Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £14.99 (Base game. Whole shebang – £26.86. DLC – £14.86 total, individually ranging between £2.89 and £3.99)
Where To Get It: Steam

The Dresden Files Card Game is an odd duck, to be sure. This isn’t because it’s a bad adaptation of the tabletop game, but because, honestly, the tabletop co-op card game has things that make me go “Hrrm.” So, keep in mind, dear reader, that most of this will be about how it plays, how the cards look, because the UI is fine, the ambient soundtrack is fine in small doses, and, apart from a minor control quirk where you scroll the mouse to zoom into a card, but click on it to zoom it out, it’s perfectly fine as an adaptation.

The character art is quite nice, and the book art remains as good as when I first saw it on the books.

Right. The tabletop game. Essentially, it’s meant to recreate the adventures of Harry Dresden, private dick, wizard, and meddler who often gets in way over his head, the creation of talented author Jim Butcher. The base game, much as the tabletop version, has the first five books, and five characters, each with their own small decks and abilities (Obviously, including Harry, and, just as with the tabletop game, 5 more books and 5 more characters are reasonably priced DLC.) The general idea? Solve cases and defeat foes, using a limited hand and tactical planning, to ensure that, by the end phase (or… If you’re lucky, after the end phase) you’ve solved more cases than there are foes remaining. So far, so simple.

The thing is, you have little niggles, and all of them are to do with Fate, or, more accurately… FATE, the tabletop system based on FUDGE, which has FATE Points and FATE Dice as resolution mechanics. In the Dresden Files Card Game, FATE Points are not experience, but a limit on what actions you can take, including passing your turn. You can get FATE Points back with, for example, Chicago cop Karrin Murphy’s Stunt (One use per game) or “selling” cards, and, as such, it’s a very tactical game. Hrm, I could use Harry’s Soul Gaze to clear up that case, but if I do, I’m leaving Karrin in the lurch for finishing off that Foe, getting us some FATE Points, and getting most of the way to clearing a case. Passing will also dick her over, because it costs a FATE Point, so… Discards final card, Harry is now a liability in the final turns.

FATE Dice sometimes play a hand in FP cost, attack power, and other shenanigans. This is, hands down, the best Showdown result I’ve ever gotten. A less than 1% chance that won me the game.

Tough choices, obviously, abound. And the game does do a good job, with a fixed card pool for each book and character, of getting across the narrative each represents. Billy and Georgia, for example, are werewolves. But they’re not bad Werewolves, and at least two of their cards can only be used if it doesn’t kill or solve. Meanwhile, Susan Rodriguez is an investigation powerhouse, with mostly weak attacks, but a good chance to take advantage, overcome obstacles, and, in at least one case, get clues for a case from fighting a foe. Meanwhile, each book, even though the card pool is always the same 10 cards, has quirks. Kalshazzak the Toad Demon, from Storm Front, for example, cannot be killed, or even hurt unless you solve the core mystery of the novel. In one book, a hostage situation is an obstacle that has to be dealt with, blocking further investigation or combat.

It’s thusly sort of a shame that some of the card art is… Well, functional. Cases look the same. Combat cards, very often, look the same. Same art for a Soul Gaze as… Consulting Bob. In the Side Jobs mode (a more random, “Here’s some occult stuff and cases that Harry would be dealing with in short stories, fanfics, and part of his world” story), this becomes even more clear, with White Court Vampires, Ghouls, Shadows, and all sorts of beasties represented by… Exactly the same card art. Now, at this point, I want to reiterate that this is a very faithful adapation of the original tabletop game, so this is how it was in the tabletop game too. But it’s still a minor let down.

You’re gonna need those case points, as Grave Peril has a lot of TOUGH cases.

Finally, you have… The Showdown. Again, this is a faithful adaptation, and another tactical layer to the game. Do you save FATE Points for the Showdown, leaving some cases or foes for a Hail Mary at the end? Or do you do your best with the cards, and then leave it to the dice with narrow margins?

Neither, as it turns out, are great. Having lots of FATE Points is nominally better, with a roughly 11% chance of getting nothing out of a case… But that chance does exist, and if you need more than, say, the 3 points you buy with 3-5 FATE Points (Depends on whether it’s a clue or a foe) , you’d better hope that margin is 2 or smaller, because even 2 points above is a 23% chance of success. And Lady Luck, as many have found to their cost, has no memory. Also to be factored in is that you have to have at least some hits on a case or foe to try, and an impossible roll is… Well, still impossible. You will never get more than 9 points in the Showdown, and that’s such a vanishingly small chance that it’s really not worth it.

