I'm picky about video games. For a lot of my life, I couldn't play them—first because my family didn't like the idea of me having a game system, and later because health issues kept me away from fast-moving games that posed a seizure risk. I never got to develop that Gen-X trigger finger that makes punishing games gratifying, devoting most of my time to tactical games and visual novels.

Fortunately, the gaming landscape is becoming more forgiving for gamers like me, between accessibility controls and an increase in alternative gameplay styles. It's why I accepted a review key for Arcana of Paradise -The Tower-: while "roguelike" and "real-time" tend to warn me off a game, "deckbuilding" intrigued me. These are all things this game is. There is combat in a procedurally-generated dungeon, and it is speedy as heck and requires good timing. But it's strategic.

The basic setup is this: you're overseeing an ever-growing group of children at the top of a tower. These children survive on bread, and will one day be baptized to become warriors with different strength. However, the Tower is in ruin. Through your guidance, pairs of children can venture down into the Tower once per day, facing the monsters and challenges within. Whether the goal is to bring home bread or venture toward the base of the tower is your call day to day.

While in the Tower, you'll find more children to add to the commune's population. As the population grows, you'll need to balance exploration with resources. Plus, bread also serves as an offering to the tree growing on top of the Tower. With regular prayers, you can begin to restore the Tower, unlocking further resources and upgrading the children's abilities.

Each child has a hand of up to four cards you can use while within the Tower. (As you restore the Tower, you'll also gain opportunities to add extra cards to your hand.) These cards allow you to attack, heal, and interact with creatures and their surroundings. Certain attack and spell cards can be chained, delivering harsher blows.

However, there are some risks inherent to this form of combat. Like tarot cards, these cards mean different things when flipped. Some enemies can flip cards, rendering swords useless or turning healing herbs into poison. Some children also add a Hanged Man to your hand, which flips the card for you. This is useful to counteract a particularly flip-happy enemy, or to alter the effect of certain cards that benefit you in different ways based on their orientation.

Combat goes fast, kept speedy by a timer on the right-hand side of the screen. If you don't make quick decisions, you'll be rotated through your hand. (That said, you don't lose cards unless they rip, you use up a trash card, or you feed the children all the bread they have on them. So the card you want will come back around.) Similarly, certain enemy attacks have a timer on them. Throw a shield up right as it's about to hit, and you have a chance to stun them.

It's not just combat, though. Some creatures in the Tower need to be helped or reasoned with, and some barriers require you to use certain cards to move through them. This means you have to account for not only combat challenges, but also puzzles. For example, certain characters may request certain items from you, whereas others want you to guess their name by playing a certain card. These interactions not only further your progress and spare you from difficult combat, they also build out your deck.

It's worth mentioning that the art and music in this game are really lovely. The top of the Tower is peaceful, and I love to watch it grow and watch the kids run around exploring. The Tower interior has some pretty gnarly characters in it that are simultaneously terrifying and fascinating to look at. It's a very atmospheric game, and the look and sound of it all deserve top marks.

I'm of two minds about this gameplay loop. On the one hand, games like these are more accessible and forgiving to players like me. (I'm aware that this is not even close to the only deckbuilding roguelike out there, but I am glad to see more of them.) The fact that I can play it at all, and even get into a groove, is a satisfaction I didn't necessarily get with several eras of gaming.

On the other, the quasi-gacha aspect of the game means you really have to grind unless you're lucky. Don't have the right cards to proceed? Keep going down and getting bread so you can afford to keep all your children fed and rebaptize one of them. Resource management is the messiest thing about this game, which is difficult when it's sort of the key to the game. It would theoretically take less time and effort to simply start a new game and hope for better luck than it would to save up enough bread to feed the kids and the Tree.

I'm also of two minds about the story. I'm intrigued by the idea, because I love a slow-burn mystery. I want to know what's at the bottom of the Tower, for sure. I want to know why these children are up here, what the chalk drawings mean, why this big sky-whale is watching them. Sadly, the game seems to be less about collecting clues to the story and more about collecting clues to the Tower, which will get you to the story at the bottom. Which is fine... if the gameplay itself is rewarding. And whether it's rewarding or not depends on your luck.

Arcana of Paradise -The Tower- is absolutely beautiful to look at and listen to. It's an intriguing concept, and the gameplay is fun and accessible. Those are all things worth mentioning, and I would love to see more games of this nature out there. That said, either the gameplay needs to be inviting enough to fight your way to the story's payoff, or the story needs to offer enough breadcrumbs to make the gameplay worth fighting through. One or the other would have sufficed. Both would have been amazing. But we kind of get neither.

If you are a fan of this genre of game in general, I recommend it. If you play games for the story, it depends on your tolerance for grinding to get payoff. Either way, the game is quite beautiful to look at; and, if nothing else, it's inspired me to look into the world of roguelike deckbuilders.

The reviewer was provided with a Steam key in exchange for an honest review of this game.