Looks like Fable Fortune is coming out of early access on Thursday the 22nd of February, i.e. this week.
The gameplay trailer makes it look like an interesting and visually whimsical take on the now crowded digital CCG genre:
I’m certainly intrigued by the alignment changes and by the co-op challenges. Has anyone played the early access version? How is it?
I couldn’t care less about the Fable licensing, but I’m interested in seeing how this turned out. I believe it’s playable now in early access, right? I’ll hold off until the actual Thursday release.
-Tom
All I could think about during the video above was “is that Ricky Gervais voicing this? That can’t be him, can it?” It sure sounds like him.
Besides that, my takeaway is that there’s a game variant that involves mustaches!
Actually the game seems pretty interesting but the devil’s in the details - I’ll give it a whirl.
I see it’s going to be FTP but it currently lists for $15 on Steam. So the $15 appears to be for the Founder’s Pack, which is 20 packs and 2 special cards. FTP sounds good to me!
I’m like you guys. I’m intrigued enough to try the FTP version, not to purchase the founder’s pack. It’s only a couple of days to wait.
We’ll see.
I just noticed this is now out on Steam for free.
I’ll give it a try after it downloads and report.
Some initial comments:
Lazy? Train? Safeguard? I’ll have to find out. I’m also guessing the sigil in the bottom right represents the rarity. But the game doesn’t make a big deal out of it. No “Epic!” shout when you open a purple.
On the graphical front, I was initially disappointed at how muddy things looked. But it turns out that it’s because the tutorial somehow started at low res and medium details with no graphical settings options. Once I got to the proper in-game home screen, I was able to change the graphical settings and the game looks a lot better. So disregard the initial appearance if it launches that way for you too.
Wendelius
The game UI is not super helpful. Card abilities are explained in a match, but not when hovering cards in your collection or when opening packs.
So, in case anyone else plans to give it a try, here is what the abilities mean:
So far, so classic. But there are also abilities that don’t have a direct equivalent in that other CCG:
I’ve beaten the hard mode solo training with 3 of the 6 classes so far (Alchemist, Knight, Gravedigger). The Alchemist with all its potions and buffs was quite a bit of fun to play. The Knight and Gravedigger played very aggo, but with a different focus on effect (buffing vs on death).
Here is an example of the type of quests you might get to select from at the start of a match:
Fulfill them and get the reward (and a Morality point).
There is also a Heroic Tales mode which is similar to the Hearthstone adventures. 6 matches to reap a big reward, and smaller ones on the way (I got some coins to spend in the store and 2 packs of cards after the first episode):
Good fun and certainly worth a try for free.
Wendelius
Does it have any of the flavor of Fable? I love the Fable games but CCG isn’t my favorite genre.
Hmm… The graphical style is somewhat similar. It’s light hearted. There is also apparently a fart emote?
It has elements of the world in the characters and the ability to switch your alignment. But that’s mostly window dressing. Just like Hearthstone is not WoW… It’s a CCG first and foremost.
I have yet to try the co-op challenges, but I doubt that will change things significantly.
Played through the tutorial, and I pretty much agree with @Wendelius. Not much to add. I do like the idea of the co-op mode, which is nearly nonexistent in most online CCGs. Hearthstone does it occasionally in Tavern Brawls, but having it as a on-going play mode is a new twist. Haven’t yet had a chance to play it yet, though, because the game crashed when I tried. Hooray, bugs!
Faeria, which I think is very good, has a whole co-op campaign thing. That I haven’t gotten to try because @Jason_McMaster can’t be bothered to play it with me. :(
-Tom
Oh? I wasn’t aware of the co-op mode. I backed Faeria. Played it a bit during beta and then forgot to ever get back to it.
It has a steeper learning curve than my current other CCGs and I didn’t feel I would be competitive at either the strategic layer or deck building for a long time.
I did like what the team was doing though. Thanks for reminding me I should give it another try.
Good question @jameslewiz. The game is charming, but it is not as polished as Hearthstone.
Have you played any other collectible card games (CCGs) before? If so the tutorial should be good enough to get you started. From there, you can play the easy then hard solo mode which lets you try out premade decks.
You can also use the list I made above if you need to refer to what the abilities do.
If you have never played Hearthstone or another CCG and it all feels a bit much, I nearly recommend downloading Hearthstone and going through that tutorial. It’s also free to play and the tutorial has got a lot more information and guidance. The names for the abilities change, but the concepts remain the same. But that’s a whole another game to download to learn this one.
That said, maybe the Fable Fortune devs have put up some additional tutorial videos on YouTube? I can’t easily check from work, but worth a look?
One important thing: if you go through all the solo mode games and the heroic tales, you will get a good amount of free packs and in game currency to get you started.
Edit: so what happened to the new poster who asked the question? Did he start spamming elsewhere? Because here, he simply asked a question and thanked me for my answer afterwards. I’m surprised his posts suddenly completely disappeared…
I’ll totally play it with you
Yeah, he asked a few badly worded questions on topics, trying to advertise some shredder site.
I appreciate the extra info though!
Ah, pity.
One other interesting thing I realised today is that the game also has versions on Xbox and the Windows 10 store. While you can’t share account and card collection between Steam and Windows, if you play on Win 10 and Xbox, you will be able to play on the same account and share the same cards. So I’ll park my Steam version and use those clients instead.
If anyone wants to try a match (co-op or PvP) playing a Live account, I’ll be happy to give it a try.
I was able to get the co-op to work after my initial client crash. I like it, seems fairly challenging and they seem to rotate events since I already see a new one that wasn’t around yesterday. I’m “ineffablebob” if anyone wants to add me to friends list, and I’d be happy to try a co-op game or two.
I like that you get quite a few packs, at least in the early going, so that you can make improvements to the base decks. So far I think I’ve gotten one after every game, even losses. There’s some sort of progression mechanism in each play mode, but thus far I haven’t paid much attention to it.
The good-vs-evil mechanic in each game is pretty cool. As far as I can tell there’s nothing more permanent that carries over outside of individual games, but there are cards that change based on which side you choose. So you could build a deck with cards that synergize best when you go to one side or the other.
I like the game so far, but my God how I hate the Windows 10 Store.
You only need to deal with the Windows store once when downloading the game. It’s no big deal.
I’ve now completed all the hard mode training fights (ie beaten the AI with every class) and am starting the Heroic Tales.
One question: are the co-op fights played with premade decks or with player built ones? I didn’t want to commit to one and waste my fellow player’s time if it requires a decent player built deck.
I like the game enough that I’m likely going to pay £9.99 for the 20 starter packs. Always fun to get in when almost everybody is still experimenting with decks.
For those playing on Win 10/Xbox Live, I’m Wendelius there. Not sure how to add friends. But I’m happy to play a match with or against you.
In the one against the undead dude that’s running right now, you can choose your own deck. I won it once with a starter deck, but lost several. It’s definitely easier if you play with a deck you’ve built for co-op. There are even some cards that give bonuses to your partner. I don’t have many cards yet but I built a deck where I basically just took a pre-built and threw in some cards that looked handy for co-op, and it’s worked OK for me.
There’s also a limited time cop-op event called Wild Cards running right now. Not sure if that one works the same way or has pre-built decks. Edit: Yep, same deal, choose your own deck.
