Hand of Fate

You sit at a table with a mysterious hooded man who wants you to play his card game. You have your own deck, but in each adventure, the dealer takes your cards and adds some of his cards into them. He acts as the “dungeon master” as he creates a story of your adventure by placing cards face-down to create a map, and chimes in with commentary on the outcome. Although there is plenty of dialogue, there’s no specific dialogue for each card so you have to read the card’s text. There’s often a decision to make, or a battle to deal with to complete the card’s event.

Some of the “maps” are linear and some have branches, but they are all simple arrangements. There’s an exit card that you need to find to move to the next floor, where you get a new map configuration. The final floor ends when you find and defeat the boss. Then you can move onto the next adventure. Each adventure gets progressively longer and harder.

With each move, you lose a single ration of food and heal slightly. If you have no food, you take damage instead. The card you are on is overturned and you are presented with a choice or battle.

When cards give you a choice, the outcome is often decided by chance. So you are dealt 4 cards of differing combinations of success/failure (or even a Major version e.g. major failure) - the combinations are based on the scenario; so the scenario may be stacked in your favour or against you. Another aspect that further stacks the chance of success for or against you - is the way the dealer shuffles the card. Some are very simple shuffles where you can watch where the cards move. Others are more complex and harder to predict. As you play the game, you do become more familiar with his shuffle methods.

Some cards are “Encounter cards” which transport you into a battle arena with hack-and-slash style gameplay. It has a very Batman Arkham feel to the combat where you can easily leap from enemy to enemy. You can slash, counter, and dodge. Countering is pretty easy because enemies have telegraphed attacks and have a coloured icon to indicate if you can counter, or simply have to dodge (Green icon means you can press Y to counter. Red means you have to dodge).

The arenas are themed areas like a forest, temple, swamp etc, and can sometimes have traps. Your weapon is a type of axe or sword, and can also have special attacks which depend on the cards you have in your inventory.

The enemies are typically bandits, skeletons, rats, lizards, and these are introduced as you progress through the levels. Some battles can be easy, but certain scenarios can throw in several enemies, and combinations of them. When you are in a small area, and have all these enemies attacking at different times, it can be very hectic and involve lots of dodging if you want to survive. You can even be up against a previously encountered boss which can sometimes feel tougher; either because you don’t have good equipment, or there may be more minions alongside them.

Cards often have “tokens” which you earn by successfully dealing with it. Some cards are basically part of the story and cannot be removed from your deck until you have earned the card’s token. Once you have the token, once you finish the current adventure (you beat the boss, or you die), then you get your rewards which will be new cards. These cards can be new events/encounters but also equipment like weapons, armour, rings, or abilities. So then you adjust your deck and carry on.

I felt much of the game was easy, but there were some difficulty spikes and it does get really tough in the last few adventures. A large aspect of the game is luck, so if you fail, sometimes you just need to try again. Other times I felt I just needed to play a bit more cautiously and not take so many risks. Sometimes my focus was to earn the tokens, so I played more aggressively/risky and not really caring if I reached the end - I was basically grinding out some new cards.

I thought Hand of Fate was a really cool game, but I can’t quite put my finger on what is missing. It’s entertaining and will appeal to a certain demographic; the table-top RPG fan. A typical gamer may be put off by the luck-based gameplay.