New Steam Game: Hand of Fate - A Deck Building Roguelike Gam : Othor Games

» Thu Feb 19, 2015 7:31 pm

"Deckbuilding comes to life in Hand of Fate!

An infinitely replayable series of quests - earn new cards, build your deck, then try to defeat it!

Beyond the thirteen gates at the end of the world, the game of life and death is played. Draw your cards, play your hand, and discover your fate. Hand of Fate is a hybrid roguelike/action-RPG/deck builder, in which the player builds a set of cards into a deck, which is then used to deal out the dungeon floors through which they adventure. Upon entering a combat, all of the cards the player has collected fly into their hands as fully modeled 3D assets, and combat begins.

Build your deck, enter the world of Hand of Fate, and prepare to face the Ace of Skulls.

Key Features

* Tabletop card game brought to vivid life.

* A unique take on roguelike gameplay.

* Visceral action-RPG combat.

* Game changing gear and items make every play through unique.

* Hundreds of encounters, items, armor, weapons, artifacts, and mysteries to unlock.

* Unique deck building mechanics let you customise your own adventure, as you seek to defeat the Jack, Queen and King of each suit."

So this came out yesterday to glowing reviews, so I decided to give it a spin (I had a $20 Steam gift card). It's not too bad. I could see myself getting caught up fairly easily in it and playing for a couple hours on end. It's fairly simple: You choose your deck of 12 cards that contain your equipment (weapons, armor, spells, etc.). Then you choose a deck of 12 cards that contain your encounters (merchants, enemies, mazes, etc.). The "dealer" then shuffles your deck along with his own (full of food, gold, and weapons). One "floor" at a time, he deals out 4 or more cards face down. You move your token from card to card, revealing it and resolving the encounter (buy from the merchant, fight the goblins, retrieve a sword). Combat is done in a third-person perspective with combat reminiscent of Fable and Assassin's Creed. You gain the equipment randomly from your deck along the way as it gets dealt out to you as rewards to make your character stronger. Rinse and repeat until you get to the final boss for the level and get a bunch of new cards to use in your next go-round.

I played the first two levels (the first one being sort of a training mission). You save after each level, which is nice. There look to be 20+ levels in the game. So far, it's fairly easy. The second boss fight was 5 enemies plus the boss and I only got hit once or twice. I'm predicting it to ramp up fairly quickly, though. Combat is fluid with rolling and countering happening with a simple Q or spacebar press. I had a Maze of Traps card that had me navigate various traps to get to a treasure chest, which was a fun change of pace. The camera was a bit wonky, but nothing that screwed me up. It's made with the Unity engine, so the graphics are nice for an indie game. The "dealer" has various comments on each card, so you get a bit of insight into what the card is about. In both of my first two levels, I got a card where I could give a guy bread for a shield. When it came up the second time, he said, "I think you just leave this in here to get a quick shield." It was a nice touch.

So far, it's a positive experience. It pulled me away from Borderlands for a bit, mainly because it's a nice switch up from an FPS. It's on sale right now as a launch special, so if this interests you, I suggest checking it out. It has almost all positive reviews on Steam (mostly from Early Access). One negative review said: "This game would be awesome if they had more card variety and they removed the third person combat and (especially) the whole sitting-at-a-table-playing-cards-with-a-wizard gimmick." I'm guessing he wants to play Magic the Gathering in a 2D environment?

Anyway, I'm having fun and I thought that people should know this game exists.