# Mystic Vale — user reviews > 116 indexed App Store user reviews of Mystic Vale by Nomad Games, rated 4.80/5 from 1,345 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/mystic-vale/id1456125882/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/mystic-vale/id1456125882.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 1,142 · 4★ 151 · 3★ 25 · 2★ 9 · 1★ 18 ## What do users think of Mystic Vale? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 🚀 Quick gameplay - 👍 Faithful digital adaptation - 💎 Unique and engaging mechanics - 🎨 Beautiful art and animations - 🔊 Enjoyable sound effects **Cons** - 🐛 Frequent crashes and stability issues - 🔋 High battery consumption - 🤔 Confusing UI elements - 📏 Small text and icons on mobile - 🔒 Lack of asynchronous multiplayer **Commonly reported bugs** - Automatic card pushing behavior not matching rules - Inconsistent behavior when exiting and rejoining games - Expansion purchases not syncing across devices **Most requested features** - More expansions and content updates - Ability to view deck composition - Option to disable automatic card pushing - Pass-and-play multiplayer mode - Improved AI difficulty balancing ## Newest reviews (15 of 116) ### 5/5 — Excellent *2023-02-24* Super jeu notamment avec les leaders. Le choix de la langue (en français notamment) rendrait le jeu parfait… ### 5/5 — An excellent Dominion replacement *2023-02-19, version 4.0.2* Full disclosure: we own every set of Dominion expansions ever produced and most of the promo cards as well. That being said, it’s nice to have an on-the-go competitive CCG, and now that we’ve discovered Mystic Vale, this one might be it. I confess, it’s hard to imagine how this “card modification” mechanic translates out into cardboard, but I’m thinking we might have to also buy it just to see. Impressive that the AI can easily beat me at medium difficulty without cheating (at least not visibly) and based on the excellent game mechanics, I’m about to buy all the expansions after getting done writing this review. I like how they’ve exchanged the (critical) card trashing mechanic in Dominion with the card modification one, and I like the “push your luck” Blackjack mechanic to risk drawing extra cards. Until the current owners of the Dominion CCG intellectual property figure out how to re-introduce it into the mobile space, anyone looking for that kind of fix can look here. ### 5/5 — Fantastic! *2023-02-04, version 4.0.2* This game is great in person, and great in this app! Thank you! ### 5/5 — Fantastic game *2022-10-05, version 4.0.2* Likely the best deck builder here. Takes a bit to learn and expansions are a must. I have a question to developer - do you plan to add more expansions? ### 5/5 — Can’t wait for more expansions! *2022-09-08, version 4.0.2* Absolutely love it. Great tutorials. Beautiful, clean detailed design. Elegant playing interface. Makes me want to buy the real card decks, but I know I would never have anyone to play with. Can’t wait for more expansion packs.❤️ ### 3/5 — Great game with bugs that need fixing. *2022-07-30, version 4.0.2* This game is a lot of fun when it works correctly. However, as I and my wife have been adding expansion packs, it seems more and more bugs are present in the game. Had to restart several times, and sometimes vale cards do not work properly. Would love to see an update with bugs fixed. If working properly, this is easily a five star game. Lots of fun! ### 4/5 — Fun iteration *2022-07-15, version 4.0.2* Would be great if they updated for play on Apple TV as well as iPhone/ipad. Seems unfair to need a pc or Nintendo switch to play on your television but that’s just because I want my cake and to eat it too when I can’t play my physical copy ### 2/5 — A happy mess *2022-07-07, version 4.0.2* This game is a luck fest with little strategic decisions to be made. To make matters worst, the dev have not deemed appropriate to provide a log so it is night on impossible to know what is going on… not that it matters mind you, since every player has zero incidence on others besides taking cards from a common pool. Still, a frustrating experience results from such a poor ‘app design’ decision. ### 5/5 — Уникальная игра *2022-06-03* Сначала я ничего не поняла, а потом как зашло и достижений 10 за одну катку открыла 🤩 визуал, музыка превосходные, правила игры раскрываются новыми красками и фичами чем больше играешь, в онлайн пока не лезла ### 5/5 — Brilliant strategic fun! *2022-04-27, version 4.0.2* I love how this game rewards deep thinking about deck-building strategy and tactics. It’s kind of like Magic: The Gathering, but non-violent and eco-conscious: instead of playing as sorcerers attacking each other, you play as clans of druids healing a cursed land. It’s also very different from Magic: The Gathering. Mystic Vale is competitive solitaire. You and your opponents draw from common decks of cards and you compete to get the most points, but otherwise you’re doing your own thing. Also, everyone starts each game with identical decks. It’s not about owning the best cards. You build your deck up during the game, then start fresh next time. Part of the fun is adding cool cards (e.g., Peacekeeper Druid, Moon Wolf) to your deck and combining them to enhance your deck’s power. Part of the fun is doing that strategically: it’s about which cards you combine and how your deck functions as a whole, not just about taking the best cards you can afford this turn. Then there’s an extra layer of depth about the tactical decision each turn of how much to push more cards