The card game is ultimately quite simple, and it is mostly dependent on what kind of adventurer you’re using. Unfortunately, the game’s primary flaw is pretty simple: it just isn’t all that fun. One might cause you to deal bonus damage if you take 3+ damage on a turn another might cause you to make it so that if you would take a single point of damage on your turn, you instead take zero, but yielding no protection against higher damage moves. In addition to all of this, there are various static abilities – some tied to adventurers, some tied to particular pieces of equipment – which can boost you in various ways. Each turn you draw a card and play a card from your hand – hopefully one that stacks up well against whatever your opponent played. Each card can deal damage (either physical or magical), block damage (either physical, magical, or both), heal you, draw you cards, or apply some benefit or drawback (like setting your opponent on fire to deal ongoing damage, or making it so you can’t die temporarily). The actual fights are a card game – you draw 3 cards, and see what card your opponent drew. Your dungeoneer will tend to seek out monsters, especially monsters of their level, as well as gold, so you basically manipulate your dungeoneer into going the right way and fighting the enemies to level. Each dungeon has some objective, and your goal is to complete it by levelling up your dungeoneer by having them fight monsters. Instead, you get a hand of five cards, which can include dungeon passages (with 1-4 entrances), monsters, or treasure, which is worth points at the end of the dungeon.

Mechanically, you have limited control over your “dungeoneer” when you go into the dungeon, you don’t actually directly control them. The “twist”, as it might be called, is that your cards are based on the equipment you get, with each piece of equipment levelling up one kind of card, giving you better cards of that type.

It is similar to games like Shatter the Spire and the like in that as you go through a dungeon, you improve your character’s abilities by getting better cards in your deck as well as improving their base stats by levelling. Guild of Dungeoneering is a mediocre dungeon-delving cardgame.

Guild of dungeoneering music