A card game wrapped in an adventure
Card City Nights 2 sends you through Starship Frivolity, a flying city where everyone is fixated on The Card Game, the only card game anyone plays in space. You battle the inhabitants to earn their trust and take their cards, moving through dubious laboratories, haunted docks and lethal restaurants to uncover the station's mysteries. It's always night in space, and the setting leans into that with a strange, offbeat tone. The game mixes an adventure mode with deckbuilding card battles, and it carries a soundtrack worth noticing.
How the battles work
The Card Game, or TCG, is played by two players on a single shared board. You connect your cards to give them power, and once they're fully charged they fire off effects: damage, healing, shielding, or disruption aimed at your opponent's cards. Activated cards stay on the board, so you can keep a combo alive indefinitely by stringing new cards into the chain instead of starting over each turn. Because both players share one board, you can interfere directly with each other — blocking your opponent's moves or stealing their power. Expect a puzzle-like read of the board as much as a fight over resources.
Playing with friends and what to carry in
Online multiplayer is included, so you and a friend can face off remotely with the decks you've built. The card pool holds 200 unique cards featuring characters from the Ludosity universe, which gives you plenty to collect and plenty of different builds to try as you progress. The adventure mode is where you'll unlock cards and push through the station's increasingly unlikely locations, so it pays to play through it before taking a tuned deck online. There are no in-app purchases, so everything comes from playing the game itself.