| Title | Card Hunter: hey buddy, should you spare a dime? |
| Author | Scott Lufkin |
| Posted in | Game diaries |
| When | September 13, 2013 |
Not long ago I would roll my eyes at a free-to-play game, web based or otherwise. This year has seen a few terrific gems that have changed my mind, such as Path of Exile, Neverwinter, and Mechwarrior Online..
Read the full articleBeen messing around with Cardhunter today. I am a few levels in, my characters are level 3. I am enjoying the deck building and tactical game play immensely (BTW, thank you Tom Chick, I originally wrote that the game was fun, and then realized I should replace that sentence with more meaningful words). The deck building aspect of the loot is pretty innovative - a bit reminiscent of the dominion style board game, but a clear innovation of that concept, not a cut-and-paste. So far I am not feeling any need to spend real money. The extra loot they flash if you were member - I am not even sure I want it. There is something to the challenge of beating the encounters with the cards you 'earn' through play. I am not sure I would want to pay to make the game easier (unless the cards you get when you are member are more interesting vs. strictly better).
The only downside so far is Blue Manchu's ability to handle the number of people who want to play the game. They are smallish operation, and were clearly not expecting the load. There can be log in queues (up to 15 mins so far). The influx has led to log in queues. Which has led to people not logging out. Which has the queueues even longer. Even worse, at the moment the servers are down (I'd be playing now if I could, instead of writing this). In addition there have been no updates on website, forum, or twitter feed as to the duration of the outage. Again they are a small team, and since they launched recently (today), I'm guessing they are probably sleeping for the first time in a week.
Despite what some people say, fun is not a four letter word.
The cardboard cut-out motif sure looks nice. Would Card Hunter translate well to a physical board game?
Typos:
"but as you can only earn each mission’s experience points and loot chest once every 24 hours." (I think the "as" needs to be removed.)
"Buying multi-player decks is a great\ [sic] way"
Game is very fun, wish there were more classes to play. So far it's pretty awesome though.
I sort of suspect this game as an actual board game (as presented in the video game) would be a nightmare of record keeping. A lot of things being tracked by the AI such as ongoing effects, what cards are seen by an opponent, drawing cards but also getting a movement card, and etc. would be certainly doable but probably a big PITA.
I take it that you don't play euro style board games.
