Wildfrost Review – A Hot New Card Game

thesixthaxis.com:

There are a lot of deckbuilding roguelikes out in the world now, and each one tweaks things slightly to try and keep things fresh, but not all succeed. Wildfrost manages to feel reminiscent of several heavy hitters from the genre, and despite similarities, also carves out its own identity, and that identity is very much worth paying attention to because it’s amazing.

It starts with you choosing one hero from among three options. Now, these heroes come from a specific tribe, and while you unlock more as you go, you’ll initially only have one choice. However, each hero also has a mix of different abilities, health, attack, and other qualities that guide the potential deck you’ll be building as you go.

Battles have you placing units on six possible slots across two rows. Most units only attack what is directly in front of them, so positioning is essential, especially because if your hero dies, your run ends instantly.  Each unit has a counter that ticks down until they take action, enemies go first if there’s a draw, and you can also play cards that will have actions tick down. You’ve then got a bell that you can ring to reload your hand. The bell will also cause the timers to tick down, unless you’ve waited a certain number of turns to ring it.

On top of that, different units have loads of different effects. You can find units that grant a shield to any allies that manage to kill an enemy, or one that heals everyone in their row whenever they kill sometimes. Then some units might slow enemies down and stop them attacking, or poison them so they take damage every turn. You can move units around at will, but you need to keep an eye on every single thing on screen to avoid accidentally losing one. It’s a lot to track, but slowly