REVIEW: Hand of Fate

A little background on the development before I kick off the review. The game started off life as a Kickstarter, and was fully funded in Dec 2013. The game launched on Steam Early Access in mid-2014 and has been through an extensive Alpha and Beta on PC. So it’s had a pretty hefty development cycle before even being released. It’s also said to be the first Australian Indie game to ship on Xbox One (and PS4). Go Aussies! First the Eurovision, now THE WORLD.

What is ‘Hand of Fate’? I hear you heckle, well, it’s a tough one to put into one genre, it’s a hybrid of deck building and a little bit of Choose Your Own Adventure. So basically, a card-based role-playing game at the core.

Our task as a Hero is to get from A-to-B safely, collect as much loot as we can to help us fight and take down the Dealers – 12 “Bosses” which are the Jacks, Kings and Queens of each card deck. For every 3 beaten in the face with an axe you get a ‘Symbol Of Power’, this is basically a level up card, which gives you buffs to things like attack speed, increased damage, increased damage resistance etc. – the sort of stuff you would find in most RPG games. Despite this, your character doesn’t actually level up in the traditional sense – this is a card game, after all. There are no XP rewards, or level numbers – just you, and your deck of cards. So each hand dealt is your basic dungeon level, complete with special encounters, random battles with baddies and shops, all subject to how the cards in dealer’s deck drop on the table.

Along the way you can bump into “The Maiden” who can give you a Max Health Boost, which is a ‘Gain’ card. We can bump into a helpful Priest, who for a small sum will heal us, or bless us. There are also shops, where you can spend gold for new Items, like weapons, food, and armour. You can also sell any unwanted cards here, be it weapons, armour, a piece of jewellery, or shields.

It’s important to note that you’re not selling them for good, but only for this round, and they’ll still be in your deck if you wish to use them in another round. You start each round with no gold, and little food/health which you need to try and build up, but with the deck been random, and not knowing fully what card may be next it’s hard to pre-plan your quest! And that’s a good thing!

Your secondary objective is to collect tokens, these are attached to certain cards like the “Maze of Traps” or things like “The Wandering Peasant”. At the end of every round, the Dealer gives you cards for your tokens. This is good news, it means you have more cards in your deck to build from. This is the most rewarding feeling, finishing a round, and cashing in the tokens. Especially if you’re a hoarder.

Equipment is gained from completing encounters, for example: “Local Peasant” card will reward you with Equipment if you help her out by giving her some of your food. I also encountered a card which allowed for a little multiple choice scenario where I could climb down a canyon to retrieve a weapon. In this instance you have 4 cards come up on screen, 3 were “Success” cards and one was a “Failure” card. They flip so they’re face down and shuffle, you then have to select one and hope it’s one of the three ‘success’ cards. If that’s the case you’re rewarded with a random weapon from you deck of cards.

If you die during a game, that’s it… you’re dead, you have to start the whole round gain! Re-selecting your deck if you wish, or using the recommended cards. The rounds get longer with each boss, so expect to fail a lot. But don’t be disheartened, keep trying and take that Dealer down!

Let’s talk briefly about the deck, and then I’ll move onto my thoughts about the game in general. The deck is where the magic happens. You can make the next round as easy or hard for yourself as you wish, but it’s still all luck of the draw, and the Dealer sure likes to throw a few bad cards in the deck before he shuffles it for play. You get to pick the encounters and weapons that can be found as loot/rewards. There are certain cards in a deck that are locked to the round, which are usually some bad encounters, shops, and the Boss card which I assume can be anywhere in the deck but from what I’ve experienced there are usually 3 or 4 areas before the Boss card shows up.

As an avid card game player myself (for reals, in real life) it reminds me of Munchkin, which is a great card game. But I don’t think a game like this would work on a table top, it needs that video game element in there to spice it up. You can’t exactly go into the garden and start swinging round an axe, people would talk! As far as a solo card game experience goes – this is a great title, and is lucky enough to have had an open platform for beta testing to benefit the gameplay. The amount of cards is insane too. There are a lot of layers to the gameplay, and it’s certainly not just another card based game, looking to cash in on the success of others.

Blessings/Curses add a layer of tactical gameplay whilst still having to manage your resources, in addition to trying to find that perfect deck. But, the game is all about the luck of the draw. It can be very unforgiving, you could be one move away from a lucky card that can take you all the way to the boss with the shiniest and sharpest equipment ever, or land on a card of an injured hero who will swipe that awesome flame sword you just found, leaving you with a basic sword, and one boss encounter to go.

If you really want to torture yourself give the ‘Endless Mode’ a go, The Dealer throws all the cards in the mix and away you go, keep going until you die! The game is super stylish, I love the art style on the cards, animations are great, and the overall presentation is just lovely. You can almost smell the musty cards and the incense filled hallways. The only thing I can pick at really is the combat, it’s not the most fluid of systems, but I’ve played much worse. Hand of Fate is functional and fun. I love the way the Dealer makes snarky comments about how long it’s taking you to make a decision, the cheeky scamp. The ‘Maze of Traps’ card areas are cool addition, which have you avoiding traps to get to the treasure chest at the end.

Cards like ‘Devils Choice’ are not so fun. I thought I was being clever when it gave me a choice of 3 enemy cards to choose from, I obviously picked the easiest, but the Devil wasn’t having that, and instead gave me the other TWO cards to fight, which turned out to be a total of 6 enemies, instead of the 2 I wanted. The game sure knows how to keep you on your toes.

Not all the cards are evil though. I had a nice lady give me a weapon AND flip the whole board of cards for me, so I knew exactly where my objective was. Some of the equipment cards have elemental effects for combat, or things like special helmets will flip over the exit cards so you know exactly how many moves you need to make if you’re running low on food.

All in all, this is a great game, it’s a mix of things that shouldn’t work together, but do, very well. Combat is a little rough, but forgivable. Only bugs encountered include was some weird audio glitch where I was only hearing background noises, accompanied by the occasional performance issue when loading into combat and when the dealer shuffles the cards at the end of the round.

I would say if you’re a fan of things like Hearthstone, and enjoy real life card games, give it a go. I wouldn’t say blindly purchase this game if you’re not really a fan of the card-building game genre, have a look at some videos. There is no multiplayer in this game, it’s strictly solo. So it’s a cool game to sit and wind down with, and no two rounds will be the same! It would be easy for the dev’s to add to the gameplay with some DLC too, so I personally look forward to seeing if it remains to be supported that way.

TL;DR: Hand of Fate is not an easy game, and will take a while to master. It’s about managing your resources and crafting the perfect deck to make the game exciting and challenging. There is also the combat to master so you can beat up them baddies while conserving resources.