Alina of the Arena

Most deckbuilding roguelikes confine combat to a flat exchange of resources — play cards, deal damage, block, repeat. Alina of the Arena, developed by PINIX and released on October 13, 2022, breaks that convention by placing every fight on a hex grid where position is as decisive as any card drawn. The result is a game where movement, terrain, and enemy facing matter in ways that straight deckbuilders never demand.

Players take the role of a gladiator fighting through randomized encounters for a crowd that demands blood. Each run is built through dynamic deckbuilding: cards are acquired and pruned across fights, shaping a deck tuned to a specific strategic direction. But unlike genre peers, the hex-based tactical layer means that knockbacks can shove enemies into each other, dodges can bait mistimed attacks, and the geometry of the arena itself becomes a resource. Winning a fight often depends less on raw card power and more on manufacturing a position where enemies neutralize themselves.

A dual equipment system adds a further layer of build construction. Each hand can be equipped independently, so a run might commit to dual daggers for damage volume, pair a sword with a shield for resilience, or sacrifice both slots to a two-handed weapon for heavier single strikes. Equipment choices modify what the cards actually do, meaning deck composition and loadout have to be designed together rather than in isolation.

PINIX launched the game out of Early Access in October 2022, with localization patches for Japanese, German, and Spanish arriving in the first weeks after release. Bug fixes through late 2022 addressed specific card interaction errors. In early 2023 the game was verified for Steam Deck, and a June 2023 update introduced a themed content collaboration. The game reached consoles in November 2023. A security patch was applied as recently as October 2025, showing continued maintenance. Along the way, Alina of the Arena won Best Design at the Taipei Game Show Indie Game Award 2023.

For players who found Into the Breach too abstract and Slay the Spire too static, Alina of the Arena occupies the same territory as Monster Train in terms of layering a second system of mastery directly onto the deckbuilding foundation.