[Baines]

Culdcept is okay, but it has too much randomness for its game length.

Card battle systems have randomness built into them. Combine that with randomized movement. Combine that with extra randomness from the altar on appropriate maps. In the mix add some card effects that themselves are random.

You can mitigate effects to a degree, but you only have so many possible cards, and some of these random elements are extremely powerful. Getting the right card at the right time can completely reverse a game, sometimes to a point where one won't ever recover. Getting the wrong cards can cripple you unless luck breaks your way again in the future. Repeatedly rolling low for movement at times can do the same. Getting neutral and negative effects on an altar while your opponent gets neutral or positive can range from annoying to devestating.

(Note: Some additional luck mitigation is done by making some cards extremely powerful, so that having better cards than your opponent is itself an advantage. More luck mitigation is done by just how abusive a player can be in creating his deck. Which can be pretty abusive, considering how powerful and useful some things are.)

Still, for the amount of randomness, Culdcept would have been much better as a 15-30 minute game, not something that can regularly run over an hour.