Dawncaster is mobile deckbuilding roguelite that is in the esteemed company of Slay the Spire and Balatro for how many hours I have played, and how willing I was to pay real dollars for the privilege. While it does have some design choices that limit its depth, I can consistently find myself playing runs lasting for hours while also experimenting with different strategies.

As mentioned, Dawncaster is a deckbuilding roguelite. At the beginning of each run, you can choose between one of six classes, which is then customized with a selection of Basic Attacks, a Weapon Ability, and then a special Starting Card. Alternative options can be unlocked using in-game currency earned from daily quests and completing runs (win or lose). Once you begin a run, you enter “Canto 1” (of 9) and are presented with three encounter options from a “deck,” which can include treasures, shrines, NPCs, or monsters. With the exception of treasures, the two non-selected encounter cards are then reshuffled into the deck. Your goal is to work your way to the boss of the Canto and defeat them.

Monster combat is fairly typical for the genre. Each turn, you gain energy of a specific type (Blue, Green, Red, etc) for your class and draw 5 cards; leftover energy is carried over into future turns, but cards are discarded. From this base, a wide variety of scenarios and strategies develop. There are debuffs like Bleeding, Poison, Doom, and buffs like Armor, Barrier, Focus. There are cards that draw cards, cards that discard cards, cards that stay in your hand from turn to turn, curses that go into your deck or the enemy’s deck, enchantments, temporary cards, and so on and so forth. Also, cards can be upgraded and even have keywords added to them.

If anything, the sheer breadth of options is one of the shortcomings of Dawncaster. And, paradoxically, that same breadth leads to many runs feeling the same.

As mentioned previously, there are six classes… but there are no specific class cards, only color cards. Certain classes start locked to a specific color, such as the Arcanist and Blue energy. After each successful combat encounter, you get to select one of three card rewards that are tied to what energy you have access to. Generally speaking, the mechanics within each color are synergistic, but even when they aren’t, at least you can try to focus on the one you want. The problem is when you gain access to other colors, which can happen at class selection or even during a given run depending on your choices. At that point, you still only get three card rewards after each encounter, but now the card pool expands to include both colors. Sometimes this can be a good thing – some colors are better at card draw or specific debuffs, etc – but often this means you will be offered useless rewards for most of a run, leading to failed decks. Alternatively, even when things go perfectly, it usually does so because a specific combo is so much better than the other available options.

Dawncaster has multiple DLCs available for purchase, which adds more cards, enemies, encounters, and bosses. Tragically, the additional cards do not feel all that good because of the specific issue above: if they are not directly related to your strategy, they just pollute your limited card choices. There is a shopkeeper NPC that gives you a bunch of card choices, but again, there are so many cards out there that you can hit them up a half dozen times and still never find the necessary cards to make your strategy work. Of course, targeting a specific strategy is probably not the best idea; I would never start a Slay the Spire run and say “I’m doing a Poison build this time” before seeing some good Poison cards. But at least with Slay the Spire, I would only see The Silent cards as rewards, rather than every class.

Anyway, this is the quibble I have with Dawncaster after literally a hundred hours or more of gameplay. I still feel like Slay the Spire is the better deck-building roguelike, but Dawncaster is in the top 5 for the genre, if not directly second place (especially on mobile). If you are looking for something to play on your phone that isn’t F2P and/or gacha, I can definitely recommend this game.