First impressions thread

Thank you! A quick line in the tutorial could help avoid confusion, I think.

Having played some more, I really am impressed with the amount of content and the depth of gameplay; my party is at levels 7/8 after quite a few hours play, and I haven't even touched multiplayer. Not bad for a free game!

Most of the dungeons so far are quite challenging and require thought, though I think the luck of the draw does play quite a significant role (of course, this can work both in favour of the player as well as against her). The cards to really dread on monsters are good armour cards, followed by decks which lean towards mobility/stabbing combos. The trogs who combine all these in the second fight in 'Beneath the Frozen Earth' were far tougher than the trog wizards in the final fight, but then again my warrior did have that armour that earths electric attacks.

The free treasure hunt dungeon was very well-designed - I just managed to hold out the four turns, finishing with one party member on 4hp! - and persuaded me that buying the remaining treasure hunt 'set' would be decent value, especially as I know I'll easily get a tenner's worth of entertainment out of the game overall. In general I find the paid add-ons to be pretty unobtrusive; for instance, the Club item on the pillow does not bother me at all.

So far then, a lot of fun. Thanks for the beta key.

 

So far so good, nice mix of tactial rpg and card game. I agree with Cerebral Paladin with the monster mix starting out (could be better). I also agree with Zane, the armor cards are pretty overpowered. All in all, pretty nice game. I look forward to advancing further in the game.

 

My first impression:
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG DHFVBSJKSBVDSKJVBSHBVJKDHBFVHKDBAVF YES!YES!YES!YES! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Translation:
My good gentlemen, I come bringing tales of my first exploits in Card Hunter . It was easy and fun to learn the ropes (good job on the tutorial), and it seems that I wont be bored by this game anytime soon. There really isn't much for me to say, outside of it looking to be very promising! As far as challenge goes, it seemed fine to me, but I only have a party of level 5, so I haven't progressed much. I have had a bit of troubles in certain scenarios, but I haven't lost yet except in the tutorial battle against the dragon dude. So yea, this game rocks so far.

Only two very minor complaints:
1- I died in the battle against the dragon dude because I had no idea that I was hiding my wizard behind a pillar, which blocked my vision. I wish I was told about that sooner, but it didn't took much for me to realize what I was doing wrong anyway, so no big deal.
2- when I went to the multiplayer part of the tutorial, the game told me to unlock a package which gave me a bunch of free stuff. I don't mind that all too much, but it felt a bit unfair that I could use some of that equipment in the single player campaign. No biggie tough.

I have yet to try multiplayer.
I have yet to see pesky little bugs (or at least I didn't noticed any)
Where is the mandatory level 1 rat fight?

 

I've been playing the game for two days now. My first impression is very positive. I really enjoyed the game so far. The story is good (will the nerd DM conquer the heart of the Pizza lady ?) and the different 'dungeons' are entertaining.
I especially love how you can miserably fail a mission when using the wrong gear (for example the golem that shrugs of damage due to high armor). When I restarted the mission, I used all penetrating gear and he went down like a hot knife through butter. I love it when a game requires some brain activity

Some remarks :
It was not immediately clear how to start a MP game. It was only after the game guided me to 'purchase' a starter pack that I figured out how to do it.
Some variation in gear drops would be nice

 

Interesting game. Any given card based combat system can take some getting used to, though I guess I had some experience from the old Dragon Ball Z card based game and from Baten Kaitos. Combat seems to drag a little, but I played through quite a few adventures before I got to the point where it was enough I had to say "I could use a break from this." But overall I think I like the equipment card system.

One minor thing that was kind of immersion breaking: When one of your characters goes down I think it was called "dying" but they revive instantly for the next fight with absolutely no explanation of how they accomplished that. I seriously thought that in the golem fight where I had my first "deaths" that those characters might be gone, but that was not the case. Did I miss something?

The art style is cool and pretty appropriate, though I had a bit of a space out moment when I first saw the "table" with the cheetos bowl. That was probably just me though.

