Deckstorm may convert this non-card dude

As long as I can get away without paying real money

The last time I wrote about a mobile card game (okay, it was more of a match-3, but I love bringing up this piece) it didn’t go exceedingly well. I can only assume that someone at DeNA read that piece and thought “Man, Zack sure knows card games back-to-front, side-to-side, so let’s get him to write about our new thing Deckstorm: Duel of Guardians.” So the team flew me down to San Francisco to its fancy office with free coffee and fridge full of iced jasmine green tea and gave me the rundown.

I’m still not what anyone would call a connoisseur of the genre, but I came away impressed and even downloaded the dang thing on my phone today when it released.

Senior Producer Roger Royce enthusiastically gushed all about Deckstorm, which is always charming; I love hearing from devs that are clearly excited about what they’re getting to create. When setting out to take its next stab at the growing digital collectible card game market, DeNA had a few core features in mind. The game would be based on War (that game you played at daycare when you were eight-years-old and the only other choice was Go Fish because poker is Hard), matches would last less than five minutes, players would be interacting at the same time, and cards would be upgradable. Due to that last concept, DeNA is referring to Decktstorm as a *customizable* collectible card game, which made more sense as the presentation continued.

Encounters go a little like this: each player (or you and the computer as there’s a single-player component) both have 15 cards in your deck that you can arrange prior to battle. You always have a hand of five cards, which look more like characters in an RPG due to how many stats they have — speed, health, attack, magic spells and the like. There are also three elemental affinities that lead to a rock-paper-scissors system, allowing you to do extra damage with smart choices. The first round allows you to redraw as many cards as you want to while you’re looking at your opponent’s hand to see which affinities would work best in this scenario. Your deck’s total speed determines who goes first.

After that groundwork is laid, you play in three different waves on a 2×3 grid. Here’s where the War influence comes into play: still able to see your opponent’s cards, you place a card down and the AI immediately does the same. This happens three times, and after all three are placed, the cards attack each other, either being destroyed or taking persistent damage in the process that will affect the next wave. There are also spells that can be built up that have abilities like multi-target blasts or buffs that help out certain affinities.

During both the demo and when I had a chance to play myself, I saw that the battles were lightning-quick. Royce told me that this was because the majority of the strategy was deferred to the deck-building. Instead of having to mull over each turn, I would throw down my cards rather quickly since there wasn’t a whole to choose from. Deciding when to use spells was a little more involved, but I really liked how fast I could tear through each fight. Royce explained that being able to judge how short games would be is important to him, since he sometimes rides public transportation and knows the spots where he’ll lose reception are. For this same reason, PvP battles won’t disconnect when connection troubles rear their heads, instead pausing or even loading up an instanced version of the player’s deck so you can continue playing.

I usually balk at free-to-play games because the countdown before you’re expected to start shelling over money seems to get shorter every year, but I was pleasantly surprised by the way Deckstorm is handling this (in theory, of course). There are a ton of ways to upgrade your cards or earn new ones without playing, as well as a bunch of different events that DeNA is running to ensure there’s always something to do. Cards gain experience through battle and can eventually evolve into more powerful forms. When earning new card packs, duplicates will strengthen existing cards instead of giving you just another one. There are also runes that you can equip on your cards — holy crap do I need a synonym for that word — and essences that can be permanently fused to square-shaped pieces of digital paper wot represent characters. 

Royce fondly reminisced about the collectible Marvel trading cards of the ’90s, and how he had them proudly displayed in plastic sleeves. He wanted to turn this into a feature, so you can look at your cards in a sleeve format. You can also see pages of the cards that you don’t yet have, and when you link together regions of the sleeve you’ll earn more of the currency used to purchase more packs. Quest Puzzles are yet another way you can earn that money: one card is separated into nine subsections, and when you complete a challenge for each one, you receive that card. In the time since I downloaded the game, I’ve found that there’s always some carrot on the stick somewhere. That might sounds annoying, but it’s giving me plenty to strive for instead of heading straight for the dollar button.

There are other cool features like guilds that you can join to be able to chat in private or public as well as daily and monthly challenges. I particularly liked that there was a 100-floor dungeon that I’ll never attempt as well as Rune Realms, a set of levels that require more specific decks. Whether or not this content generosity will remain or not is hard to say at the moment, but it seems like DeNA has the right idea for now. I’ll stick with it for the next couple of months and keep you updated. I foresee lots of toilet time with Deckstorm, which released yesterday.