I don’t feel I’ve really got my head around it yet.
I’m intrigued at all the decisions you have to make in your turn. Not just which two cards to play, but where to play them, and when to trigger the battle. That last bit is interesting, and not something I’ve got to grips with yet.
Creatures seem to very disposable, because attacking happens every turn. So your strategy is based less on the cards already out and more on your deck than is often the case in summoning games. I think?
Ascension has set a ridiculous bar for creating a world in tiny snippets of text, art and mechanics. I don’t feel SolForge’s factions have the same compelling identity that those of Ascension do.
The demo so far is only for iPad. The full game is supposed to be released across a plethora of platforms (I believe they mentioned all iOS, android, PC and Mac).
I played a few games, could not get into it. Felt if I wanted to play this type of game I should just go play MtG instead, but I gave that up a long time ago. I enjoy Ascension but guess I just don’t like the CCG stuff anymore.
Playing it a little more, I was starting to get the sense that you not only wanted to play cards that would help you immediately, but also you want to play cards that you want to level up – even if their current state makes them essentially disposable.
And I’ll agree with the consensus that it isn’t grabbing me as much art wise right now. I think once we start to see more decks (I believe there are supposed to be 5 or 6), there might be some more interesting stuff.
On the whole too, this still isn’t grabbing me as much as the Penny Arcade game is right now. I’m still interested to see how it shapes up. It might play really well as an async multiplayer game, since you can quickly play two cards per turn and move on (on the other hand, that could also be a negative since you play so little, then wait and wait and wait…)
Interested if anyone else has picked up the updated demo or expansion packs.
The gameplay seems much more balanced now and it can definitely be a fun single player game, but the interface is so achingly slow that all fun is just sucked out of it for me. Every action takes an order of magnitude more than it should. They have to massively update the engine for this to consider switching from Playdek.
I’ve upgraded to the latest demo and I got my two free Kickstarter decks (Alloyin and Tempys). The game is definitely a lot of fun with the new cards, but the slowness is getting really aggravating. I’m on an iPad 3, and the slowness is bordering on unacceptable.
Here’s to hoping that they will work on stability and speed in the next release, before any new features.
I’ve been playing with my two starters (also Alloyin and Tempys) and what’s more disappointing to me than the lag is the way most games seem to play out.
It seems like if you fall behind in the race to block your opponent for even a moment, it is almost impossible to recover. This makes any cards other than units or direct damage spells almost impossible to use. And direct damage spells for the Tempys seem overpowered with all the built in buff capabilities among the Tempys units. The Tempys starter deck wipes the floor with the Alloyin.
I’m hoping the addition of new cards balances this out, but I was already feeling this way about the pace of games during the previous demo. Truth be told, it’s just not grabbing me like I hoped it would. We’ll see how it progresses from here.
PS Does anyone know how to “activate” a card? Some of the Alloyin cards have this trait, but I can’t figure out how to use it.
I’m going through playing each deck versus each other. There’s one I just can’t win. I think it’s green vs red. (I’m never going to know the names) hopefully the balance will work a bit better the further it goes on.
The Early Access beta on Steam is now open to everyone. The game is close to feature complete with deck building, online play and vs AI games so now is probably a good time to start playing if you are interested (although their servers are under heavy load at the moment).
The base game is free and you earn “Silver” and random card drops daily by logging in, for your first win and for playing three online games. Silver can be used to buy “basic booster packs” which contain three cards with one guaranteed rare and a small possibility of heroic or legendary cards. Real money can be used to buy premium boosters that contain more cards and have guaranteed heroics/legendaries. All in all the daily bonuses seem to net you about a dozen new cards per day.
I’m enjoying the game a lot although it doesn’t seem super deep or strategical so far. It’s quite luck driven but games are fast (or at least would be if the servers weren’t hammered), the tactical choices each turn are interesting and you can occasionally build some really satisfying combos.