I am not so sure about the pricing of pizza. Seems kind of expensive for what you get, though I do not have so much extensive experience with good Free to Play games to tell what the "going rates" are.

 

Hooray first impressions!

First, love the D&D theme. The cheetos and pizza are a great touch. Game looks great and play is smooth.

Second, usability problems.
I want to be able to cancel a move, just like I can cancel spells or attacks; I've accidentally used one of the dash attack a half dozen times.
Selling my loot is a scary proposition; I always end up accidentally selling something being used by my MP team if I'm in campaign, and something from my SP team if I'm in MP. I have no idea if there is a way to isolate equipped items, but it's driving me crazy that I keep selling stuff that I need.
I would like a buyback option for loot, so that if the above accidental selling happens, I can get my stuff back without paying a 2000% markup.

Third, monetization. I think the price for the club is too high; I put 10 bucks in to try out the different features, and one extra piece of loot isn't worth the price of admission, just my opinion. I'd like to see more benefits to the membership, or longer times for your payment.

Fourth, I love the mechanics. All of my favorite 4th ed tricks work here, mostly terrain tricks and traps once enemies have exhausted their moves. Well designed and really entertaining.

Overall, if this was the final product, I'd keep playing. I don't know if I'd spend money on any of the current offerings, but that's because I'm not that interested in what's for sale, not a reflection on the quality of the game.

Good job everyone

 

Well, I am about 3 days in now, and I have to say, I like the game and the mechanics a ton. I think it's really a lot of fun.

I would have a few nitpicks though.

1: replaying the missions is a lot less interesting with the overarching story gone. It's really wierd not to hear gary and melvin. I am not sure why that's cut out.

2: the tutorial is not.... reenableable? I accidentally clicked and missed one message in the tutorial. I thought it said something about a group of enemies sharing a deck only being able to use one attack per member per turn. I figured "okay, no worries, I will just replay the tutorial tomorrow and double check". And then when I did that, the tutorial didn't actually show up. Admittedly, I am pretty sure I figured out how it worked by playing the rest of the game, but it was a bit bothersome that I couldn't actually redo the tutorial.

3: The interface is really good, but I wish the opponent's revealed cards at the top of the screen were significantly bigger, or could be enlarged in some way. I play on 1680 x 1050 (native monitor resolution) and find that it's very tough to actually see the revealed cards without mousing over each one unless I am intimately familiar with the decks.

4: for building a character, it would be helpful if there was somewhere in game a quick breakdown of "okay, this is where the gear starts costing talents". For example, suppose I decide I want to devote my talents to a shield and some boots, and that means I want the best quality talent free sword I can find? what level is that? 7, from what I make out. If I play higher level quests, does that mean I will get primary weapons that don't cost talents? Considering how critical talent costs are to an item's role in your loadout, it seems wierd that It doesn't explain exactly how to predict if a chest will give me items that cost talents or not.

5: the gear interface really needs a way to enable multiple sort criteria at once. Even within a specific set of requirements (no talent points, level 5+, sort by rarity, for example) you still have to filter by card types (for example, amongst my axes, the shredding strike ones or the skillfull strike ones), and in addition, even if you remember "yeah, I got that awesome arcane item 5 levels ago", it seems like art is reused. As a result, I find I end up having to manually look at every item more than I would like, and it will only get worse as I get more stuff.

6: I would really like to see more class skills with a wider variety of types of cards in them. Specifically, I would like to see ones with no traits at all, to allow people to focus on more defensive criteria than offensive for the ambush scenarios. I feel like it's really easy to tool up with lots of bash for zombies, but very tough to tool up with lots of defense, because it seems like there are only a couple sources of good supplemental armor cards, and it's very easy to find them not drop, or not appear in stores. Shields specifically, I find very easy to just not have any relevant ones, given how they seem to go very obsolete at certain levels. In addition, helms seem in short supply and maybe that's fine, but It would be really nice to have another source of armor cards if I am going to end up using the whelk's helm for 12 or more levels for lack of alternatives.

