Last updated on December 8th, 2025 at 08:55 am
Card of Darkness – Adventure Game Review
Card of Darkness is a Adventure game from STFJ LLC, first launched in 19th September 2019.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 985+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Card of Darkness Stand Out
Embark on an epic hand-animated adventure from Zach Gage, Pendleton Ward, and Choice Provisions.
Cast powerful spells, slay fantastic monsters, discover ancient secrets, and ultimately save the world — just by picking up the right cards.
Card of Darkness is a full-featured adventure designed around an accessible, minimalist, card game core.
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The journey has been long, but finally you're here in the heart of Glinhorn Forest at the edge of darkness. The people asked for a hero and they got you. Good thing you're a hero.
Many stacks of cards lie before you filled with monsters, treasures, weapons, potions, and spells.
You can only see the top card of each stack — what lies beneath is a mystery.
Sometimes the cards you see are fearful monsters, fantastic treasures, or weapons you really really need, and you can take any of them… but there's a catch! You must finish what you start.
If you take a card from a stack, you must eventually take all cards under it… and you won't know what dangers (or treasures!) lie beneath the surface until it's too late.
Every level in Card of Darkness is a slow reveal of a compelling and ever-changing puzzle, filled to the brim with risk/reward decisions.
But thats no problem for you — hero.
——JUST GIVE ME THE NUMBERS
- Journey through 8 environments in your quest to recover the Card of Darkness
- Defeat 5 ancient and terrifying bosses
- Find and equip 64 cards from the Deck of Darkness
- Discover over 150 unique monsters, weapons, treasures, potions, and spells
- Compete and rank up daily in the Chaos Realm
- Beat a Sunday dungeon in the Chaos Realm to access the secret Prestige Chaos Dungeon!
——A WORD FROM THE DEVELOPER
Over the past decade I've established a practice of making deep, compelling, and accessible games for people who don't have the time or space in their lives to learn every intricate detail of every videogame.
I strive to take the best of modern game design and package it clearly and accessibly so people can enjoy new kinds of games they might otherwise not be interested in.
For years I've wanted to tackle roguelikes, a game genre where you battle through randomly generated worlds of monsters and challenges. It is one of the most complicated, inaccessible, — and incredibly fantastic — game genres out there.
Card of Darkness is my attempt to take some of my favorite moments from roguelike games, and distill them into a simple but deep card game.
It's the streamlined design you'd expect from me, but this time layered with tons of stuff, just so much stuff! Well over a hundred unique monsters, spells, and upgrades. And art! Oh my goodness — the art! Beautiful incredible hand animated art from Pendleton Ward, Nelson Boles, Andrew Onorato and Evan Borja. Plus an incredible soundtrack from Stemage.
I honestly can't believe I got to make this videogame with all these amazing people. This certainly wasn’t possible without the support and hard work of everyone at Choice Provisions. We all poured our hearts into this and we hope you love it.
I'm so happy to be able to present it to you — Card of Darkness, an epic adventure for everyone.
-zach
This Adventure game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Card of Darkness is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 7th October 2022
Recent improvements include:
Various bugfixes.
Download & Availability
Card of Darkness is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Card of Darkness on App Store
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:
Im chuckling at some of these 1 star reviews. When we first started this game, we too was incredibly frustrated, but we kept at it and once we were able to shift our mind and understood the game, things took off. Ive played through the entire game twice and we wish there were more levels. We found it to be a nearly perfect game. To all those people who think this game is too hard it is hard! But so worth it.
This game takes skill. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. We think it's well designed and clever. Great for fans of Slay the Spire, Dicey Dungeons and Balatro.
Ok this game is so awesome and easy.
We want to write this report to tell her theres a bug in this game basically when you leave the shop and then heading to a level, then exit the level without going into the level the door an animation place again.
This game absolutely deserves a higher rating than 3.9. Its surprisingly challenging in the best wayit keeps us engaged and thinking the whole time. We really enjoy that its not too easy, which makes winning feel more rewarding. On top of that, its genuinely fun to play, and the art style is super cute and charming. Definitely worth checking out if you like games that test your brain a little while still being fun and visually appealing.
