Entering the world in Hand of Fate is a mysterious and exciting experience. The cards are beautifully illustrated, combat graphics and animations are sharp and detailed, and the concept is so unique that it opens up a whole new tier of gaming. Read more in our Hand of Fate review below.

Platform Used For Hand of Fate Review: Gigabyte P35, Intel i7-4720HQ 2.60GHz, 16GB Ram, GeForce GT 965M
Developer: Defiant Development
Genre: Action, Indie, RPG, TCG
Recommended If You Liked: Dungeons & Dragons, Desktop Dungeons
Price: $24.99USD
Rating:

Starting Hand of Fate, I had no idea what was in store for me. The concept of being a trading card slash action game sounded quite interesting, but I just couldn’t imagine where or how the two would meet.

Thankfully, when you initially sit down at the table where your fate is decided, all questions go out the window as soon as the deckmaster speaks. The dealer/deckmaster, voiced by Anthony Skordi, immediately pulls you into the fantasy that is Hand of Fate with his fantastic voice acting, and makes it so you can’t help but linger on his every word spoken.

The Concept

The idea for Hand of Fate is quite unique and reminiscent of old pen and paper games such as Dungeons & Dragons. The deckmaster is the one who narrates the story and you are the one who plays through it.

The stories played out are controlled via cards that trigger certain events which provide you with multiple choices of how you’d like to proceed. To initially activate a card, you need to move your golden gamepiece on top of it.

Your gameboard is made up of face down cards that have been positioned in a way to resemble a dungeon. Cards are placed side by side or above and below each other. Your gamepiece jumps from card to card, each time using up one food.

Food is the currency that controls how far you can move, gold allows you to purchase new equipment, spells and more, and health is there for enemies to try and deplete.

To begin with, the deckmaster takes you by the hand and introduces you to events, multiple choice outcomes, equipping items, combat and everything else needed to know when getting started.

Events

When landing on an event card, you might end up walking away with some new gear, extra food or fighting some monsters. Some cards will take you through a little bit of story such as seeing a man being carried away by cultists into the forest. This particular event will give you the choice of leaving them alone or interrupting their ritual.

Other times you might come across a maiden who can give you a bit of extra gold, food or health. Alternate encounters can see you parting with half of your food only to avoid going back one space. However, when each movement costs one food, you’ll have to weigh the options to see if it’s worth your while.

Encounters can also come in the form of a travelling salesman, mage or other such spruiker. Here you can spend all of that hard-earned gold on new weapons, armour, spells and more. You can also stock up on food to help you move those extra few spaces.

If there are particular events you don’t want to encounter, customise your deck before commencing a game so you only come across the encounters you want to.

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[schema type=”review” url=”http://store.steampowered.com/app/266510/” name=”Buy Hand of Fate on Steam” description=”Entering the world in Hand of Fate is a mysterious and exciting experience. The cards are beautifully illustrated, combat graphics and animations are sharp and detailed, and the concept is so unique that it opens up a whole new tier of gaming.” rev_name=”Hand of Fate Review” rev_body=”Ultimately I can’t recommend Hand of Fate enough to lovers of trading card games who also thoroughly enjoy smashing through monsters. If you ever tried your hand at the pen and paper version of Dungeons & Dragons and liked it, chances are you’ll find a satisfying experience playing through Hand of Fate.” author=”GameReviews AU” pubdate=”2016-04-04″ user_review=”4″ min_review=”1″ max_review=”5″ ]