into your “field” (i.e., hand). If all goes well, you get more mana to spend this turn. If you push too much “decay” into your hand, you “spoil” and lose your turn. Here’s where it pays to keep close track of what’s in your deck and your discard pile so as to calculate the risk and reward of pushing. I read a review that said the app doesn’t follow the rules about decay and its opposite, “growth.” At first I thought so too, but then I realized that I was just confused by how the app displayed the counts of decay and growth. Once I learned to understand those displays that do some of the card-counting work for you, and to keep proper track of the amount of decay in my deck, I became expert at calculating the odds of pushing and took my game to the next level. The AI opponents have hard and easy levels, and you can learn a lot by watching the AI play at a hard level. You just have to change a setting in the app so that the current player’s hand is displayed at all times. Except for being sometimes confusing (those counts of decay and growth, and the timing of points scored by certain cards), the app is very well-done, with beautiful artwork, enjoyable music, and smooth gameplay. Mystic Vale is one of my favorite games ever! ### 3/5 — Internet obligatoire pour jouer contre IA *2022-04-02* Jeu sympa mais impossible de jouer contre des IA sans Internet !! Pas du tout pratique dans le métro ou dans l’avion. ### 4/5 — Good but… *2022-03-05, version 4.0.2* The audio doesn’t work when I’m playing. I have all settings enabling it and still nothing. I want to hear it…. ### 5/5 — Digital Beats Physical *2022-01-25, version 4.0.2* Excellent representation of the game. Very handy that your score and bonuses are all kept track for you, makes an otherwise unruly game quite simple to keep track of. My only complaint is that when you have an opportunity to discard a card from your field, there’s no opportunity to browse your field to see if it is truly worthwhile. ### 5/5 — FANTASTIC, with some room for improvement *2022-01-25, version 4.0.2* First of all, I love this board game - it’s beautiful and engaging and changes enough from game to game to keep it fresh and make you adapt your strategy. (There is an element of luck and every once in a while it seems like every turn doesn’t go your way, but mostly the luck keeps it interesting.) And I love this digital adaptation of the game - it’s great to play with friends (with or without additional AI players, which are quite good) or alone. All of the above is still true, and being able to play digitally makes games a lot faster (no shuffling), they also keep track of your ‘magic’ (I forgot what the vale symbols are really called) each turn and track everyone’s VP through the game. Now when my husband and I play MV, we typically go to our tablets instead of pulling out the board game. There are some small things I’d like to see improvements in: 1. Undoing - a. sometimes I tap to move into planting when I meant to push, and this can’t be undone, but it should be able to be (obviously not the other direction though) b. you can only undo the one most recent purchase during planting, but I think you should be able to undo any/all planting moves while you’re still in the planting phase 2. Discarding - when you get to discard (ie with Deadwood Harvester, etc), you can’t see what’s available to draw, how many cards are in your deck, etc. The discard pop-up should be able to be moved or/and minimized so you can see the rest of the game before you make your decision. 3. AI last turn strategy - overall the AI’s are great, although even on difficult they sometimes make suspect moves (like taking if a fertile soil instead of a seedling in the early game or putting a dreadcoil cobra on a blank card instead of one with a lifebringer seed or a seedling), they’re still very competitive. The thing that bothers me is that they have no final turn strategy - whether you can tell from the VP remaining and the number of VP in everyone’s field for the round, or because their turn will claim all of the remaining VP, or an earlier player has triggered the final round, the AI will not buy cards to maximize VP but will continue to buy cards according to an ongoing game strategy (ie buying a lifebringer seed instead of a hawk). 4. Multiplayer time-out - there should be a way to pause a multiplayer game. 5. Multiplayer Colors/Tribes - in multiplayer, players or the room host should be able to select their color. (Fortunately they’re always assigned in the same order, so you can control the order you enter the room, as long as people are happy with blue and red.) Anyway, my “room for improvement” wishlist would make the game even better, but I still love it (and play it too much) as it is. ### 5/5 — Relaxing enjoyable *2022-01-14* A card crafting game, based on a table top game. You don't build decks by adding cards, but you add enhancements to your starting deck. A starting deck consists of some empty cards and cards with some enhancements. But enhancements might come with negatives. The game is played over several rounds until the common win-points are used up. Besides enhancements there are as well special cards. **What is special? ** The craft/ enhance your cards is a really nice mechanic, as the ones you build up you want to keep and there are no cards which you don't want to use, as you can enhance any of the cards. And a round does not take longer than about 20 minutes, normally. There ist the option to play shorter or longer. **How does it feel to play? ** It has a nice fantasy romantic art style, solid/ fitting animations and unobtrusive music. The game feels relaxing, as it is not about fighting but about building (the theme is about making waste land fertile again). **Little interaction. ** All players want to build up and don't fight each other. This is nice, but as well a bit boring, as it would be nice to have more direct interactions. The only interactions are about taking enhancements/ special cards from the common deck. **Summary.