Adventure time fans are in luck!! The art style makes us so happy. Its straightforward but not too easy and we can see good potential for replayability.
We dont know why all you say its all rock not strategy. Is there definitely RNG going on? Of course, its a roguelite. It definitely has strategy and its not impossible. Its fun and interesting. We really like the art style. Its simple yet engaging. It deserves more than 3.9 IMO. We definitely recommend it. Also, theres real progress which is nice. We think the devs created the game they set out to create.
We loved this game we found ourselves getting so frustrated at times when we felt it was impossible to beat a level.. Id play around with what cards to equip and try and get just enough coins to buy health tokens.. Once we were on one level for 2 days and was so upset. But now we wish we didnt try to rush ourselves so much because alas we beat the game and now its over :,( so if youre finding yourself upset about being stuck playing a level over and over again, just remember.. At least youre still playing it and youll eventually get that joyous satisfaction of escaping into that little black tunnel of success on the last floor.. But it will come to an end too soon :(.
This is a great game. The end game is very difficult but we love playing it once a day. There are still some minor bugs that show up now and then though. Needs some love to keep it alive.
Just finished the game and we gotta say Ive loved playing it – and we almost never leave reviews. It has a really cute and charming art style as well as a good variety of enemy cards. Its decently challenging and the strategy required changes throughout. Its an easy game to put down and pick up again if you only have a few minutes and dont want to doom-scroll social media. Overall, Id recommend it if you like strategy card games.
What in the world does the Blade of Grass weapon do, it seems to work just like a normal sword but it says that it reduces enemy damage and breaks on use. Every time we use it, it.
Im glad we played through the main campaign; the daily challenges are great. We wish the dev would make past daily challenges available for free play.
Overall, this is one of the best games Ive ever played. But sometimes the random level generator can make the levels IMPOSSIBLE, but we have a 2 tips. 1: Fill your backpacks slots with potion tokens every level! 2: This works for us, just plow through every card in a straight line toward the exit. This game is awesome!!! Ive already killed grollunder, magmeera, and ancient jelly! We love this game, and we hope Zach gage continues to make games like this. Have a good day! -Marlon.
We are addicted to this game! We literally CAN NOT stop playing 100/5.
This game is super amazing. Its so good that we finished it and now we wait for the daily games just so we can keep playing. Really hoping it gets an update sometimes or a few new levels.
There are an infinite number of bugs in chaos mode. Some days its literally unplayable. Its infuriating, especially because we love playing it so much. Please, please fix this amazing game.
Lol Im kidding This game was very entertaining Although we wish there wasnt a limit on how many darkness cards you could have Its pretty long, entertained us for a while. The twist at the end was cool.
First off, we love this game! Ive beat it and now Im playing the dungeon everyday but there are a couple glitches. For instance, when we were playing the Saturday dungeon today, sometimes a card pile wouldnt reveal dispute there being an empty pile next to it. And an even more frustrating glitch is when we use a slingshot and it just attacks the enemy like a sword would and marks the pile, often killing us. Please fix these glitches and thank you for this awesome game.
Cant change our old review so writing a new one we guess. We really enjoy this game. It is difficult with a lot of chance, but if you plan ahead you dont usually get forced into an impossible situation. Very fun. (Original review was 1 star after a bug deleted our save file – developer quickly put together a fix that recovers old save data and gave us access to the beta version of it!).
Love this game so much. Its complex and challenging. Unique and funny. And will absolutely piss you off lol. Nice work gentlemen! Would have rated it a 5 but Ive been experiencing some bugs where our game will glitch and it will get stuck on certain animations. We have to close and reopen the app. Nothing else will work for us. ZACH! HELP! (Playing on the newest iPad Pro if that context is helpful).
Great little game. Only a few issues keeping it from 5 stars. 1. Theres a bug where the slingshot randomly acts like a dagger instead of a slingshot (possibly related to the seal card?). 2. Less important bug is the achievements dont always sync so despite having beaten the game, we dont have all of them. 3. There needs to be more levels.
