Vambrace: Dungeon Monarch

by Aethyna Feb 7, 2025 | 1 Votes | 92 Played | 0 Reviews

7 rate

Genres:

Strategy , Card

Graphics:

Labels:

Turn Based , Magic , Deck Building , Dark Fantasy , Collectible Cards

Platforms:

Publishers:

Headup Games Assume the role of Monarch, the chosen ruler of a sacred dungeon created by the demon god, Hellforn, and prevent the slew of heroes who entered the dungeon from breaching the portal in this unique deckbuilding game, Vambrace: Dungeon Monarch! Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Vambrace: Dungeon Monarch is a deckbuilding game with an interesting and unique twist! In this game, you assume the role of Monarch, the chosen ruler of a sacred dungeon created by the demon god, Hellforn, whose body lies in the sanctuary underneath. Your goal is to prevent the slew of heroes who entered the dungeon from breaching the portal that provides access to the inner dungeons. However, things aren’t as they seem, and the revelations you had from what seems to be a dream might just upend your original plans…

Plotline

Surprisingly enough, the story of this game started off with the ending. It shows you, the Monarch, being double-crossed by your allies, leaders of the Guardians, a group dedicated to eradicating evil, and slain just when you chanced upon the demon god, Hellforn, whom you all were to supposed to be killing, and discovered something momentous – it was a beloved whom you immediately recognized.

However, after life ebbed out of your body, you found yourself awake in your chambers at the very beginning – back when you’ve agreed to work for the Guardians and go undercover into Hellforn’s dungeon as his “chosen one”. There’s a bit of backstory here about that – apparently, you were somehow able to wield Hellforn’s sword, the only relic of the demon god. It seems like you were able to call upon some of the powers that Hellforn used to have as well.

Of course, although it was a dream, there’s a nagging feeling that it might be a prophecy instead and naturally, you’ll want to do better this time around (as opposed to in your dream) to avoid getting killed. You are also interested in finding out why your beloved ended up in the place you found her in and how that plays into the demon's concentrated effort to resurrect Hellforn.

The story mostly plays out in the form of dialogues between important characters in the game, ranging from your trusted advisors, Gremorya and Byleth, to your handler and liaison to the Guardian, Gwen. That being said, the story has a lot of characters and world-building elements that make the story rather convoluted and hard to follow. The game tends to introduce unique terms and reveal what they mean later on, which can be confusing. Some of the dialogues also felt unnecessary; it felt like they just wanted you to click through a couple more dialogues so as to prolong the game’s playtime.

Gameplay

Even if you’re familiar with deckbuilding games, you’ll find the gameplay in Vambrace: Dungeon Monarch to be refreshingly unique. Not only does the cards in your deck important here, you’ll also need to have a good team of creatures available in your “hand” (a.k.a. the “summoning queue”).

You see, unlike a typical deckbuilding game that is usually 2D, there’s a dungeon layout with multiple platforms called Tiles. These Tiles are all interlinked to form a kind of map in the shape of an inverted pyramid, where the Floor with the most Tiles is closest to the dungeon’s entrance, and the lowest Floor contains only a single Tile that houses the Portal to the inner dungeon. Note that the bridges that link all the Tiles allow units to move from one Tile to another. Naturally, the goal here is to prevent adventurers who entered your dungeon from making their way down to your portal and destroying it.

To do that, you’ll need to halt their progress by putting up some resistance of your own. This comes in the form of your units. You can conscript units to your hand at specific turns, namely the 4th, 8th, and 12th. If the battle goes beyond the 12th turn, you won’t be able to conscript any more units. Conscription also costs gold, and you can earn them by defeating enemies. Thankfully, you do get a nice sum to start each battle with, and they do accumulate across battles. Unfortunately, there’s a hard limit on how many units you can summon into your dungeon based on their unit capacity value. Note that some larger units may take up more space than others, though they are usually the hardiest. There’s a hard limit on how many “reserved” conscripted units you can have at any time, too!

Units come in all shapes and sizes, including race, role, grade, stats, and abilities as well. This plays really well into the game’s synergy system, where units of a certain race or role gain additional bonuses when certain synergy criteria are fulfilled. Each Tile can only house up to three units, be it the enemy or yours, at a time, with the sole exception of your Monarch, who can be summoned to any tile and be the critical tie-breaker in any close fights.

Now, the game’s combat goes through three phases in every turn – the first being the Enemy Invasion phase, where enemies will be summoned onto the top Tiles of the dungeon. Some of them may be stunned upon summoning, thanks to this Adapting penalty (as in they are adapting to the dungeon). Obviously, being from the dungeon, your units do not suffer this penalty.

The next phase is the Player Act phase. This is the part where you can summon your own units, depending on available space, from the summoning queue and play the cards that are in your hand. The cards come in two main types – the normal ones which you can immediately play as long as you have the mana to do so (though, there are cards that can help you gain additional mana to use), and the Monarch-linked ones that you can only use if you summon the Monarch into battle. Cards come in many different forms too, from offensive ones to defensive ones, to even boosts. Also note that the Monarch will stay summoned until all enemies on the Tile are defeated, and she can’t be moved to another Tile prior to this.

The last phase is the actual Combat phase where fights will automatically be resolved. Your units will automatically (and usually) attack the enemy with the highest threat so you can’t really dictate which units they should focus on, which can sometimes be frustrating when you want them to focus on defeating the boss or killing the enemy with the lowest health.

As you progress, more game features are introduce, including the ability to gain and build blueprints which are essentially structures you can add-on to Tiles to provide certain boosts or to add specific units for conscription. There’s also the Prison of Zephyr which allows you to deploy captured enemies that are mind-controlled to fight for your side instead, while the Ritual site allows you to sacrifice extra conscripted units to obtain upgrades for the units you want to use based on their race and roles. So if the sacrificed unit has the corresponding race or role you want to upgrade, you can speed up the process, making an upgrade faster to obtain.

As interesting as the game design is, Vambrace: Dungeon March lacks many quality of life (QoL) features that would have made the game so much better. For instance, card effects are often not clearly explained, something that would have been easily fixed with pop-up tooltips when you mouse over the words for the effects.

The story mode has a lot of dialogues as well, which you cannot skip. There’s no way for you to use your keyboard to move the dialogues through faster, forcing you to click for every bit of dialogue, no matter how short they are. For this one, the devs could really take a page out of any good visual novel game and add more QoL features. Since there’s no manual save available, you can only pray that your progress is auto-saved before you exit from the game. If not, you’ll have to go through the tedious sludge of dialogues again.

Hopefully the devs can address these concerns and improve the game experience Vambrace: Dungeon March can provide.

Graphics/ Sound

Vambrace: Dungeon Monarch features gorgeous visuals and artwork that truly befits a deckbuilding game. From the cards to the units to even the dungeon layout, they are all very well-designed and visually appealing. In terms of sound, the game provides a selection of music that perfectly sets the atmosphere and tone of whatever you are currently doing, be it clicking through dialogues or battling heroes in the dungeon.

Conclusion

Vambrace: Dungeon Monarch offers a refreshingly unique take on the deckbuilding genre. The strategy-driven gameplay is both intriguing and fun, which mostly makes up for its shortcomings. If you enjoy playing deckbuilding games and would like to experience something new, this is one game you’ll want to check out.

New Game Added: Vambrace: Dungeon Monarch

by Aethyna Feb 7, 2025

Assume the role of Monarch, the chosen ruler of a sacred dungeon created by the demon god, Hellforn, and prevent the slew of heroes who entered the dungeon from breaching the portal in this unique deckbuilding game, Vambrace: Dungeon Monarch!