by A.J. Coltrane
Recommended Game — Card Hunter
It’s a lot of things. It’s a free-to-play browser based game. It’s a CCG (collectible card game) like Magic the Gathering, only it’s also a tactical turn-based high fantasy game with an old-school D&D flair to it.
Confused yet?
You control a party of three characters. The characters can be one of three archetypes – either fighter, wizard, or priest. I’m running with one of each, but if you wanted to you could have three wizards, or two fighters and a priest, or whatever else you wanted. Like almost every other rpg, the characters fight monsters to gain experience and better gear and become more powerful over time.
The monsters you fight live in modules (a themed adventure featuring 4-6 encounters, each on a different map), much like they can in D&D. When you defeat all the maps (“complete the module”) the characters gain the experience and gear mentioned above. Phat “loot”!
The loot is where the CCG elements come into play. Every piece of equipment that your characters can wear is represented by 3-6 cards. As an example, here’s a card that might be associated with a crummy low-level weapon:
If a character has that card in his hand he could hit an enemy one square away and do 3 damage. In this case up to two enemies could be targeted, as indicated on the card text.
Here’s a much better card that would be associated with an weapon that was either rarer or higher level:
That card is way better, it does six damage instead of three, and it pumps up the effect of any other Chop that you play. That’s more like it!
So, every weapon is the game is a mixture of up to six different cards, some strong, some weak, and some that even might harm the user.
Each character’s deck (the cards that he has available to play) is the aggregate of the cards that are associated with the equipment that he’s wearing. Get a better sword? Great, now he can do more damage. Better armor? Now he can withstand more punishment.
The game is now out of Beta, the release date is September 12. If you like CCGs, or tactical turn-based games, or some flavor of D&D, or loot based games like Diablo or Borderlands.. I’d strongly recommend giving Card Hunter a try.
Hopefully this trailer will make all of that a little more clear. (The whole thing is intentionally somewhat tongue-in-cheek.)
It got this glowing review from Tycho at PAX 2012: “My favorite game of PAX 2012 was Card Hunter. There is no pause between the question and the answer. Card Hunter now, Card Hunter forever.”
(That’s a big deal.)
Link to the Card Hunter home page for more info and to sign up to play.
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