7: it would be REALLY nice to be able to see lines of sight after activating a move card, to refresh one's memory. Especially in complicated crossfire scenarios in the single player campaign.

Overall though, really impressed so far. It runs quite well for in browser, and beyond the being unable to cancel movement cards or attacks that also give movement, it controls well, and overall I am really impressed with the mission design. I feel like it introduced quite a few interesting scenario types and only a couple of them felt very "gear checky".

 

The game itself is nice, but some things are really annoying. For example when i had 2 melee units left and the enemy 3 ranged units
All they do is use 1 move card, then all of their units run away, you try to chase them, but they keep doing hit and run.
And for some reason with 1 move card ALL OF THEIR units can move.
This pretty much left me with no chance at all.

 

This game is pretty fun! I really like the strategy of where to move, when to use your cards, and all of that. The randomness is kind of sucky, usually when you don't get any attack cards out of your deck.

I would love to play the game more... but its just going to wipe my progress anyways. So I will quit until final release : /

 

I have made a point of not reading anything else before posting in this thread, so don't blame me if it's redundant!

At first I was a little unclear as to whether I was a single player, creating one character, or a person playing a party. So I was kind of frustrated that the first character I made was a manly dude, and then I played just him for a bit. Once I got my second character, it was much clearer and I was a bit more okay with my line up, especially once I could get a tough lady for my cleric to balance out my stereotypical she-elf. And you know, I spent my freebie pizza on making my dude a lady, so now I have a crack team of badass women. They all appear to be white though, but now I don't remember if I saw other skin colors in the costume area. They were kinda blued-out, so now my memory is fuzzy on it.

While I love being able to play a single-player, no-mess version of games like Hero Quest (which, uh, might happen to be in its original box on a shelf in my gaming room...), no matter what I do with my browser window, I'm having to move around the "table". If I make my window big enough on my 20-inch monitor set to "everything is tiny" resolution, I shouldn't have to do that! I can understand it not scaling well to my 10" netbook screen (though that would be super amazing awesome, just saying), but I can't see why it stubbornly just... makes everything bigger? I don't need the things already in view to be bigger, I need to have my whole sheets in view! The map! Yeesh. Yes, I am one of those people who's section of the table at gaming is nice and tidy...

Let's see... what else... shopping for gear, even with so little gold, is kind of fun. The only down side is that the shopkeeper doesn't seem to have any spare space to send the stuff I sell until I mess with filters and then go back to viewing all. I've accidentally covered up good gear a couple times now.

You've done a good job on the two brothers, by the way. At first I found them *both* annoying, but now I'm only annoyed at the older brother for not letting his little brother figure things out on his own and let us have fun playing the game in the basement! XD

I've only played a bit, but I'm having a lot of fun!

 

The devs have promised there will be more variation available later on, including different skin colors.

 

hello guys,

I am playing 3 days ago now. I found the game very exciting, and i am happy to see a game which is new style. I like the graphic, the combat mechanics, and the deck-building \ gear set system is very interesting. There is two main things what i didn't like:

- there is too much food\girl related intermezzo in the story. I am understand the main idea about the two brothers, as Gary trying to be an helpful AI like the paperclip guy in the MS Office, and the confronts between them make the player to feel Gary on our side. But the other side, the too much food notes just annoying me, i don't know it's because the different cultural background, or i am just too old (or just grumpy).

- the item management is very confusing at start. Every time when i found a new loot, i tried to match if is upgrade or not, as i didn't really got the idea about the "every fight may require a different deck" - and there is not strickt upgrades, but different sets for different situations. The confusing covered me totally when the tutorial led me into the multiplayer area, i bought a multiplayer set, and all of the items landed in my inventory - where i tried to keep some order, and keep selling the not useful items. I got one million brand new items, mainly high level items what my characters can't use, and i felt totally lost. (something like if as kid you collect stamps, till the point when you get a huge sack of them, and you just overloaded). Since this point i don't sell anything but the trasure, thinking on "this item may be good for something". Now i figured out how to use the search function, and even found i can save\load party, so in theory i can save different item sets and load them back when it's need again... but i think it would be more useful to be character-based. Or to have a container where to i can put all of my floor-changing items. Sometimes i searching cards what helping against floor-changing effects, like dispel, telekinesis, hover, push - and there is no single search word for them... i remember them, or i have to look every armor pieces one-by-one - every time. Would be good to sticky them somehow, add a custom keyword for them, or make own categories, or something. It's a good thing that i have to make different decks time-to-time, but not help if i know there must be something just i don't found, or worry if i forgot something.

