Combat ushers you into a small map within a forest, or within a ruined temple, and you swing your axe or sword at rats and mages until they fall-or until you do. Failure, on the other hand, usually means drawing loss cards that diminish your maximum health, or even curse you with negative effects that last until the game is over-unless, that is, you draw a card for a mage that sells curse removals, and you actually have the 75 gold necessary to buy his services.Įncounter cards lead you into battles that are not left to your imagination, but occur in real time. Victory often means drawing from a stack of equipment cards from your own deck (Ooh, look: a flaming sword!). Some events are stacked in your favor-the hand may consist of three success cards and one failure card, for example-while others punish you with several randomized draws in a row, each of which possesses only a single chance of success.
The four cards are shuffled, and with a shaky hand, you choose the one you hope leads to safety. You are running from a giant tentacled behemoth, and your destiny belongs to the whims of four cards, only one of which represents success, while the others represent various degrees of failure. The gods will not always smile upon you.ĭrawing a card often leads to more choices, many of which are determined solely by luck. That card might represent a simple bandit ambush, a bard asking for coin in return for a song, or a magic portal that takes you to the next adventuring area-which means navigating a new arrangement of cards. The enigmatic dealer places his cards face down in a linear or non-linear arrangement, and with each move, you lose a single ration of food, which is one of three primary resources-along with gold and health-that you must track. In Hand of Fate, those cards act in tandem as a tabletop game board in which you move your token one square at a time, uncovering events with each turn. A typical CCG is competitive, having players attack and counter using cards that represent creatures, heroes, statistics, and so forth.
It's tempting to call Hand of Fate a cross between a collectible card game and an action role-playing game, and while you can customize your deck, that comparison doesn't seem quite right. When the game tells you of a surreal circus that dissipates on the wind once you make your exit, the writing is just clear enough to let you paint within the outlines drawn for you.
Hand of Fate invites you to look beyond its abstractions and picture such moments with your mind's eye. You never see these lovers: they exist only as a few words and a card. Meanwhile, you sit across from the enigma holding the cards, choosing whether to help the lovers, or to alert their parents you navigate that river, hoping to traverse it unscathed, rather than to draw the ire of nearby lizardpeople. The game's mysterious and melodramatic card dealer takes the role of dungeon master, uncovering cards that represent star-crossed lovers looking for a friendly face, or raging riverbeds that must be crossed. Hand of Fate may not be a Dungeons & Dragons game, but it captures the imagination in a similar way: by abstracting exploration and encouraging your mind to create exactly what the forests, dungeons, and villages you encounter might look like.
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