Last updated on January 16th, 2026 at 06:27 am
Bardcard – Roleplaying Game Review
Bardcard is a Roleplaying/Puzzle game from Kevin Mikles, first launched in 14th August 2022.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 55+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Bardcard Stand Out
Bardcard is a card-matching roguelite featuring a mysterious subterranean world to explore. Match cards to advance through the dungeon. Discover helpful equipment, battle dangerous minions, and meet magical familiars that join you on your adventure. Learn the secrets of this realm and discover the truth about the chaos that engulfs it.
Can you find your brother Lukas? Who is ZUG? How far down does this dungeon go?
FEATURES
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40+ rooms to explore: Determine the best card-matching sequence to survive each floor. Keep on the lookout for alternate exits leading down less-traveled paths, and rare artifacts that appear when specific cards are matched. Are you exploring a dark room? In that case you’d better bring a torch!
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150+ unique, hand-drawn cards to discover: Weapons, armor, and magical items to protect you in the dungeon. Various characters that guide you, teach skills, and present puzzles. Monsters and traps to thwart your progress at every turn. There’s a lot to discover, and each game is a bit different than the last.
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Old-school RPG elements set within an immersive world: Turn-based action, experience levels, quests to complete, and more. We’ve taken elements from all our favorite games of yesteryear and rolled them into Bardcard.
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Beautiful soundtrack created by us: We’ve orchestrated every flute, piano, and xylophone to create a unique realm to adventure in.
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Challenging rogelite system with powerful persistent artifacts: Death is likely unavoidable in this dangerous world. Lucky for you, there are special items and companions that stick with you no matter what happens in the dungeon.
ACCOLADES
App Store Game of the Day (11/8/22)
ABOUT RASCAL MAGIC
We are two childhood friends building a mysterious world for you to explore. Originally from Michigan and now based up and down the West Coast, we create everything from the gameplay, imagery, audio, and story, to physical apparel and collectibles.
Although we charge a small price for downloading our games, we don’t have in-game advertising or in-app purchases. It’s just not our thing. Instead, you get access to the entire game and future updates. Let’s do this!
We’d love to hear from you: [email protected]
This Roleplaying game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Bardcard is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 5th December 2025
Recent improvements include:
This release improves crash reporting to help us find and resolve application bugs faster. A few bugs have also been fixed, and a few unused files have been deleted.
Download & Availability
Bardcard is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Really enjoy its simple and easy to use design, and the roguelike aspects are our favorite to play through time and time again.
When you first pick up this game, youll think its some weird Memory game with some combat thrown in. Its not. Its a thematic, decision-heavy hardscrabble. The game organically presents objectives that, on completion, yield information, equipment, key items, or changes in the dungeon. These persist into subsequent runs. Coming up with an executing a plan to pursue these objectives represents the core gameplay loop. The matching system induces a risk-reward dynamic, creating variance in the cost of fully exploring a room or taking side paths. It also creates this neat dynamic where if youre hurrying to find the exit, you might stumble on something interesting that prompts you to stick around. Youd think the card-based rooms would be same-y, but theres a narrative frame for different parts of the map, and the NPCs, environmental hazards, monsters, and items participate in that frame in unexpectedly immersive ways. The comprehensive journal and map are a very thoughtful addition to the game. Im looking forward to the release of the next chapter.
Definitely worth the two dollars! Super fun card matching rpg. Super addictive.
A fun concept, runs well! Though the match mechanic needs to have a more engaging risk/reward factor (as someone said on TouchArcade). Maybe a limited flip option or other impacts that force the player to be more careful about what they select? Otherwise, if you have to uncover everything anyway, what is the purpose.
This game is an RPG – the kind where you equip items to yourself and such, and battle enemies in turn-based encounters. However, it's not 2D or 3D world traversal like a pokmon or zelda game, nor is it strictly text-based traversal like old retro RPG games from the late 70's and early 80's. You traverse by flipping and matching cards or tiles. Some of the cards have actions that may trigger a text-based interaction with an NPC character, other pairs might trigger a text-based battle, others will be for collecting pickup items, etc. The game has a menu for equipping items that you have already collected. It comes with a well done retro aesthetic that complements the gameplay.
