Summary
- Card games like Slay The Spire have popularized the combination of deck-building and moment-to-moment card play, attracting a wide audience.
- While some games clone Slay The Spire, others borrow mechanics from Hearthstone, focusing on summoning and buffing units.
- There are several highly rated card games, such as Super Auto Pets and Legends of Runeterra, that offer unique gameplay experiences for Hearthstone fans.
Card games are one of the most popular genres in both the tabletop and digital gaming scenes, especially since the release and success of the indie game Slay The Spire, a game that combined the deck-building and moment-to-moment card play of games like Hearthstone with a rogue-like structure.
Deck-building and card games are rich in abundance now, but as more games clone Slay The Spire and its various off-shoots, fewer games are choosing to borrow ideas from Hearthstone, such as its emphasis on summoning and buffing units. However, some games take Hearthstone's card summons made up of health, mana, and abilities, and apply this mechanic in unique ways.
The digital card game genre is an extremely saturated one, so it's highly likely that there are great games out there that are easy to miss. Furthermore, this list aims to provide games that have a generally good reputation at the time of writing, and that Hearthstone fans might enjoy. This means that games like Shadowverse CCG, Magic: The Gathering Arena, and Yu-Gi-Oh! MASTER DUEL won't be included, despite having their fan bases - these games are either too polarizing or too dissimilar to Hearthstone.
6 Super Auto Pets
Yes, Super Auto Pets is not a card game. In fact, it's the only game on this list that doesn't use cards in some fashion, but for fans of Hearthstone that like the idea of adapting and building their team (of minions) on the fly, there's a lot of fun to be had with Super Auto Pets.
In Super Auto Pets, players buy and sell the titular pets, each having their own health, attack, and special ability. This ability can activate in the shop (where players construct their squad), or in one of the game's asynchronous multiplayer battles. Super Auto Pets is extremely different from Hearthstone mechanically, but the strategic thinking and synergy-building of combining unit abilities is something that Hearthstone fans are likely to get a few kicks out of.
5 Undaunted Normandy
This digital adaptation of a board game takes place in WW2 and has players deploying various troops and controlling them with cards representing a variety of soldiers. These cards are drawn from a deck that can be built upon over the course of a game by taking units from the supply.
This gameplay loop of deploying units and attacking one another via card plays is very similar to Hearthstone, but the game adds a hefty amount of randomness via dice rolling, which is something that fans of Hearthstone might not appreciate. Regardless, for Hearthstone fans who enjoy WW2 games and digital adaptations of tabletop games that don't mind a little randomness, Undaunted Normandy is worth a look.
4 Slay The Spire
This indie rogue-like is almost inarguably responsible for the massive boom of deck-builders that have launched (especially on Steam, PC) since its release. Although fellow indie title Dream Quest released a few years before, Slay The Spire perfected the rogue-like/deck-building combination with its slick moment-to-moment card play.
Just by looking at Slay The Spire, it's clear what Hearthstone fans would like about it. It's got a plethora of synergies to discover, made stronger by its selection of "Relics" that grant players passive abilities and add further variety to the game, as well as its highly similar card play. However, Slay The Spire doesn't really toy with Hearthstone's core mechanics of summoning and battling with minions.
3 Legends Of Runeterra
This card game from Riot Games, the team behind League Of Legends, is based on the League Of Legends IP, using familiar characters from the popular MOBA. While this may ring alarm bells for some, Legends Of Runeterra is far from a money grab. Instead, it's a well-thought-out and unique take on the digital card game and deck-building genre.
Legends Of Runeterra is rather unique to Hearthstone and arguably more complex, but it's very clearly inspired by Hearthstone (just take a look at the way the game is visually laid out), and fans of Blizzard's card game titan are likely to have a good time here.
2 Monster Train
One of the few rogue-like games inspired by Slay The Spire that managed to be unique while remaining successful is a lot more similar to Hearthstone than Slay The Spire due to its focus on summoning units (monsters) to defend the titular train.
In Monster Train, players play cards using a very familiar mana system and a customizable deck that is built throughout a run. These cards range from spells to units that can be placed on the train's various levels, taking up a specific amount of space when doing so. This makes the placement of monsters an important and tactical decision, and it's also important to decide when to bring out specific monsters, as once they are dead, they're gone for the rest of the battle. Furthermore, the game features several boss enemies that bring unique challenges to each run, as well as various factions with their unique cards that can be combined to create various synergies, making it a highly replayable experience.
1 GWENT: The Witcher Card Game
This free-to-play game based on the Witcher franchise was developed by CD PROJEKT RED and features various factions to choose from, each promoting a different playstyle and unique leaders.
Like Hearthstone, GWENT features a deck-building system, with each card having its own recruit cost on top of its regular attributes. Players build decks similar to Hearthstone, but unique to Hearthstone is GWENT's battlefield, which has two rows as opposed to Hearthstone's one. These rows are melee and ranged, and the positioning of cards on these rows is crucial to player success.