The Adventure Store is a trick-taking, deck-building mashup where you’re a fighter participating in a series of trials and spending winnings on upgraded gear from The Adventure Store to give you an edge in the next trial.

Players start with a deck of 22 cards, identical except for fantastic artwork unique to each character. Draw 11 cards from your deck each Trial and play tricks (fights) until everyone’s hand is empty, or only 1 player remains.

“How could only 1 player remain?” I hear you cry!

Instead of playing one card per trick, if you match the card played by the last person you can add another card of the same suit to increase the total value.

There are also ‘augment’ cards which don’t have a suit of their own, but can be played to increase the value of a card, or Eldris’s Gambit cards which lose you the trick while still gaining you a half crown.

A player could therefore leave the arena before the trial actually ends. Do this and gain the 1st player token, but miss out on winning more tricks.

Each trick won earns crowns which gain you renown before being spent in the store on cards to improve your deck. Earn the most renown by the end of the final trial to win!

🔮 The game is delightfully chaotic. In a normal trick-taking game you’re in a pretty strong position when leading but here this is flipped on its head
🌙 There are some fun rules to shake things up. I had great fun shooting the moon and making it to the end of a trial broke, meaning I got first place for the round and was given store credit equal to the richest player!
🆘 The player who earns least renown gets offered a “helping hand”. They can return all crowns, take any card for free, and also get to choose the trump for the next round in a neat catch up mechanism
🃏 There are heaps of cards in the box, but only a selection of them in the store each game so tons of replayability
🔥 Even with the catch up mechanisms, you can’t get around the fact that more crowns = more/better cards = more crowns, so there is some risk of a runaway winner

NOTE: There is no solo mode, but I LOVE a trick-taker and adore the theme so couldn’t resist when given the opportunity to preview this by InsideUp Games. As ever. All thoughts are my own.