We dont often find games, let alone mobile games, that get us legitimately interested in the lore, development, and make us want to 100% it. But here we are! So far this has been a sick game and it deserves more popularity.
We definitely had fun with this. The memory mechanic kept it challenging and we liked all of the secrets to unlock. Will there be a part 2.
Didnt expect to enjoy this but its fun, we like the elements that you retain across play throughs, and its really well writtenplus it helps exercise our aging memory. One more: was just fighting a whelk, had almost zero health, it poisoned us just as our weapon broke completely. We tapped our hand to see if we could equip something mid combat, and it said basically we could only do that outside of combat. The background flashed for a sec (s as we assume we died) but then the button to return from the equipment note wouldnt workand the only way to get out of that screen was to force quit completely. Fortunately it loaded back up just fine (with the immediate note that Id died as expected) so no big problem just a single bug in what otherwise an extremely clean game! :).
As a voiceover user, Ive often found it a bit difficult to find good RPGs to play. This one seemed to come out of nowhere, and it absolutely blew us away. The exploration mechanics are super creative, it runs sort of like a memory card game, but every time you match two cards, it triggers some kind of event. Combat is turn based and requires no vision or reflexes whatsoever, just strategy and a bit of luck. We like that the overall gameplay has a sort of survival theme. Not only do you have to keep your health up, but you also have to keep your energy up otherwise you will start losing health, and if youre over burdened, you start losing energy. The fact that we have to constantly keep all of this in mind, while always trying to ration enough food to get us just one floor further, really immerses us in the game world, making us feel as though Im truly braving the depths of a vast and mysterious underground land. Another really cool mechanic we love about this game is every time you kill a monster, you learn a bit more about it. Its like youre studying the Monsters in real time. As for story, we find the storyline of this game incredibly intriguing. We never know whats around the next corner, or what secret zone we have yet to discover. We feel like theres always new surprises here, even on floors Ive visited 1000 times. Overall, we would say that we love this new addition to the ever growing collection of voiceover accessible rpgs on iOS, as it is engaging, challenging, completely accessible, and hits you with interesting surprises at every turn.
Our favorite game on our iPad in a long time – the only thing is we think the brother is impossible and we admit Im getting a little tired of trying to make it there and then just get annihilated. We dont know if its because of a skill issue (us!) or what anyways we love playing, we just hope we can progress finally one day. Super awesome game though.
The best parts of RPGs with the tedium simplified Awesome pixel art A retro nod back to the arcade days of our childhood in the 80s Total feeling of immersion which most games are missing we love it.
This game quickly became one of our faves. Hits all the right retro vibes with a familiar format with lots of modern mechanics. Looking forward to Chapter 2.
Addictive, too. We cant stop playing it. Dont let the apparent simplicity of the matching mechanics fool you. Theres a fair amount of strategy across the entire map. The story is richly imagined and well-written. It deserves more players.
We really appreciate that the developer revamped the game so that progress is much better. We redownloaded it to start over and we can tell already its been greatly improved. Thank you, developer, for listening to feedback and addressing issues, its really appreciated. This game is monetized right with no ads or IAP. The design is awesome and the gameplay is unique and fun, the right balance of luck and strategy. Theres a lot to do but its not overly complicated, making it good for casual and advanced gamers alike. We like that it saves progress at all times too so you can jump in and out quickly on a break. Youve done everything right, developer, and we highly recommend this game to others.
Reminds us of a lot of other role playing rogue likes Ive enjoyed playing but with its own unique story. Lots of secrets and replay ability in the first chapter. Looking very forward to seeing where this games goes and hope updates come soon :).
The memory mechanic is far too random and there arent enough resources mostly youll randomly die from no energy while randomly clicking squares to find a match. Add more food; add some sort of memory buff so you can reveal cards more quickly.
There is absolutely no skill associated with this game. The mechanics are luck based which is incredibly frustrating to play.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.33
- Size: 184.97 MB
- iOS: 15.1 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
- Developer: Kevin Mikles
Last updated: 5th December 2025 | Genre: Roleplaying, Puzzle | Developer: Kevin Mikles