Is it part of that Dresden Files mood to have the final Showdown be partly based on luck? Hell yes. But equally, do I have to like that? Hell no.

In the end, it’s an interesting adaptation of an interesting game, albeit one with its flaws, it has a good tutorial, and it has hotseat for those of us who do play hotseat, meaning that yes, you can buy it to play on your tod (Thank you. No, really, thank you.) On the other, it’s definitely intended to be played with friends, and this shows in even elements of the interface (You can’t, even in Solitaire mode, just switch between characters in the planning stage to see their hands. You have to click on them, then on the hand, then scroll through it. Not much extra effort, but it’s not 100% clear.) This would be fine, except… Well, everybody’s got to have a copy of the game, and the base game is £15. Which is fine… If you are also intending to play it on your own. Which isn’t recommended for long stretches, as the sameyness, and the quirks baked into the game itself, can annoy after long periods.

I’m… Not sure what Biker Gangs exist that look like this, honestly…

Frustrating.

The Mad Welshman met Lady Luck for the fifth time at a bus stop. As before, she completely failed to recognise him.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £10.99 (£3.99 each for Undermountain and Skullport modules)
Where To Get It: Steam

There should be a word, perhaps, for when a game feels emptier and cheaper than it, in fact, is. That word would work very well with Lords of Waterdeep (Full title: D&D Lords of Waterdeep, to differentiate it from Waterdeep, Ohio, I guess.)

It is important to note that your avatar has no bearing on which lord you get. That’s down to *faction* . This screen also serves as a handy guide to what the expansions add.

Before we get into that, the basic idea of Lords of Waterdeep is that you are one of the titular Masked Lords of Waterdeep, rulers of the city who are, for the purposes of this game, at odds with each other. Each Lord (Chosen randomly from a faction pool) has special abilities, preferences, and goals, and winning the game involves making maximum use of your cards, and limited agents per round, in order to get Victory Points. It’s got a lot to it for something with such a simple base concept, and not for nothing was it, and games that follow a similar vein, quite lauded in the board game industry.

Part of the problem is, quite frankly, that it’s a direct iOS port of a game where the most effort has clearly gone into making sure the game itself works. The art is servicable, but the UI is iffy, and has trouble handling more than 6 buildings in a game (It is highly recommended to play the tutorial, to get used to the UI.) The music, I turned off rather quickly. It’s a single song. What you’re meant to mainly be enjoying here is the game itself, and play with others.

This is the first time I will see this card being played. It won’t be the last this turn. Not by a long shot.

Which can, honestly, be a disorienting experience, be it in multiplayer or offline, hotseat mode. On the one hand, I can understand why the decision was made to have every other player’s turn recap for every player, and why it will suddenly jump to another player (Who will also recap what they missed) every time someone has to confirm or choose something as a reaction, but there is not only no way I can see to turn this off (Should, say, you be playing hotseat on the honour system), and you need to go into settings to change the animation speed, that games can, at times, feel excruciating. Yes, I know Arilyn Moonblade did this, this, and this, I saw it happen. I don’t particularly feel the desire to see it four times in a five player match.

The AI in the game is pretty vicious, and even with an “easy” AI, there is a good chance you’re going to have to play pretty well to beat them, and, in the end, the main thing recommending this game is that it’s cheaper than the board game and its expansions. Overall, it feels kludgy, and very much a case of “You get what you pay for.”

On the one hand, thanks to post game scoring, I didn’t lose as badly as I could have done this game. But Mystra, to lose to a Moon Elf playing a Halfling. UGH. (And yes, that is apparently a halfling. CORRECTION: A Halfling replaced by a Doppelganger. THE REALMS, EVERYONE.)

The Mad Welshman is extremely salty that he lost to, of all people, Arilyn bloody Moonblade. Although he supposes it could be worse. It could have been Danilo Thann or Khelben Arunsen.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £1.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Unreal Estate is kind of emblematic of tiny games that work, in that while it’s undeniably perfectly fine on its own, you can play with friends, and it’s easy to learn, there’s really not much to say beyond that. The art is nice, the fonts are kinda eh, and the sound and music, similarly, is there, and that, beyond it being a mere £2, is, uh… Largely it.

