These days, you're just not a proper RPG unless you've got a fancy card-game spin-off either in or out of world. Gwent. Hearthstone. Arcomage. Triple Triad. Legends of Norrath. Pokemon CCG. Now The Elder Scrolls is throwing its adventurer's cap into the ring with The Elder Scrolls: Legends, as announced aeons ago, but only just going into closed beta. Quite a gold-rush, especially given that historically, these games haven't done particularly well in digital form, even when backed by a big name or license.
]]>The most dangerous ideas are the ones so compelling, nobody wants to admit they're bad. Also the atom bomb was pretty nasty, but that's a bit out of a weekly RPG column. Instead, let's pick one of the chocolate teapots that people keep mistaking for the Holy Grail - the idea that RPGs can hope to offer anything close to a classic DM experience. It's a terrible idea. It's not going to work. Stop wasting everybody's time.
]]>Card Hunter [official site] is a free to play D&D-themed CCG/boardgame for one or more players, originally released two years ago as a browser game. It's now been re-released on Steam, with a new, System Shock 2-inspired paid expansion. I jumped at the chance to go back.
]]>Card Hunter [official site] is available on Steam right now. It will be one of the best games released on Steam this year just as it was one of the best games of 2013, when it launched as a browser-based free-to-play CCG/RPG hybrid. The development team includes former Irrational, Popcap, Looking Glass and Magic: The Gathering folks and the game is every bit as good as their combined back catalogue suggets it might be.
Go. Play it now.
]]>Hot damn, Card Hunter [official site] is coming to Steam. I enjoyed the card game simulation tremendously when it first came out. From the little details to the cast of geeks, it all works for me. There were only two things I really didn't like about it: the fact it wasn't on Steam, and the fact I couldn't trap my friends on the board with me. WELP. GUESS WHAT HAS CHANGED.
(Card Hunter is coming to Steam, and will allow co-op goodness. It'll also soon receive a new expansion, Expedition to the Sky Citadel, introducing a not-wholly-unfamiliar AI.)
]]>See the little guy in the bottom left of the header image there, excitedly throwing his arms in the air about bits of (digital) cardboard? That is exactly how good new cards being introduced to your favourite game feels. While my personal crack Magic goes through yet another spoiler season for its next release, extraordinarily generous free-to-play RPG/CCG hybrid Card Hunter is conquering new shores as well. For the unfamiliar, it combines a D&D style board game with a paper cut-out aesthetic and collectible elements to create an experience both Adam and Alec have sung the praises of. This first addition promises to bring "tough new campaign battles, bizarre new monsters and powerful new cards" along with some other sweet deets you can find below.
]]>Unless you’re reading these words on a device that doesn’t allow you to play Flash-based browser games, there is absolutely no reason for you not to toddle into another tab and start playing Card Hunter right now. If you have a terrible time, you can always come back, read the rest of this post and then jump straight into the comments to tell me how incredibly wrong I am. The rest of the post, you see, is made up of paragraphs of praise for one of the finest games of the year.
]]>Remember when Alec played Card Hunter's multiplayer? Back when he couldn't even beat the game's own creators on his first go at it ever? What a joke, right? I mean, practically anyone could do that. I would, but I'm too busy decimating the world's most sophisticated chess-playing computer with both my brains tied behind my back. You, though - you should absolutely brush up on your Card Hunter skills, as a) Alec still lurks in the shadows, waiting to suck all potential victims into the black night of his vengeance and b) it's a really great game from former BioShock developers. The free-to-play pen-and-paper/TCG game fusion is now available in easily accessible browser form. Go slay dragons with a vicious series of paper cuts!
]]>There's something entirely infectious about the whimsy with which Card Hunter presents itself. There's absolutely no attempt to be cool, it's an unapologetically, ridiculously geeky game designed to play off the decades of history surrounding the hobby. Alec echoed as much in his preview back in June and now we can excitedly reveal that you can all get your mitts on it on September 12th via any web browser you care to mention. While the inevitability of my own endless fascination presses heavy, you may require further convincing. Read on.