And a plus thing:

- sometimes i read the description of the adventure, and i realize i have wrong deck - but cant change my items, only after the first wipe. It's embarassing to go into combat against the powerful magicians known that all of my antimagic armor is in the inventory...

 

It's a very good game. I really like how well the atmosphere of a tabletop game like D&D translates to this. From the cheetos at the loading screen to the sounds to the pizza, its all very immersive. I wish there would be a co-op feature for dungeons because itd feel more like D&D (a party instead of solo vs AI) but maybe thats already in the works.

-An interactive story would be cool. I enjoy the small talk, but sometimes its not worth reading as much. But if we were able to buy our own character's face and converse with the brothers once in awhile when they pop up, and possibly earn pizza/gold by correct answers, id probably pay more attention.

-Props on the item reward system, makes the game very addicting, and it does not feel unfair or Pay2win in any way. However, I really really wish there was a warning on spending the free pizza early, I thought we'd continually gain free pizza as the game progressed, i wouldve saved it for unlocking the missions etc. maybe that is actually your intent but just saying what i thought

-Leveling + Party system is sort of weird. I want to play with more than just 3 characters, so I have to level up another party with different classes so I can switch out if a combo is better for a certain mission. But that gets into complications because when you switch units, their current XP might be different than the other party (10/20XP vs 19/20XP), and when you finish a mission 1 unit might level to 5 while the others are still 4, and that leads to XP gain difference What would be good to alleviate this would be small XP potions (+3XP) you can give to units to balance out the XP difference if you want to use multiple parties/units, i don't think XP pots will break the game if you limit their appearance in drops.

 

Ok, doing my best not to read other peoples threads.
My impressions after a day or two of playing were such.

I love the classic look and feel, I remember playing those old modules, so that rings very true.
The cardboard figure look worked fine, and really evoked the right feel, overall the look and feel was spot on.
The conversation parts were ok, perhaps trying a bit too hard at times. As a kid I played DnD in the basement, and it didnt entirely ring true. But it moreso played off stereotypes and was humerous enough, its certainly not bad anyhow.

Now for playability, I made an elven fighter to start, happy to trade durability for mobility, an elven mage second, and a human cleric last, as I was really feeling that lack of durability, but wanted to keep some mobility, and unspecified 'tactical superiority' sounded interesting. I played up to level 6.

Overall the play felt good, the randomness of cards meant having good attacks, or often enough any attacks at all was no sure thing, but I never felt like the cards that came up were completely useless, and the tactical options were very clear. The intro with well equipped heroes did help me get an idea of where the game was going.

The occasional nudges towards the paid content were reasonable, and giving free slices to try them was nice, even the extra reward shown every battle is subdued, I never felt like I needed to pay to succeed, but that it was a viable option if I wanted a little boost.

I think that the low elven HP is a problem early on, especially for fighters, really not made up for by having dash as the move card. Or perhaps fighters in general just didnt feel durable enough to me, I havent tried a dwarf yet. I'm still too early in the game to give a really good take on this, but I did end a great many maps with a dead elven fighter, certainly more than any other party member dead.

The only real downside I felt, was the lack of coins and early randomness of gear. I had little to no gold to spare, and even a 5g item from the shop was a hard cost, meaning that filling newly available slots was not always an option, and buying an item to give myself more options in a slot that was already filled was right out I think I had 19g at the end of the day. It was frustrating being able to see how some cards could work well together but not really afford to try any of them. Adding a step that gives players a few coins and make they buy an item from the shop, or even just adding a few more treasure item drops on early dungeons would go a long ways to helping with this.