The card art is nice.

Essentially, it’s a turn based card game, in which, on your turn, you either grab a card for your hand, or play a card that matches the ones on the right for the card’s value times the number of matching cards on the right. If you have more than one of that card, it counts for more, and once all players (from 2 to 4) have picked up or played a card, the rest go to the right. Rinse and repeat, until all the cards are gone or nobody can play anything, and the one with the most points wins.

Similarly, the criticisms are small: It doesn’t, as far as I can tell, have a windowed mode, nor does it have volume sliders (just sound/music on/off.)

Cue perhaps the shortest review I’ve ever written.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £18.99 (£29.99 for Obsidian Edition, £3.99 each for a cosmetic DLC and a “Some good cards and nice dice” DLC)
Where To Get It: Steam

You lose a lot of stuff when adventuring, it seems. Sometimes, in the most dickish of ways. “Get hit before the fight even begins, Discard 1d4-1 cards (Unless you have armour, which won’t always work)”, “Permanently lose this card to close this location (Which you need to do to win the adventure)”, “Permanently lose this thing to pass this other thing.”

“If you didn’t have a weapon, or have and roll low, become slightly more screwed. Oh, and it goes back into the location deck for you to encounter again later.”

If it weren’t for getting new cards, and not having to pay money for all but the best cards, I’d probably have quit Pathfinder Adventures (a tablet port of a collectible, co-operative card game that has now hit Steam) long ago. As it is, getting those new cards introduces its own irritations. But we’ll get to this in a bit. First, the general idea.

The general idea is that you play a party of adventurers (modelled after the Pathfinders, the mascot group of Pathfinder, which, itself, is off brand Dungeons and Dragons) , each with a limited hand, trying to fulfil quests where both time and hand size are against you. Run out of the Blessing deck (ticking down 1 per each character’s turn, more if you encounter the villain of each adventure early and let them get away), and you lose. Run out of cards to draw from your adventurer’s hand, and they die, making it harder to win the adventure (and dying permanently, losing you a lot of hard work, if you’re foolish or brave enough to turn Permadeath on.) There’s a lot more to it than that, and the tutorial feels quite heavy because it has to introduce a lot of concepts, pretty quickly, but that, in essence, is the core of it. You draw cards at a location until you hit either a henchman or a villain, and, depending on which it is, you either fight them to “close” the location (IE – “The Villain Ain’t Here, Boss, And They Can’t Run Here”), or you encounter the Villain, and try to make sure they can’t go anywhere else while you finish them off. Failure to do so, as mentioned, screws you, as the villain escapes and takes valuable turns to deal with said villain with them, to a random location you didn’t manage to close in time.

I have four or so locations to close. I *can* close three of them. Maybe.

This, in essence, is a lot of my problem with Pathfinder Adventures: It’s very adversarial, and, even in victory, most of your rewards (whether added to each characters deck in play, or via post adventure rewards) are going to be thrown away, sold for the pitiful in-game currency sum of 1 Gold Piece per card, seemingly regardless of rarity or use. To give some idea of how insulting this feels, a generic blessing sells for the same price as either a better blessing, or a spell that adds 1d10+1 (big numbers, for low levels) to a wizard’s normally quite shitty combat skills, a quest generally rewards you with 100 GP for completion, and a chest that allows you to add four random cards (and sometimes dice, a cosmetic item) to your Unclaimed pile (which, thankfully, you get to keep until you “claim” them, at which point they become subject to the same “Most things get thrown away” rule) costs 500 GP.

Generally, your progression will be upward, to better, more damaging and more roll increasing cards, but any adventure that involves a lot of banishing cards is going to reduce that trend, and there is, like very old school Dungeons and Dragons, the occasional “No, fuck you, you just take damage” that makes the adventure more difficult in entirely frustrating ways.

Just in case you thought I was joking. “Damage taken cannot be reduced.” Damage = Discard cards from your hand. The one saving grace is that it isn’t *Banish* cards from your hand (Permanently lost.)

