PC/Mac (available now), iOS/Android (coming soon) •
In the “Oh, Shit, When Did That Happen?” department comes the discovery that Hidden Achievement has launched their digital version of the Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game on Steam. The answer to the question, by the way, is Monday.
The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game is based on the best-selling series from Jim Butcher recounting the exploits of modern-day Chicago wizard, Harry Dresden, and his battles with fantastical nogoodniks that muggles regular people don’t know about. At least that’s what the first book was about. It’s the only one I’ve read, with the intention of devouring the rest of the series at some point down the road. Unfortunately, the road keeps getting longer and longer.
The card game lets you play as Harry and friends as they take on cases from the books and work together to crush whatever Big Bad is at play. The game covers the adventures from the first five novels as well as the short story collection, Side Jobs. In a cool twist, the short story collection is replicated in digital form as a random scenario generator so you’ll never run out of new stories to play through. Of course, new heroes and the other novels are being worked on and are due to be released as DLC in the future.
The game is based on a tabletop card game from Evil Hat Productions that I haven’t played. I’ve heard nothing but praise for it, however, so if the digital version can capture what the tabletop version offers, it sounds like we have something special brewing. Also, it’s a cooperative game that plays 1-5 players and actually lets you play with up to 5 players online. Is there another cooperative board game with online multiplayer? I can’t think of one off the top of my head, but, frankly, I’m too lazy to think very hard about it.
The current release is for the PC/Mac version via Steam, but there are other versions coming out in the future, including versions for both iOS and Android. We’ll let you know when those go live, but for now you can check it out on Steam. It’s currently on sale, able to be had for less than $20.
Nick is looking into the game and we hope to have his take on it early next week if you wanted to wait before hitting that “Buy” button. I know I’m a little worried about not being a Dresden Files reader and understanding anything that’s going on, or being spoiled before I get a chance to read the novels. Actually, I’m not worried at all, but it sounded good when I thought of it.
Paging @LordGek
Tim, how is it? Your suggestion that this is a much quicker-playing, streamlined analogue to Sentinels from the Steam forum intrigues me, since I disliked how incredibly sluggish/choppy Sentinels is.
I’m still not sure what I think but leaning toward the positive. Harry Dresden and 2 companions (when playing solo at least, in real mp you can get up to 5 players) are faced with attempting to clear out a given “story” (2 rows of 6 cards with various enemies, mysteries, obstacles, and advantages).
One of the game’s main gimmicks is its extreme tightness, each of your 3 characters start with their own hand of 6 cards or so with very few if any added later on (I believe their whole decks are only about 10 cards). If the tiny hands weren’t enough of a limit, to play a card you’ll need to pay for it with your team’s communal mana that is primarily replenished by discarding some of your team’s very limited stock of cards from their hands.
When approaching the various challenges presented in the playing field, their range (how far right the card is in the row), as most of the character’s abilities only have a very limited range.
To give you a chance in heck, each character has a couple of unique abilities, 1 that automatically kicks in each time you discard a card for mana and another powerful skill that each character can only use 1x per game.
You aren’t even expected to clear everything to win, your team just needs to, by game end when you’ve run out of playable cards, to have solved more mysteries (a lot like defeating a baddy, only instead of using damaging attacks, you’ll be using your various characters’ clue acquiring skills).
Hopefully this gives you at least a taste of what the game is about. The various expansions primarily add more companions to choose from and more stories to play through.