Slay the Spore

Put two beloved games in your tagline and you've set a bar you almost certainly won't get over. It doesn't get over it. What it has got is a real reason for the two halves to be stuck together, because generated creatures make a deck unpredictable in a way handcrafted encounters never can. Rough round the edges. The idea underneath is worth somebody's afternoon.

card battler with wierd generated creatures in it. Took me a couple of fights to work out what I was doing, and then it clicked. Easy thing to poke at. The monsters being different every time keeps it from going stale as quickly as these normally do.

Deckbuilding against creatures that are grown rather than drawn by hand is a lovely pairing. Generated monsters keep you from knowing what's sat across the table without anyone having to author it. Big promise, small package.

deckbuilding where the creatures are assembled procedurally, so every fight opens on a silhouette you've never seen. Cards are Spire more or less unchanged. The monster generation is what keeps it fresh.