Visually, it’s quite nice, even if some UI elements (like that Blessing counter that determines whether you run out of time or not) get lost in the crush, and the sounds are okay. But I got tired of the music (especially the wailing violin of the theme tune) very quickly, there is no multiplayer that I’m aware of (Unlike the card game itself, which you play with friends), and honestly? The adventures have started annoying the hell out of me with the aforementioned “No fuck you, things get worse” pretty early on. It has a fair bit of depth, it has a fair few strategic elements that help minimise the luck based elements (Such as adding dice via blessings, changing the skill used to one you have better dice in via other cards, etcetera, etcetera), and I will, in its defense, say that it currently keeps Pay 2 Win and microtransaction fuckery to an absolute minimum, but otherwise, if I wanted to be told “Rocks fall, you lose 3 cards” , I’d join a Pathfinder game without asking what kind of DM was running things.

The Mad Welshman hastens to add that, if you like Pathfinder, you may have a more enjoyable experience. Emphasis on “may.”

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Source: Regretted Cashmoneys
Price: £3.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Aaaah, October. That time where games, regardless of quality, have to have something to do with something spoopy. Even if it doesn’t necessarily make any sort of sense. Such is the case with Cards of Cthulhu, a game with cards, yes… But the only Cthulhu related thing I’ve seen has been the title card. Everything else has been some odd combo of anime and metal album memes. And that makes me kinda sad.

It says something that this title card was actually a little tough to screenshot. It goes by moderately quickly, and with no input on my part. Gee, it feels so worth it to see Popcorn Cthulhu now…

Making me even more sad is that there really isn’t a whole lot to say about the game overall. A biker with seemingly no context (Out of game, the context is “Save your girlfriend.” So yay?) rides along a desert landscape, fighting a series of monsters in increasing group sizes. Most of the difficulty lies in numbers, whether that’s in the damage of your cards (Often reliant on the enemy not having a whole lot of health, or you not having a whole lot of health), or the numbers of each enemy grouping (So far, I’ve gotten up to groups of three at a time.) Numbers go down (once a second on each side, later going up to 2/s on your side with certain enemies), there’s not a lot of interaction, and when each enemy dies, a shader thing happens, and you move onto the next group.

Which would be a good point to mention that, for some reason, this seemingly all 2d game uses the Unreal engine… And I’m genuinely not sure where among the simplistic UI, animations, or canned sound effects this game really needed that.

So, onto the positive. It’s visually consistent. That’s… About it. The UI is ugly (Not cluttered, just ugly), the enemies are either monstrous, Brotastically macho, or have breasts and love to shove them out. Occasionally, there will be damned men being eaten, or women clinging to their legs. It’s all very cliché, doesn’t have a lot to do with Cthulhu, or indeed anything lovecraftian, and isn’t particularly horrific. It’s just… Trying too hard. There’s even a Cyber-Harpy who combos DRAMATIC FORESHORTENING of her biological limbs, while using two of her four cybernetic arms to, er… Show off her chest and/or try to lick it?

I would content warn this as “Immature Content” , but really, that’s self evident.

Meanwhile, the attack cards (Your main actual interaction) are bland as hell. Oh look, here’s the ice card. You can tell, because it has ice on it. Same with the Burn card. The Venom card is green, and has smoke and bubbles. That’s how you can tell it’s poison. And from there, it doesn’t really get any better. Here’s some swirly things for a time bomb. And what they amount to, once they’re played, is a bar counting down at the top of the screen, a canned sound effect, and maybe an explosion at the right moment.

Oh, and let’s not forget it calls itself a roguelike, perhaps because it thinks that’s fashionable, or that there is meaningful procedural generation here. It’s not really a roguelike. It’s not even a rogue-lite. It’s a game which unlocks more content the further you go and/or the more you die. And that content is basically cards. It throws you straight in, not giving a whole lot of time to appreciate the title card, and once you’re in, it’s over anywhere between 5 minutes and half an hour later.

So, if you’re looking for a low input quickie to play, and really like the artstyle of monsters you’re going to see again and again and again, then maybe this is… A buy? But honestly, I’m seriously struggling to work out where the appeal is here. And this is from someone who likes metal album monsters.

You, er, ride on free, Boxing Sabertooth on an Iron Horse…

The Mad Welshman is, secretly, a cybernetic whip wielding Chihuaha surrounded by Escher Women For Cthulhu. But don’t tell anyone.

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