Hands of Fate - Tabletop RPG reincarnated.

 Hands of Fate - The Old Magic reincarnated.

Long long ago, before the emergence of the Internet which are used by common folks now, there was an era where humans play games on top of coffee tables and even on the floor. They could have large map-like paper, a few dice, a few tokens (sometimes it could shape like human figures but most of the time, it is just colored round objects) and dozens of cards, each written with specific rules, battle encounters, rewards, punishments, weapons, armour, spells and so forth. These were the Age of Table-top RPG games, an era so long passed that gamer generations today have never even heard of them, much less experience them first hand as I did back in 1970 and 80s when I was around ten, going against teenagers who are in their twenties and making them sweat a buck. I really had a certain gift of foresight in this type of game. 

Over the time, games like the tabletop RPG started to vanish from the mainstream by late 1980s (largely due to the advent of Arcade games), except perhaps for games like Snake and Ladders and Monopoly which I believe still hold some of the original theme in it. Even then, those games have started to become less and less interesting for the newer generations. My personal interest was kept alive by trading card games such as Yugioh and the most recent one, Vanguard. But as I grow old, these type of Tabletop RPG games started to vanish into the pages of history and had turned into nostalgia.

Then a few months back, I got this game for free from my PSN (Yearly) subscription. It was called Hand of Fate, developed by an Australian game studio, Defiant Development and was released in July 2014. Frankly speaking, until I got the game for free, I have never heard of it or seen it anywhere before (or I could have brought it earlier). I put it aside because I had other games to play. Recently, I ran out of games to play and saw it, decided to give it a try. Imagine my surprise to see this game was created in style of a Table-top RPG (TTRPG) which I used to play in late 70s and early 80s.

Furthermore, the game was designed in Unity game engine which I'm currently learning for my own personal use. Therefore, it makes a perfect learning curve as well as a case study for Unity game development (among others like Wolves of Midgard which I had played but have not finished it yet). 

In this game (like most TTRPG games), the goal of the game is not to defeat the dungeon or the level itself but to outsmart the person sitting in front of you, namely the Dealer. It is the Dealer who is the real "boss" in this game. He is what players of TTRPG game could call as a Dungeon Master (DM). His goal is to create obstacles, challenges and throw everything but the kitchen sink at you during the game. His goal is to "kill" your character and he could do it at every chance he gets.

And it is your goal to survive. You can do that by collecting cards which will gain you food (for travels from one point of the map to another), gold (in case you want to buy more food which what I usually use for), weapons and armour (swords, mace, shield, armour and head gear) as well as accessories (rings usually). 

You will also get Curses (which has a debilitating effect such as reducing your health and health bar). Health is your overall health at that moment while health bar is the maximum health you have. If your character has 100/100 HP. The first 100 is the health and the second hundred is max. health. When you take 10 damage, it could look like this 90/100. When you heal for 20 HP, it will not become 110 because 100 HP is the max health you can get at any given time.

In this game, as far as I played it, the best way to increase the length of your health bar is by drawing the right card which will increase the health bar permanently. This also means that are cards which could reduce your health bar permanently as well. Card like The Maiden (which is quite common at early stages of the easy mode, like what I'm playing now) will allow you (to have options to choose one out of several choice) such as options to increase your Health bar permanently, give you supplies (food), gold or a blessing. I usually go for blessings or a health bar increase in early stages of the game but as you progress further, the Dealer ensures that this card become rarely available to you (or even possibly removed it). 

As for the battle, while it is largely influenced by the cards you gain (and those stacked against you), this game is brilliant in forcing you to control your character and have them fight enemies in real-time battles as well. The weapon and armour cards you obtained will become your armour and weapons during the real-time combat. Any blessings you have collected will also be in affect. I had (couple of times) received the blessing which allows me to destroy a single enemy at start of every battle and it did help me a bit. Also, the curses you accumulated will also take effect here as well. 

The real-time battle will consists of you facing real-time enemies. Dust refers to human (bandits) enemies. Plague refers to rat enemies (possibly a reference to the Black Plague of 1200s). Scales refers to Lizard enemies which are tougher because they can blow your blocks and it will take blunt weapons to damage them effectively. I find that it is effective to press Square to bash them with your shield (which is important - never sell them) once and them beat them to a pulp. Skulls refers to Undead (Skeleton) monsters and they can be harder to kill compared to regular humans. In some situation, they cannot be killed until you destroyed a certain totem nearby which kept summoning them. These are your regular run-of-the-mill monsters and enemies. 

Learning to fight them effectively early on is very essential because mistakes will not be tolerated later. There are also other not-so-common enemies like the Minotaur, Lava Golems and Lich are based on the path you choose at early stages of the game. So far, I have defeated the Lich and the Lava Golems which were summoned randomly. I have not encountered the Minotaur since I did not pursuit that path. There are also the Kraken and a few others I have not encountered. Maybe I do that in the future after defeating the Dealer in the easy mode.

Speaking of the Dealer, I think the Dealer will remove a lot of cards which actually gives you advantages in battle and throughout the game (he could say so himself if you draw a good one during the game - something about balancing the deck). So basically the stages you play at early parts of the game are methods of trimming out strong (random) cards which can be used against the Dealer and the only advantage you get to win is by accumulating more and more powerful weapons, armour and blessings which you can stack up for the final confrontation with the Dealer. 

So far (as of now, 26th January, 2022), I have yet to defeat the Dealer in our final confrontation. The easy mode is not that easy. I have no idea what the normal mode could look like. The final fight consists of him summoning the previous bosses (like the Queen and the Rat King) and send them after you. It going to take all your skills (in dodging and planning ahead) to survive those encounters. 

When the enemies he summoned were defeated, he could send in projectiles toward you (which you need to press the right button to deflect it back to him). Do it right and he could collapse on the table, allowing your character to move in and physically attack him. This will be repeated up to four phases (I reached 2nd phase so far) until you reduce his HP completely. 

I have heard that there is a sequel for this game but I have not encountered it yet.

Overall, this is a good game for those who miss playing the TableTop RPG games like we used to play. For others, it is a unique take on strategy game which new gamers (those who born after the year 2000) should experience firsthand. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_of_Fate_(video_game)

https://handoffate.fandom.com/wiki/Hand_of_Fate_Wiki