Dead-End City Blues is a turn based card battler. The game is set in a dark and futuristic world where a dangerous substance known as Elysion has taken over the streets. You play as a bounty hunter named Kanna who has decided to track down the source of the substance and finally free the city from it's grasp.

The story is pretty straightforward with few surprises, twists, or turns along the way. Most of the scenes are fairly brief, without much in the way of depth or character building. The writing and dialogue isn't too bad though and does a decent enough job setting up for the H scenes a providing an interesting world for it's characters.

As for the game play, you play as Kanna and go from location to location, working jobs and battling against several enemies to uncover more information regarding Elysion. All controls can be easily done with only the mouse which does qualify the game as being fully one hand playable. It's very similar to games such as Slay The Spire where you will draw a hand of random cards every turn. Each card has it's own energy cost, with a limited amount of energy to spend per turn. You will need to carefully balance both defensive and offensive cards to both protect yourself from damage as well as defeat your enemies. There's a good amount of card variety and a bit of strategy involved in choosing synergizing cards that work well together.

While the combat in Dead-End City Blues is decently enjoyable, it also doesn't really do anything unique to set itself apart from other card battlers out there. The balancing in the game is also a bit off in that it can be very punishing if you make a few suboptimal choices in the beginning of the game. This is due to the fact that money is difficult to grind, and also that you cannot replay previous easier battles to get better cards. If you are able to identify and choose some of the more powerful cards and upgrade items early on you will likely cruise through the game, but if you miss out you may end up having to slowly grind out gold losing to the same enemy over and over again.

I would say the only real downside here is just how few levels there are in the game. It's a rather short game overall and should only take a few hours to fully complete. Your mileage may very depending on how much you struggle with the early game if you make a few bad choices. The final challenge mission can be pretty tough as well and may take a bit of grinding to get strong enough to beat. The game definitely offers a decent challenge, and has a bit of replay value as well. If you get a bad ending you can carry over progress such as cards and upgrades to replay through the game, but after a replay or two you should be able to easily unlock the true end.

What Dead-End City Blues may lack in other areas, I do think it more than makes up for with it's fantastic H content. The majority of the H content in the game is received upon defeat, but there are a few scenes unlocked through the extra side gigs. If you are not a fan of scenes on defeat then you probably won't enjoy the content, but if you don't mind the quality is definitely there. The scenes are fully voice acted and animated with each scene having a few progressing variants. All the scenes are centered around the main character, so enjoyment will likely hinge upon how much you enjoy their character design.

If you'd like to see a closer look at what this game has to offer I have extended more in depth review over on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8f-u6LpqhY