Thoughts on Card Hunter on Steam

Card Hunter is a name that I turned my head for. It has “card” in its title, it’s gonna be something for me right? I remember playing this a couple of years ago on another platform. Might’ve been on my Android phone? Not sure. Anyhow, this time I re-discovered it on Steam and decided to give it another go

First of all, it’s an amazing concept for a game! In some ways I really wish that I came up with it; concept-wise it’s right up my alley. A digital card game with several layers of tactical gameplay on top of it, framed as an old fashioned RPG campaign where you move around old-school paper miniatures. How can you resist that?

The art style is simple but reall neat. It really captures the feeling of old school board gaming in the 90s, it speaks to me. The cards themselves could’ve been slightly more interesting, but they get the job done. At least they look different enough from each other so that you can tell what it is from a glance, even on a pretty small screen. Hard o make an interface that works for small screens.

The game is free to play download and play but make use of in-game purchases for those who wants a slight edge or some extra content. I’m usually not a big fan of in-game purchases, but when the game gives you a full experience without needing to pay anything and not getting in your face about it either, you have to kinda respect it. There are bundles you can buy that almost represents a “buy the game”-button since it gives you most of the things you can spend in game money currency on. I was close to purchasing it multiple times but didn’t think I will would spend enough time on the game to warrant it.

You can play either Campaign, were you complete various adventures battling menageries of monsters, or you can play head-to-head multiplayer versus other players or the AI. The characters are always max level when you play multiplayer, to even the playing field. Besides that, any equipment you earn in either mode could be used in either. You get access to two different parties of three adventurers, one for Campaign and one for Multiplayer.

I mostly enjoyed the game as a soft single-player campaing experience. It’s a cozy game and can be real challenging. The card draw aspect gives it some variance as well.

Deckbuilding is done by equipment. Each piece of equipment gives your character a pack of cards. You have three characters that each have their own deck to draw from. It’s a cool variant on deckbuilding and something we also thought on when making SteamWorld Quest, but it’s very hard to get a good overview using that method. Very quickly it feels like you have little or no idea what equipment gives what since you continously unlocks new equipment slots, thus making your deck larger.

I gave the game a good five hours or so before I decided I was done. I was level 10 at that point and had completed something like half of the campaign or slightly more. Well spent time with lots of ideas and inspiration gained.

Just now read in the forums that the development torch has been passed from Blue Manchhu to The Knights of Unity. When researching The Knights of Unity I found that they also were a big contributor to Disco Elysium, a game I wrote about a few weeks ago. It’s a small game dev world. Judging from Disco Elysium I would think that the game is in good hands to develop further.

For a game to be released in 2013 and still going strong is really impressive, and the fact that it’s still in development is even more impressive. Not many games can say the same.