Sometimes a game comes along that’s so simple, and so well-executed, that you wonder “How has nobody thought of this before?" That is exactly how I feel about Royal Card Clash from Gearhead Games. We’ve been fans of their previous work Retro Highway, O-VOID, and Scrap Divers, but Royal Card Clash feels like something quite different for the tiny two-person team.

Ok, so the rules. Take a standard deck of playing cards, pull out all the face cards (Jacks, Queens, and Kings) put them into 3 equal piles of 4. All the remaining cards are yours to play, dealt face-up 3 at a time. Your goal is to defeat all of the face cards using the number cards and Aces. Each face card has a set amount of health and the number on each card that you play is how much damage you’ll deal that face card when you play it.

The wrinkle is that you MUST use the same suit as the face card you’re attacking in order to deal the final blow. So, for example, if a King of Hearts is down to 2 health, you’ll need to use at least the 2 of Hearts, or a larger Hearts card, to actually defeat the King. For such a simplistic game this wrinkle actually makes things very challenging and strategic.

Adding to this, Aces behave in a special way. Playing an Ace will automatically drain a face card’s health down to 1, and if a face card is already at 1 health and you play a same-suited Ace to destroy it, you’ll actually get to keep that Ace in your hand. This is VERY important from a strategic standpoint, and is one of those little details that makes a game like Royal Card Clash much more tactical than it appears at first glance.

There is also a discard pile that also acts as a “hold" for a card in your hand. Kind of like holding and saving that certain piece in Tetris because you know you can better utilize it later. The catch here is that you can only play the top card in that pile, and if you put a card in the discard pile when there’s already a card on there, that bottom card now becomes unusable for the rest of the game. This should really be a last ditch effort type of move since every single card in your deck is important for knocking down the health of the face cards.

Rounding things out are two special abilities. One is the ability to add a fourth card to your hand, and the second is the ability to shuffle your hand back into the deck and redraw new cards. Both can be extremely helpful if used in the right circumstances. There are multiple difficulty levels in Royal Card Clash too, with the base health of the face cards increasing with the higher difficulty. The Extreme difficulty is just that, extreme, and you’ll need to make careful and strategic use of every card in your deck if you hope to be successful here.

I can’t stop playing Royal Card Clash. It plays perfectly with one hand in portrait which means I’m constantly pulling out my phone and diving into a game whenever I have a free moment. It also supports landscape and switches on the fly for those that find that more convenient or comfortable. The music is also awesome, though maybe a bit repetitive, and the animations and overall production values are top-notch.

Royal Card Clash is free to download and play, with intermittent ads as well as the ability to watch ads for the special abilities. If you enjoy the game then you can purchase an IAP for $2.99 that will remove ads and give you the use of those special abilities every game without having to watch any ads. So go ahead, try this one out for yourself, I think you’ll like it.