Overall the game is a ton of fun, and I look forward to playing it more.

 

My first impressions:

I must say that this is one of the most fun games I have played all year. I have been playing now for almost a week for about an hour a night and I can't get enough.

I used to DM 25+ years ago and the storyline and atmosphere are spot on. I really enjoy the whole Gary/Melvin interludes and find myself smiling every time they pop up. Quite possibly my favorite thing about the game is the module sheets with the descriptions and art. Those sheets just have the right flavor and set me up for a fun adventure each time. I also really enjoy the huge variety of equipment/cards that allows for multiple strategies.

Here is some (hopefully) constructive feedback.
- I am not a big fan of the whole f2p model as it is ripe for coercive monetization. This is such a great game I would easily plunk down a good chunk of change right now to buy the game outright. As the model stands now I will never spend money to unlock extra items or characters but I would spend money to unlock extra modules/story lines/expansion packs.
- I don't really like that my multiplayer items bleed over to my campaign. If nothing else you could have a filter check box to allow or disallow items won in multiplayer to be seen in the campaign.
- is there a way to reset the single player back to no items/lvl 1 characters/ all modules locked again/tutorial on? It would be a nice option so that I could relive the experience of going through it all again. I could see this being done with profiles for the single player so you didn't just lose your other characters they are just in another profile.
-The level of difficulty in single player is pretty good but it would be cool if you could ramp it up. Say have a hard version of each module and you could choose to do the normal or the Melvin version of each dungeon just for added fun.

I just want to emphasize that I am truly loving this game and it's whole style. The above is just my impressions/opinions after playing for a week so take it for what it is and nothing more.

Now back to slaying some Goblins.

 

So I've played Cardhunter for about a week (or two?) now. I watched a "Let's Play" on Youtube before playing, so I had a basic grasp of game mechanics before starting and I had a chance to devise some strategy for the first ~8 levels of modules (up to, but not including Melvelous the Magnificent. And I missed watching Rescue from Shieldhaven Prison, somehow).

I love the art style and the game mechanics. The overall feel of the game is very solid with a good bit of strategic depth and enough challenge without feeling brutally arbitrary (except in places, see #3 below). The increase of the challenge is quite good with a jump in difficulty coming around level 6 when you've got a good feel of the mechanics. I think the first time I lost a character was in Ruby Demon Portal and the first time I had to retry a module was in Compass of Xorr, but that didn't mean the modules were easy. Success came from a mix of luck, foreknowledge, and strategy. Melvelous the Magnificent took several of tries, too, which I expected since it seems sort of like a boss battle. And I've died plenty of times since then in testing out new strategies/playing with different mechanics. I'm up to the Tomb of Tvericus module now.

If I have any complaints, they are these:
1. The Cardhunter Club is too "in your face" for me and really dampens the enjoyment of the game. I'm not a fan of monthly subscriptions and never will be, but I realize you've got servers to maintain and people to pay. I liked the idea of the treasure hunt modules (a sort of DLC, which is a model I can get behind if done correctly) and bought enough pizza to unlock them all. But it is annoying to see what I "could have got if I'd been willing to pay" every time I earn a reward. I'm sure that is the way it was designed to be, but I disagree with the theory of game design that says "annoy your players until they pay to make the pain stop."

2. There needs to be an "unequip all" button. I like to play with all classes and all races, and I've been experimenting with lots of different item/race/class compositions. It is annoying to have to manually pull off each individual item equipped to a character before I trade them out of my party. The "store party" function recently introduced helps go back to some setup that you had previously, which is great. Now if you could add an "unequip all" button for those of us who experiment with everything all the time . . .

