Concrete Jungle is a weird little game where you're trying to build a city using cards from a deck that improve or worsen tiles on a grid. The goal of each level is to collect enough points on each column to advance the board forward, losing you lives if you can't figure out how to clear them. The addition of multiple characters with skill trees and card unlocks as you level up is nice, but I found the game too difficult and a bit too random to be enjoyable for me.
As stated earlier, you have a deck of cards and you can select two of these from your hand in order to create buildings on a grid. Some buildings affect squares around them in a positive way, increasing their value, some decrease it. You have to build points-collecting structures in order to increase your column score and if it gets high enough, you win that column and move on. If not, you have to lose a heart to destroy that one. Lose all of your hearts and you have to restart the level. Cards also have an economic value that allow you to buy things and an expenditure cost that raises the score you have to beat on each column, so it's a big balancing act to place the right card at the right place.
I've been struggling horribly with the game, I lost the first few levels and couldn't figure what I had done wrong and where I could've put my cards instead. They add versus modes where you have to fight against AI by building things and that went even worse for me. I couldn't progress very far in the game, and I also didn't seem like I was getting any better. I wish there had been some kind of helpful mode where the game would give me hints as to where I should place my buildings - that should be possible since the AI has to make the same choices itself, at times.
After a while, you can get to choose different characters with skill trees that can be unlocked as you buy more cards by racking up economic value. It's a deck-building game, so everything is only available for that one game and your deck resets to its basics the next time around. I suppose that's fine, but I wish I could've fine-tuned my cards between rounds and not only during.
Concrete Jungle got a snappy look and some interesting ideas, but I couldn't play it much more before becoming frustrated. I wish it had been easier! Oh well.
