REVIEW – There are few games that have barely any information about them up until release. Well Hand of Fate is such a title that appeared from out of the blue. It started via kickstarter, and when released became an instant hit. It is a card collecting adventure game, with a hint of D&D plus third person combat. Sounds messy at first, but the developers combined the elements so well that’s a great game.

There are so many features here that I can barely summarize it. We can select from two card decks, one is just for weapons and armor. The other deck represents the procedurally generated combat and events. As we move forward in the story we’ll be able to add more cards to our decks. In the beginning we will have a lot of worthless items, but later our loot will be great to defeat our foes.

Let’s see those cards

There is a wide variety of encounter cards, some can be just a simple visit to a shop, and others can be raids. The card is determined when we pick it from the dealer, and at time we can even select our enemies. Goblin thieves that steal our gold, but luckily you can get it back from them. The levels and locations are entirely random, so there won’t be the same two levels, and can make the game addictive as hell. You’ll be able to fight in some pretty dangerous situations.

Who dares to ask for another card?

The more we progress within the game, the more difficult enemies will attack us. Sometimes I wished to retreat from some of the encounters, but I decided instead to press on. Luckily I picked one of the strongest weapon and equipment in the beginning of the game, so even in hopeless fights there can be a tiny speck of hope. This can be attributed to D&D’s dice system as a throw resulting a 20 can defeat even the toughest bosses.

In a dungeon there are many corridors. Our first thought is probably to get to the boss as quick as possible, as who would want to wander around, and waste time with pointless encounters. Hand of Fate however rewards maximalist players, so clearing out a dungeon fully is worth it. Certain cards a worth different amount of tokens, and having more tokens will allow us to earn better gear, encounter cards, and weapons. The player is incentivized to mop up every enemy to the last bit

Frost sword or Shocking Mallet

The interesting aspect of Hand of Fate is that once combat starts it switches to a third person view. It’s reminiscent of Arkham game series, though here it lack the polish. The AI doesn’t provide much of a challenge, however when there are many enemies you can get into trouble, especially if you don’t have the right amount of gear. There is a wide array of weapons at our disposal, a few of them have special properties. The great challenge however is the main boss at the end of dungeon.

You picked the wrong card, it’s over

What can be chalked up as a negative aspect for Hand of Fate is the shop system and getting through rooms that are filled with traps. In shop mode the game switches for an arbitrary reason into TPS mode, the framerate drops because of this. The traps will become annoying as the camera view is against us, plus the huge amount of effects.

Flamethrowers, arrows, guillotines will be on every corner. I encountered an interesting save bug where after loading the game, all of my campaigns and associated decks disappeared. This bug happened at the end of the campaign, when I got back to the menu. The game froze, and after restart I was at the tutorial phase, with all of my status lost. Hope this was just a one off issue, and was already patched out.

At the end of the deck

Regardless of the above issues, which will hopefully be fixed quickly. Hand of Fate is a great game, but it also created a new genre. I have never played D&D in such a form, and I’m always excited for the next encounter. This is not just for D&D fans only.

-Malachit-

Editor: Defiant Development

Developer: Defiant Development

Genres: cards, RPG, action

Publication: February 2015