3. The only time, so far, I have thought that the difficulty bordered on the un-fun was in Against the Cockroaches. It wasn't the swarming that was difficult. It was the arbitrary way that Morvin could kill my entire party in (nearly) one round when I got to him. I could get through the first two scenarios by using the right combination of strategies and items. I'd even manage to clear out the door and the cockroaches on the third stage while keeping alive all (or at least two, always) of my characters. Then I'd get ready to face off against Morvin, he'd come in and Dragon Breath (I don't remember the card name, but it is a burst, poison 3, duration 3 card, I think, and it has a picture of a dragon on it.) THREE TIMES IN A ROW followed by Poisonous Pseudopod for whoever survived, and I'd be dead. My entire party in one (or nearly one) go. Not fun. I tried every strategy I could think of. I farmed for the right items. Nothing. When I finally defeated him it was more a matter of luck than of skill. This was the first module I faced where I nearly walked away from the game even with money invested into it. (I did stop playing for several days.) And I have no desire to ever play this module again. Challenging is one thing, arbitrary is another. I'm hoping for a rework between now and the next reset.

4. I'm not a fan of the increasing wait time with higher ranking (reward chest position?) in the Multiplayer cue. I can see possible reasons why it was implemented, but I don't like what feels like getting penalized for winning.

Overall, a pretty solid game with lots of fun moments. I even like the GM characters and their silliness. I'm hoping to find out what happens with their story by the end of the single player campaign. I already put my money where my mouth is, so I don't have a whole lot more I could add.

 

I played Dungeons & Dragons as a kid in the 80's and this game revives all my memories of the original game. The card aspect of it is a cool twist and makes gear choices a little more interesting than most games. Strategy RPG's are among my favorite games and I've been playing them very regularly since Warsong and Shining Force on Sega Genesis. My biggest complaint with that type of game is that they are generally too easy for me but I've lost several fights during the campaign and that's fantastic! There is a lose in the name 'strategy game' if you can just outfit your team and smash everything, but the balance seems good when you go back and re-equip after getting slapped around by skeletons immune to your stabs or imps that fly around and burn\acid splash my team.
I've made it to level 10-11 for my strongest characters and my only suggestion at this point is a little more variety in character types. Where are halflings or half-orcs? Rogues, druids, bards? I realize making enough equipment for many different classes would be extremely time consuming and a bit of a hassle but perhaps only some original slots on some such as thieving tools and lighter armor but less weapons than a fighter for a rogue or a druid with some arcane items and access to robes but maybe a nature skill and different weapons than wizards.
My team is switched around between 2 of each class, different races for the speed\HP differences but it would be nice to have some more options there I think. The game is a lot of fun, spent my first $20 on my third or fourth day playing and when my friends came for our bi-weekly D&D day they both immediately signed up for beta. Great stuff here from the style to the game play, probably the best beta I've been involved in.

 

I wanted to finish the main campaign before I wrote this, so I don't really know if this is a first impression. This game is pretty much everything that I hoped for. Full stop. I haven't sampled the multiplayer much but it seems legit. The learning curve seems to be pretty gentle and the tutorial seemed appropriate. Only complaints I have are when I lose connection, but that is mostly my internet to blame (though other games are able keep pretty stable connections).

Edit: Didn't think about it at first because it is a problem in most games I play, BUT international purchasing support would be great. Some places don't have access to PayPal or Google Pay.

 

I really love this game.

The atmosphere is perfect, the dialogue is quite amusing. The tabletop setting is perfectly implemented and I love it.

I've played some hours and gotten my first team to about level 6, and really the ONLY complaint so far is the inability to swap out characters for different missions. The racial differences are excellent - significant enough to effect gameplay, not so major as to make any race unplayable in specific situations - but I would like to at least TRY the other race/class combinations, without ditching my current characters.

I expect you'll be adding purchasable extra character slots? If you're not, you really really should be. So far it's the only thing I'd want to buy. Add it and you'll have my money. (Though I suppose it's possible you'll have some of my money anyway when I reach special levels that must be unlocked via pizza? The PvP aspect doesn't really interest me and I suspect that's where most of the profit is going to come from.)