DO NOT BUY THIS GAMERecently I played the demo for a seemingly fun adventure, exploration, card game called Voyager by SimProse Studios:
http://simprosestudios.com/?q=voyagerThe game consists of Three Parts:
Adventure Screen
This is where you choose the next location you want to travel to. You may have an encounter, which is a card battle, or an event such as a quest/bane/boon, or you may be challenged to a Wizard game.
Hand Screen:
This is where you see what cards you have in your hand
Card Battle Screen:
This is where, if you have an encounter in a land, you play a very simple card game where you compare battle strengths to see if you win or lose. If you lose then you lose an amount of health equal to the difference.
Your WizardYour wizard has three stats:
Essence = Health/Hit Points. You lose these from encounters, certain lands, and losing Encounters (Card Battles)
Karma = Mana. To play cards from your hand you pay the cost in Karma. Karma seldom runs out in this game though
Gold = Score. The object of the game is to reach the tenth realm and get as much gold as possible without
DYINGYou begin the game with 5 cards in your hand (max:6) and you choose one land to travel to first. You continue choosing the next land until you either die or you reach the realm 10 where you face the boss monster in a card battle
What is wrong with this gameThe game is, essentially, gambling. If you play the demo you will notice that everything is random. Random can be fun. Nethack, Faster Than Light, and all the Roguelike games prove that.
The problem is that the object of the game is to
SURVIVE WITH AS MUCH GOLD AS POSSIBLE. This may sound easy, but when instant death is a random event, all sense of skill or flow or point to the game goes out the window.
Also the only real way to get proper money is to win Wizard games. Wizard games maximum monetary rewards are 4000 - 6000 gold. Normal events average 400 gold. And wizard games are random games of chance with a random chance of being encountered
SummaryIf you are at all interested in video game development, you should definitely give the demo a try. This game is an excellent example of how stupidly addictive video games with gambling elements can be.
You can buy the game for USD$4.95, which I did because I thought the full version would be deeper than the demo version. I was wrong.
What is worse is when you reach the final boss and you do not have cards you have to sit through the tedium of losing a children's card game. What is even worse is that you HAVE to win the final boss fight. You cannot draw or lose otherwise you die.
With just a little more polish, this would be a really good game. The game keeps a text journal of your adventure, but a simple interactive map connecting your start location to your later locations would have made this game amazing. Even if the map never changed, it would at least give some sense of exploration, adventure, and accomplishment.
However, all you get is this:
note: Derek appears to be the example player but by my calculations his score falls into the 95% bracket. I am not kidding. Once you get to 7000+ gold the game will instantly kill you.
