Spectromancer is a low budget game from some of the creators of Magic the Gathering. In Spectromancer you and your opponent is dealt random cards of four factions as well as random cards from a chosen faction. Then you do battle one card at a time until you either loose all of your life points or kill your opponent.

On the surface Spectromancer is simple and easy to play. You can either play a creature card that stays on the board or play a spell. That’s the only options, but the vast variety of cards and strategies that you can employ as well as the fact that you’ll rarely play the same deck twice creates a very deep game.

You can either play the single player campaign or play online against a human opponent. The Spectromancer server is always full of people wanting to play, so it’s never taken me more than about a minute to find an opponent online. A game of Spectromancer will take about 5 – 10 minutes depending on how fast you and your opponent plays the cards. You can check your online ranking at the Spectromancer website and see who’s number one in the world. The matchmaking works well and the online battles will get you hooked on playing Spectromancer.

Spectromancer was realeased in late 2008 and is available on Steam or Impulse for USD 10. Spectromancer is well worth the money and is a really great casual game. I’ve never played Magic the gathering or any other card game and doubt that I ever will, but I’ll definitely play lots of Spectromancer online in the time to come.