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Card Battle Game

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A genre of video game that is essentially an electronic Collectible Card Game. It may be an exact conversion of a real-world game, or it may be something entirely new. If it's a new game, there will probably be rules and game mechanics that wouldn't be possible in a real-world game. If the game has a plot, of course, you can expect the card game to be Serious Business, maybe even not being considered a "game" despite the obvious rules workings.

To simulate real Collectible Card Games, you'll have to get cards randomly rather than choosing the ones you want (though in real life, you can usually find single cards in game stores), either by receiving them after battles or by buying booster packs at an in-game shop.

A Sister Trope to Fight Like a Card Player. Compare Deckbuilding Game, a different style of digital card games.

Examples:

Games with card battle elements:

  • 7th Legion, a 1997 RTS that uses cards to boost units.
  • Age of Ishtaria is an RPG with characters represented as cards.
  • Anti-Idle: The Game has one of these in the form of the TukkunFCG mode.
  • Attack of the Friday Monsters! A Tokyo Tale has "Monsters Cards", a kaiju card game played amongst the children in town.
  • Bloons Tower Defense Battles: The mobile version introduced 'Card Battles', a mode where you and your opponent fight battles with, well, cards, instead of normal towers.
  • Captain Heroes: Pirate Hunt is a shooting game with characters represented as cards.
  • EA Sports' FIFA and Madden NFL series have a mode called Ultimate Team, in which players manage a team using virtual trading cards.
  • Divine Girls is a strategy game with characters represented as cards.
  • Dungeon Trackers is an RPG with characters represented as cards.
  • Elemental Wings is a Vertical Scrolling Shooter, with characters represented as cards that can be upgraded.
  • Fantasica is a tower defense game where units are represented as cards.
  • Final Fantasy VIII has the Triple Triad card mini-game. On top of being a fun distraction, the cards can be refined into various useful items, which in turn can be refined into powerful spells. Due to balance issues with the game's level scaling system, gaming the Triple Triad and junction system while keeping your characters low-level is often the preferred playstyle.
  • Final Fantasy IX has the Tetra Master card mini-game. Unlike the previous game, it has no bearing on battles whatsoever, and simply serves as a light-hearted relief from the storyline. In addition to that, the The End screen features a secret Blackjack minigame that one can access with a code.
  • An update for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn reintroduced the Triple Triad from Final Fantasy VIII as a playable minigame, complete with its original music.
  • Game of Dice is a Monopoly clone with abilities represented as cards.
  • Genshin Impact has "Genius Invocation TCG", a card battle minigame where you can challenge both in-game NPCs and other players. Similar to Gwent, it's treated as an in-universe popular pastime.
  • Girls X Battle (Sexy Academy, Ninja Girls: Moe Moe Moe) is an RPG with characters represented as cards.
  • Kindergarten 2 upgraded the Monstermon cards, simply collectibles in the previous game, into a full-fledged minigame where you battle the other characters using the cards you collected against their own cards. It is quite small and simplistic compared to other examples, even those that are also minigames, with only 50 cards total and a handful of opponents.
  • Littlewood has Tarott Monster, a card-based mini-game that relies on Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors mechanics. Cards with different functions exist within each element. Cards can either be found, purchased or won by beating certain opponents.
  • Hero Manager is an idle RPG with characters represented as cards.
  • Mario Party 8: The basis of the minigame Cardiators. Two dueling characters arrive to an olympic stadium, and take turns to choose and unveil cards with attack attributes. When a character shows a card, the enemies portrayed in it will come to hurt the other character (the amount of HP lost for that character is also shown in the chosen card); the other character then chooses a card on their own to summon an enemy or group of enemies and attack their rival, and so on. Whoever loses all their HP first loses and will render the other character victorious.
  • Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has a new mode called "Heroes and Heralds" in which there are multiple collectible cards that can be used in normal gameplay; they add many kinds of Status Buff such as speed boost, super armor, new combo strings, and many more.
  • Monster Avenue has a board game layout with card collecting.
  • Rise of Mythos is a strategy game with characters represented as cards.
  • Shovel Knight: King of Cards features Joustus as a mini-game which also serves as the centerpiece to the plot, although playing it isn't required to beat the game.
  • Soccer Spirits is a Captain Tsubasa-style soccer simulator, with characters represented by cards that battle each other.
  • Sonic Shuffle: Drawing cards allows players to move across the board and battle monsters when in Battle Mode. If the value of the player's card is equal to or greater than that of the card the monster has, then the player will win the battle. However, the player loses the battle if their card's value is less than that of the monster or if they draw the Eggman card. By drawing the Special card in battle, the player can perform a special move that is more likely to defeat the monster than a standard move, such as being able to draw higher numbers or two cards.
  • Soul Guardians is an action RPG with character abilities represented as cards.
  • Soul Rage is a Vertical Scrolling Shooter with ability cards.
  • Spirit Stones is a tile matching game with characters represented as cards.
  • Splatoon 3 has a card battle minigame called Tableturf Battle, a card game version of Turf War where you assemble a deck of 15 unique cards and aim to claim more squares on the grid than your opponent.
  • Summoners War is an RPG with monsters represented as cards.
  • Super Robot Wars: Original Generation Gaiden has as bonus mode that tries to distill the classic Turn-Based Strategy formula into Card Battle Game. It doesn't work all that well, since it requires cards with amounts of text that would be impossible in real life and rolling huge numbers of dice to determine damage, but it's still a good Guilty Pleasure.
  • Sword of Chaos is a 3D action game where cards are used for minor upgrades.
  • Tale Seeker is a tile matching game with characters represented as cards.
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the originator of Gwent (mentioned above), which served as a mini-game and popular pastime in-universe. One that Geralt may or may not develop an addiction to.
  • Xenosaga had a complete card game called "Xeno Card" as a minigame. Unlike other role playing game card games (such as Triple Triad and Tetra Master), Xeno Card was a complete Card Battle Game, complete with boosters, rarity, card types, stack rules, phases, and such.
  • Weirdly, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Wheelie Breakers is moreso this than anything actually resembling Yu-Gi-Oh!. While it features actual Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and many of the mechanics are inspired by the actual game, it's more of a straightforward racing game with Yu-Gi-Oh! cards taking the place of power-ups seen in arcade racers.

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