The gameplay is very fun and quite frankly addicting, but the downside is we cant go one round without our touch screen failing, its not failing anywhere else but during the game. We dont know what might be causing this.
Rng is going to throw some impossible floors at you but a good game and really fun when you get Granny Smiths to give you a 99 level sword.
We really like the game play, but game hasnt been updated in two years and is buggy, we would expect better from an Apple Arcade game, please fix bugs.
We seriously am in love with this game we've been playing it nonstop, we love the art style and gameplay and everything. But theres some bugs we've noticed! Like on the volcano boss level when we finished it, it wouldn't let us pick up the coins. And then we left the game and came back and it let us pick them up, but then it didn't leave the level and the boss had full hearts again. Then also we noticed when we left mid-game in a dungeon and came back, cards that add up each time you have a turn would stop adding up. We hope these bugs can be fixed because this game is so cute and we wanna keep playing.
We really have enjoyed this game but in the time that Ive been playing it (about a week) Ive beaten it twice. There needs to be more levels. Doing the daily chaos levels dont mean anything when you have all the cards from beating all of the levels. Would love more levels.
Great game to kill time. Part strategy part luck. Only complaint is Ive beat all the levels and am wishing it had an endless mode. It does have daily challenges that are new but you only get three tries and then youre done for the day. Give us endless.
Periodically the slingshot will act as a normal weapon and that really can screw up strategy. Please fix. Love the game otherwise.
Fun game, wish the story side was a little longer but finding that replays are fun when we need a quick distraction. Daily play in chaos realm is great but we are starting to notice bugs in the gameplay and it looks like the game hasnt been revved in almost half a year so not sure if these will get addressed. There is a big where slingshots play like daggers and often the auto-incrementing and decreasing cards get stuck.
We have no idea what adjacent means so we are are very confused.
Overall its a fun and challenging game at times. As much strategy as luck of the draw. Afterbeating the storyline it doesnt offer a lot unless you play the daily chaos realm challenges. Which are fun and can be incredibly frustrating due to random luck it seems. But we have noticed theres broken code and some of the cards consistently dont do what they say they do. Theres a multi shot slingshot that acts like a dagger and marks piles and just does the damage thats on the slingshot and then breaks and gives you damage or not just like a normal dagger. Theres also some monsters that sometimes dont behave like they say they do. Some cards say they do certain things on break vs pickup and we feel that they rarely do whats they say they do on break. But we also dont understand what they mean by break since the cards dont do anything beyond their number. Annoying but Im still playing the chaos realm challenges lost days.
Im loving the game. As a big fan of Adventure Time the art style is very appealing. As part of the next update could you please account for the iPhone 14 Pros magic island.
This is a good game although it doesnt have very many levels. What really wish is that there is a way to turn off the sound when the game opens. It has a the ability to turn off the sound in the game but when you open the game you are on blast with no way to turn it off :(.
This game has some fun strategy and interesting ideas when it comes to the monsterss abilities. Sometimes taps stop responding. Trophies refuse to go above $1 despite killing monsters much larger than 1. We had to delete the game and redownload it when the game state was somehow going to a blank black screen on launch. (Luckily the cloud save retained our progress).
For the most part, this is a very well designed game. However, as many other reviewers have pointed out, there is way too much randomness stacked against the player. We like many of the mechanics and dont have a problem with the lack of upgrades, but often there really is nothing you can do to beat a floor. We presume there is some degree of control for the RNG, so really all thats needed is stricter parameters for generating levels. Unfortunately this game has been out for several years and nothing like this has been implemented, so we doubt anything will change at this point. You can still have fun in the game, just be prepared to face unwinnable situations frequently.
This is honestly one of our favorites games to to kill time and Ive been looking for a game with a concept similar to this for a really long time but our biggest problem with this particular game is that there is no leveling, like the enemies just keep getting harder and your basically just as powerful as when you started the game. Also when theres like an enemy in like every slot of the first row and theres not a weapon until a few rows back and then by the time you get the weapon theres no way to win.
Wish we could pick our gender and our color. It is fun but because the character didnt look like us , our heart wasnt into itstopped after the 2nd level.
