iOS Universal •
The small 2-person developer Tinytouchtales arrived on the scene back in 2015 with the release of Card Crawl, an unassuming solitaire card game/dungeon crawl that ended up being the best game of the year. Few mobile games last more than a few months on my devices, Card Crawl has been on there–getting play–for two years. That would explain whey we’ve been so eager to get our hands on the follow-up title, Card Thief. We’ve been teased for over a year with gameplay hints and the occasional screenshot, but today the waiting ends. Card Thief is now available on the App Store.
At first glance, you might think Card Thief is a sequel of their earlier card-based masterpiece. The beautiful art is from the same artist, the game is card based, and there’s a definite dungeon-crawl vibe. That said, the two games couldn’t be more disparate. Whereas Card Crawl was a light, breezy dungeon crawl you could play in a minute or two, Card Thief will make your brain hurt.
The goal in Card Thief is to use your thief to steal as much gold, and a treasure chest, from each manor or castle. The game uses light and dark to create a stealth mechanism, but it costs a certain amount of stealth to explore the manor which is represented by a 3×3 grid of cards. Of course, there are guards aplenty and not just mindless brutes. Some manors will have dogs that can sniff you out or owls that can both see and hear in the dark. You’ll have guards that carry torches, or traitors who will help you by giving you better places to hide. If your stealth is at zero or below and you’re seen, you’re caught and it’s game over.
You’ll also have a bevy of equipment to take along. Each run you can carry up to three different pieces of gear such as arrows to change guards’ facing or douse light sources. There are cloaks that bump up your stealth or powders that can blind your enemies. All of the equipment is upgradable as well. By performing different tasks, you can bump up each piece’s usefulness.
Card Crawl is out now for iOS Universal and an Android version should be going live in about a month or so. I’m working on a full review now and hope to have it ready by tomorrow. Spoiler: I like it. I like it a lot.
Love the artwork. Love the theme. Love the game. Have no what I’m doing.
Took me a long time to wrap my head around it, and I still suck at the game.
Lot of fun failing, though.
Congrats to @Pitta for being the current world #1 on the first deck.
The fact that we’re 4 posts into this thread without one from @Pitta is one of the biggest surprises in Stately Play’s short but illustrious history.
EDIT: On topic–the game’s great. I was in the beta, and I’m afraid I’m still working my way back from the purgatory of resetting my progress to test some changes in the tutorial, but it’s worth it.
He’s too busy rocking the leaderboards and making me feel awful about my poor performance… And just when I thought I had it down, I tried the second castle.
Sorry guys.
I’m glad you all love the game…I think it’s a true masterpiece.
It’s incredible how true it’s to the theme and how well the mechanics support it.
Also, it’s really fun and deep, while being relatively accessible.
After tons of hours I still find or try new strategies…and I know that the dev has grand plans to further expand the game.
If Card Crawl is any indication, we have a lot to look forward.
But I was too busy playing…I noticed they re set the ladders!!!
must be by a very special theory of relativity.
hahaha, i played through the tutorial twice and thought “WTF?”
i don’t want to say it were no great and deep game, i just still don’t see it.
i’m caught in a tinkering-around-with-different-move-paths-simply-by-trial-and-error-phase. try this, take back, try that, take back, try another and so on.
back to Ticket to Earth. i will not give up though
Yeah, I actually prefer this quite a bit to card crawl. I always wanted a little “More” with card crawl and this delivers.
Cannot recommend this enough. I know Pitta and I were in competition for the the Daily Heist leaderboards throughout the beta (which I’m still playing as the Android official release is in a month).