The game is inspired by Triple Triad, a minigame from Final Fantasy that developed a fandom of its own. In addition to the strategic decisionmaking, Card Craft introduces roguelike elements with permanent meta-progression for lasting replayability.
From Hero’s Journey founder Jabari Alii: “With Card Craft I wanted to embrace minimalist strategy. It’s basically rock paper scissors, flipped on its head, thrown on a grid, and then juiced up with that roguelike candy we’ve all grown to love.”
The game takes place on a 4×4 grid. Play a card adjacent to an enemy card, and if yours has the higher number on that side, it will flip the opponent’s card and become yours. The player with the most cards when the board is filled wins the match.
In addition to numbers 0-9, special rank symbols have strengths and weaknesses in different situations. You and your opponent’s decks are always visible, meaning you’ll need to predict and plan for upcoming counters and combos. Think ahead to predict what your opponent will play next, and find their weak spots to win the match.
Each time you play a card on the board, it gains experience, and eventually earns enough XP to be augmented, allowing for permanent customization. From swapping places with the defender (backstab) to pushing cards back a space (shove), an augment fundamentally changes the way the game is played, and persists across playthroughs. Shield cards were giving you grief last run? Choose the shieldbreaker augment to break through the enemy defenses and demolish that match.
When you make a play that captures more than one card, it triggers a combo. Sacrifice weaker cards and think long-term to set up cascading combos and take back the board.
New heroes with vastly different powers can be unlocked over time, such as Nushan, who can add bow symbols to cards, or Imani, who can rotate the values on a card to make their most powerful values orient toward your enemy. Swapping that zero with a 9 is a sneaky way to subvert your opponent’s plans.
As you progress across the world map, you’ll encounter shops, forges, and strange creatures that can temporarily or permanently upgrade the values on your cards. This adds an immense amount of variability to the gameplay, and makes no two runs the same. Just be sure to save that bow potion for when your opponent hides their card 2 spaces away.
On February 6th, the game announcement trailer was revealed. Currently in early access and available to wishlist, Card Craft is fully launching on Steam on April 9th, 2024.