]]>I am speaking to you from beyonnnnd the graaaaaaaaaaaave. Said grave being 'exhausting 24 hour child care' and said beyond being 'the sabbatical I am supposed to be on until October.' While the tiny beast is distracted by a brief milk-daze, I shall seize the opportunity to quickly share with you this video of me playing upcoming TBS/CCG/boardgame delight Card Hunter (which we last wrote about here) against the developers. I'm roundly beaten, naturally, but at least I very nearly manage not to sound bitter about it. Myself and Card Hunter dev Joe McDonagh also quasi-interview each other as we play.
]]>Ah, that's the stuff. I couldn't have wished for anything more stabilising during a week when the games industry seems of the verge of eating itself. A game about games, a game where all this came from, a game about the purity and the silliness of escapism, a game about boardgames, card games and pen and paper roleplaying games. Console scenesters might have their Monster Hunter; on PC, we have Card Hunter. Card Hunter, I heart you.
]]>It's entirely possible to do a good many things with cards. You can stack them, scatter them, throw them, boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew, etc. And after humanity realized that Card Stew was a disgusting affront to tastebuds everywhere, people even started playing games with them. Slowly but surely, though, the phrase "card game" took on a rather unsavory stigma - relegated to pitch black basement dungeons and videogames without punching or explosions. But the mad card and mustache scientists at Blue Manchu have engineered a means by which to hunt cards, and the end result - Card Hunter, naturally - is quite a different creature from standard cardboard slip trading fare. Basically, if you normally flee at the sight of anything with "card" or "TCG" in its description, this might make a believer out of you yet.
]]>One of the games my greedy little brain is currently most anticipating, now that my previous most-anticipated games have arrived, is Blu Manchu's Card Hunter. A boardgame/CCG mash-up from one of Irrational's former bigwigs and a cartel of highly experienced devs, its focus is on recreating cheerfully dusty boardgame socials as it on coming up with some tight strategy/roleplaying mechanics.
I've been able to play the demo made available on the show floor at PAX, but without having to experience the unbridled horror of being in the close vicinity of other human beings. It's only two matches, but I liked what I saw, yes I did. I liked it very much indeed.
]]>Card Hunter's got quite a lot going for it. For one, it heralds from a studio headed up by former Irrational co-founder Jon Chey. Also, that studio's name is Blue Manchu. Everything else is secondary - even the card-battling RPG's fusion of Magic: The Gathering-esque deck building, grid-based tactical battling, obsessive Diablo-style loot collection, and an honest-to-goodness dungeon master. Those things are, however, still pretty great, so watching them in motion is a thing I would advise. And you can do just that right after the break.
]]>Curse our limited-length titles! For this post should really be called something like 'Irrational co-founder and now Blue Manchu boss Jon Chey talks more about his splendid-sounding new PC boardgame/ CCG/ MMO mash-up Card Hunter, how to make free-to-play non-horrible, what he thinks the future might be for immersive sims in the vein of System Shock and his thoughts on his former studio's controversial XCOM remake'. Doesn't bloomin' fit though, does it? Oh well. You'll find all that stuff out for yourself simply by reading on: tons of interesting comments in here, and I'm particularly excited by the thought towards the end that a coming wave of mid-budget simulational shooters might be on the cards, and far more likely to take big creative risks than their glossier triple-A peers... (Oh, and if you missed the more Card Hunter-centric first part of this interview, looky here).
]]>Card Hunter, the lovely-looking PC-based CCG/boardgame/MMO hybrid from Irrational co-founder (and former Looking Glass man) John Chey's new studio Blue Manchu Games, looks right up RPS' street. So, I had a chat to him about the game's inspirations, its conceptual similarity to Mojang's Scrolls, why it might be first time a collectible card game manages to be successfully singleplayer, and why it's an idealised version of the RPGs we played as children.
]]>The danger of a phrase like 'Irrational Co-Founder' is a bunch of people will probably presume you're talking about Ken Levine. So let's get that clear up-front: this is not a post about Ken Levine. This is a post about another founder member of System Shock 2/BioShock developers Irrational. Jon Chey has been with the studio since the very start, and prior to that did a stint at god-factory Looking Glass - so he's someone you should take an interest in. Lately, he's been heading up the former Aussie wing of Irrational, rebranded as 2K Australia and which did a bunch of the work on BioShock 2 and the upcoming XCOM (I know, I know) - but now he's going it alone as an indie dev named Blu Manchu. The first project puts board games, card games, browser games, RPGs and strategy games into a blender, so he's not exactly starting off small.
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