It might not exactly be the hand of moves you want to play, but you’ll still need to find the best use of your cards to survive the harsh world of Grand Guilds.
Grand Guilds will have you carefully figuring your way through each of its battles, using positioning, movements, and the hand of moves you’re dealt to win the day. Naturally, you can choose which cards to stack in your deck of potential attacks, spells, and buffs, but the game is only going to deal you a potential hand from that deck. It’s up to you to figure out the best way to make that hand work. It may not be ideal, but that’s part of the intriguing challenge.
Don’t expect the game to go easy on you while you learn it, either. I tried a build of the game at BitSummit, dealing with some political shenanigans as I fought to stay alive. Enemies made smart use of the moves they had, and would aggressively work to take down single characters if they detected any weakness. You really had to be careful and use your cards in clever ways if you wanted to keep your team intact.
Having a random selection of cards made each round exciting, though, as you couldn’t rely on a set strategy to win. I wasn’t able to customize my deck in this build, but I did enjoy having to think about the best possible attack plan each turn. It was very engaging, forcing me to consider when I might normally rely on a few powerful moves. Also, the game uses an action point system as well, so you can use a handful of moves from your hand, depending on their costs, which was another thing to factor in. It makes combat feel very thoughtful and demanding.
Some interesting character designs, heroines with dark pasts, and a story of political strife aim to make that card-based combat all the more interesting when Grand Guilds releases. And I’ll be looking forward to it.
Grand Guilds is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can subscribe to its newsletter from the game’s site.
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