** If you like card games and want a different mechanic I can really recommend it. If you hate non-intense games, don't play it. It feels good to relax for a round in between of an intense fighting card deck game. I think the price is fair! DLCs are worth it. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Mystic Vale *2026-05-20, version 4.0.2* The Mystic Vale is not working ### 1/5 — No longer loads *2026-02-18, version 4.0.2* Game crashes on load these days. ### 1/5 — Terrible AI *2024-08-11, version 4.0.2* The “AI” cheats at the more challenging levels. For example, I’ll have a slot open in which I need a certain advancement. The advancement will stay in the field right up until my turn, and that is when the AI removes it from play. It really takes the fun out of the game. Update: How is it possible that I can spoil 9 times in a row with only one additional card drawn? It’s not possible except in a poorly written app. ### 1/5 — Doesn’t work with iOS 17 *2023-11-19, version 4.0.2* It was one of my fav games, but it’s stopped working now my phone’s on iOS 17. I deleted the app and re-downloaded it on the off chance it would help, and while it progressed slightly further towards starting a game, it didn’t actually manage, and I also lost the expansion packs I’d paid for. ### 1/5 — No asynchronous multi *2023-07-12, version 4.0.2* App seems to work well , but as soon as we bounce out of an online game with friends, the game is lost with no way to get it back Who wants to sit and play for 45 minutes straight just to finish the game? With asynch this would be 5 stars ### 1/5 — Game locked up *2021-09-26, version 4.0.2* Now whenever I start the app, it asks if I want to load my saved game, when I say yes the app glitches and closes. Until this is solved I refuse to play the game, poor quality coding. I do like the board game though. ### 1/5 — Another stacked deck game *2021-07-10, version 4.0.2* Tried of lazy programmers using a stacked deck as a means of setting difficulty levels ### 1/5 — Crashes constantly *2021-04-26* Can't finish a single game without the app crashing twice. ### 1/5 — Unclear! *2020-11-05, version 4.0.2* Even by going through the tutorial twice, I still don’t know how to play. Too complicated. The GUI could have been better too. ### 1/5 — Why oh why?? *2020-10-13, version 4.0.2* This is a beautiful representation of the real game. EXCEPT every single time it throws an online player out it ruins the entire game experience! So disappointing 😔 ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Seriously great card game! *2026-08-05, version 4.0.2* I’m don’t know why this isn’t more popular! This is more relaxing than Dawncaster and the visuals are stunning! ### 5/5 — A Fantastic Port From the Table Top *2026-04-27, version 4.0.2* One of my friends has this game, but we don’t often get the chance to play so I sought out a mobile version and it has been perfect for scratching that itch to play. ### 5/5 — Worth it *2026-04-16, version 4.0.2* Buy it. Play it. Enjoy it. It’s worth it ### 5/5 — Why did I overlook this gem for so long *2025-04-01, version 4.0.2* I knew about this game when the physical version came out. I liked the mechanics and got the app sometime back. But it sat unplayed until I just recently was reminded about it. Upon my first play in forever, the joy of playing such an intriguing deck builder has been reborn. This app will not be forgotten a 2nd time. ### 5/5 — Unique strategic game!! *2025-01-17, version 4.0.2* Just awesome!! Makes you think in each turn! Well done developers ### 5/5 — Excellent game *2024-10-04, version 4.0.2* I was recently introduced to this game by a friend. Since then I have purchased the physical version, pc, and mobile. It is fairly straight forward to learn with a ton of variety. Definitely a 10/10. I haven’t tried online play but I am not too interested in that. ### 5/5 — Made me fall in love with the game all over again! *2024-02-22, version 4.0.2* This digital release is fantastic! Really love how quick this has made the experience, and the small animations added bring charm to this game. Automating the harvest phase really is amazing. The AI is also quite good without feeling like they’re cheating. Going to buy all the expansions and hope they add more! ### 5/5 — Terrific adaptation of a great game *2023-08-28, version 4.0.2* Love it! So glad I purchased this. Translates the spectacular card game perfectly. I would recommend it to any fan of light-to-medium card games like Magic: The Gathering, Hearthstone, or similar games. I have two small complaints: 1. The writing is a bit small on my iPhone Pro Max. 2. On ONE level above Easy the AI tends to swoop in and score ten or fifteen points on its last round for the win a LOT. But maybe I just need to git gud. ### 5/5 — Great Game! *2023-08-08, version 4.0.2* This is a very good and accurate representation of the board game. It plays quickly and is fun. ### 5/5 — My favorite game for iOS *2023-07-12, version 4.0.2* Add more expansions. Love this game --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-27.*