the mission of exploring the wild lands and facing harsh challenges. On the path of conquest, you will meet mystical creatures and recruit them as allies, each with unique powers to help you overcome your opponents.The journey in the game does not stop at battles but also takes you deep into decoding the forgotten secrets of this world. Step by step, you will have to make important tactical decisions, each decision can change the course of the adventure. Can you reach the hidden treasure and become a legend? The colorful and challenging world of Abalon is waiting for you to explore.

Gameplay is a combination of many elements: The gameplay of Abalon brings an experience that harmoniously combines tactics, role-playing and card mechanics. In the role of a summoner, you will command your army on maps full of monsters and traps. Players can move characters according to the squares within the specified range, and at the same time come up with appropriate attack or defense strategies depending on the situation.An interesting point is the card mechanism that allows you to summon powerful creatures or activate special skills to change the situation of the battle. When fighting, the turn-based element gives you enough time to think and plan. Every decision is important, because small mistakes can lead to defeat.During the exploration, you will pick up new cards and strengthen your squad. In addition, healing teammates by dragging support characters to the necessary location is also an attractive factor.

Many available game modes: Abalon offers many interesting game modes, helping players explore the game world in their own way. Each mode is designed to bring a different experience, suitable for both beginners and veterans.In Adventure mode, players need to defeat three bosses to complete each level. Although each match only lasts about 3-5 minutes, the journey to get through all the levels can take hours. If you want to jump right into the matches, Battle mode is the perfect choice, where you can just team up and dive into battle.The Custom Adventure mode allows you to tweak the rules to your liking, opening up opportunities to experiment with new play styles. With Quick Adventure mode, players will form groups and engage in challenging Boss hunts. Finally, Survival mode requires you and your team to fight off successive waves of powerful enemies, a great challenge for any strategist.

Choose the right cards and summons: To date, Abalon offers more than 500 diverse cards, including monster summons, special skills, and power-ups. Thanks to this diversity, players can freely build decks that suit their strategies. Each deck is limited to a maximum of 20 cards, so carefully choosing the strongest cards that suit your play style is very important.In addition to cards, the game also offers many summons with unique characteristics. Each character is designed with a different appearance and fighting style, contributing to the excitement of each level. For example, D’Orc Slayer with outstanding defense or Chieftain with abundant health. Some characters can only be unlocked when you complete levels, while others require players to pay.

Comments:

Abalon - Just so you know my POV on this review, I got my key for this from Humble Bundle part of "FUNgeon Crawlers" bundle for 14€, the bundle included six other games. I just cleared my first run on novice (the easiest) difficulty.TLDR: What a treat!I went into this blind and not having any prior knowledge on this type of card/dungeon crawler/turn based type genre mishmash type of game but prior knowledge or familiarity with each genre on its own. So how does this mishmash work? Very well thus far! Every run taught something new and more importantly for me never felt really super unfair since the difficulty you choose gives you room for error and making the learning curve easier on the long run and getting some progression in getting to know new cards, items, enemies etc.Something that has been bothering: for some reason the performance, when moving freely around the levels the FPS seem to be all around the place and just weird tearing or just not smooth to the eye? But I will have to see if it has more to do with the setting or the game using wrong graphics card etc..Loved the soundtrack, the lore scrolls that have been sprinkled in the biomes to give some lore to the upcoming boss or just the world around, the random encounters that you can stumble into, the charm, enemy & biome variety and the amount of summoners you have to choose for each run.

I absolutely adore this game. It's got a really great hook that keeps me coming back for more and more runs. I enjoy turn based games like that where I can think about my moves, plan out attacks and take my time. I love the guardian aspect and equipping them with gear. I also like that the higher difficulties force you to try new cards and tactics. Each summoner feels unique and the leveling system allows you to try new combinations and gear up for higher difficulties.The developers are consistently updating which is awesome. They listen to feedback and are constantly improving the game. If you like card games that are unique, check this one out.

Good all around game play.Replayability is surprisingly high.The difficulty setting makes this enjoyable to all players.Thre is nothing atm that I would say is bad about this game.Having to unlock game variants is now new so I do not know how new players to this game feel about that.

Conclusion:

Abalon: Roguelike Tactics CCG – this indie game is an epic adventure with elements from bagels. The developers created a fantasy world inspired by board games. To participate in the battles, players will have to assemble a deck, because not only monsters, but also bosses will have to be defeated. As a reward for victories, assistants, treasures and spells will be given out.The developers of Abalon: Roguelike Tactics CCG promise more than 500 maps, including 225 manually created character maps. Despite the external complexity, there are no complex leveling systems in this game. At the same time, gamers are given the freedom to experiment with builds and equipment.