The game design is fun, different and definitely worth trying. Im in the Deep Deep though and its become almost impossible to beat a level. Its maybe 10% skill and 110% luck. Creatures called Horrors appear so often, and take all but one HP of your life. Ive kept at it a few days but will likely bail soon, its just way too difficult so that it stops being fun.
Im really good even, just the main story is short so now Im only able to do the chaos realm which only gets us 3 plays a day which isnt fun but its ok. Im only writing this review because theres a weird gamebreaking glitch that happens with that double slingshot weapon? It doesnt function like the normal slingshot sometimes and instead of hitting the enemy for 1 damage it acts like we just attacked normally. Really messes our strategies up.
Its a charming card-based strategy game with a unique approach, visually appealing style, and fun gameplay heavily marred by random generation that creates impossible stacks and inconsistent or (in game) expensive solutions to those problems. Nothing feels as frustrating as starting a level that the game has doomed you to fail by only drawing monsters on every visible stack time after time. Removing the randomness or drastically decreasing the cost of summoning scrolls would likely solve this issue.
We love the game but we only have the first 4 cards of darkness and we cant seem to get any more of them to work.
We love the game, especially thinking strategy among hundreds kinds of Card. The problem is, it has so many cards so the game has many bugs, especially when so many effects of card mix together.For example ,the Nettle card, you say lose thorny at value 1,but the truth is sometimes we reduce 1 heart and sometimes reduce 2 with our sword when value of Nettle Card is 1.
Its super fun, hard but not angering. We were playing it every day, we were addicted. Until we stopped being able to advance much. We can still get more cards, can buy the first three scrolls in the shop, but there isnt anything more to work towards. It feels aimless, and Ive had this game for at least half a year. There hasnt been an update in way too long, whats up with that.
Lots of cool concepts here. Unfortunately, the execution is a little lacking. The grass swords never break even though theyre supposed to, the RNG can be pretty unforgiving, and some creatures combine with wolves which shouldnt.
We really like this game, but the further you play the more you realize that beating a level isnt exactly about skill and more about luck. Its pretty unbalanced. Also it keeps freezing on us.
It can be fun but between 1) the issue that the distribution of cards on each level has no constraints so that you just have to keep doing over and over until you get a doable level and 2) in the arcade version you cant actually get and use any of daily/weekly prizes, it needs some work.
No strategy or planning can overcome bad RNG. Player choice isnt of any value.
No skill involved. People calling this challenging arent being accurate – its just dumb luck what cards come up and whether youll be able to clear a given level. Its a grind for coins over and over and gets really old really fast. We do not recommend it at all.
We like this game and Ill update with a good review if our bug gets fixed. The slingshot is inconsistent and you will sometimes just tank the damage from an enemy when you use it instead of knocking them down 1 hp. We experience it a lot in the chaos dungeon, and think it may have to do with the sword of chaos.
We've completed the main campaign of this and done a lot of the chaos realm runs (just daily challenges), so we have experienced basically everything in the game. So let us tell you that it is not really worth your time. If you have an Apple Arcade subscription, there are many more games that you should play instead. First, the game design. Random levels in the main campaign have a horrendous level spike where you can only win via RNG on these levels (trust us, we had at this point already purchased all the gear you can buy). Then, in comparison to this, the bosses are extremely easy. Not to mention that you purchase every upgrade possible by the time you're a third of the way into the campaign. Second, the glitches. They vary in intensity but WILL show up. Some are beneficial, such as weapons that break after one hit not doing so. But the vast majority are game breaking. Decks that are face-up may randomly flip face-down and you won't be able to access those cards. Sometimes your weapon behaves incorrectly, such as you weilding a slingshot like it is a sword, which you won't know until it is too late. And the worst part about all this? Every time there's a glitch and you want to fix it, you have to close and reopen the game. And it takes too long with how often you have to do it. Only reason we're continuing to play is because we're trying to 100% the game. Play any other Apple Arcade game but this.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.1.5
- Size: 1,208.75 MB
- iOS: 13.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: STFJ LLC
Last updated: 7th October 2022 | Genre: Adventure | Developer: STFJ LLC