Card City Nights: Hope you like Mana screw

I've played a lot of CCGs in my life span. I actually played them back before Magic dropped the tapping patent bomb and cleaned out the market, so there were lots and lots of odd little games to try out. I always miss the original LOTR, which had sweet art and a completely overcomplicated rules set. And I also always wish someone would pick up the design for the original battletech, which had the best compromise when it came to mana/lands.

There's always a lot of, hmm, let's say friction between ideals when discussing CCGs, as I often see people complain about game elements that the designers have kept intentionally, because it offers more and deeper game play, in lieu of simplifications that often ruin the late game or strategic depth. I'm always going to go back to Magic, because Magic is just the best after twenty years, but it's funny seeing someone who has played a twenty year old game for less than a month complain about elements that they barely understand. This game, thankfully, doesn't really delve into much of that and you won't really find that sort of friction - mostly.

I haven't played any of the other Ludosity titles, though I do own one or two of them, and maybe some of the other indie games that in some manner come under the heading of this game. The art style is from the same guy or gal who did Ittle Dew, with cartoony characters and backdrops, and then the card art comes from other games which somehow connect to this title.

owns

 

I would actually sort of argue that in a lot of ways Card City Nights, hereby shortened to CCN, is more of a board game than a card game, and a lot of the elements feel a great deal away from the usual TCG, CCG, DCG or whatever acronym we're supposed to use experience. It is sort of interesting reviewing it, as well, because when you start peeling away the layers of cute art and cute sounds the game does not feel like the designers played or researched nearly enough about card games to actually build a convincing experience.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...


CCN is a "casual" card game built around a play experience that resembles a stripped down, limited version of something like Microprose's Shandalar or GBA or DS or vita or w/e Yu Gi Oh games. The core game is relatively simple: cards can have various active angles. You need to connect these angles and reach three 'symbols'. The symbols dictate the result of the union, with a tie allowing you to choose between the two. Unions can result in attacking, defending (which is just life gain) or reviving disabled cards. You have nine spaces to match cards on, as does your opponent, and you begin each match with a hand of five cards with life totals of 7/10 for both players. I point out the ten, because it is a little weird how capped life totals are prevalent in other games outside of Magic where it never matters anyway.

I don't like arbitrary caps on resources you need to expend energy to gain.

The more advanced elements of the system focus on rotating, removing and disabling cards. Rotating is better on cards on the outside, while disabling is better against cards on the inside. You can rotate your own cards, in theory, but it isn't a prevalent mechanic. Reviving is more common, and most second half decks will have access to revives, though a lot of the AIs will simply spam Healing Potion, which revives by itself rather than taking a union to do. Removed cards can't be brought back, and you can't look at your removed pile, or at least not that I could tell.

The basic game is good, but it suffers a little for lack of variety and most of the cards feel very restrictive based on the number of angles they are allowed. Some of the nomenclature is a little off, too; cards that read "can not be targeted by an opponent" don't include triggered effects in that, so those cards do often end up disabled or rotated to your surprise. The first half of the game is silly and causal, but the second half has a lot of denial attacks going on and you start to really hit the problems, which I'll talk about in a moment.

The adventure side of the game is mostly good and cute, you wander around "Card city" and meet various people. The art style and visuals are soothing, the game is very easy on the eyes and the sound track is sort of a mellow jazz out affair. I do find it a little weird that some regions require you to click to their outdoors, then another click to get in, then more clicks to get to the npc you want to talk to, when none of this needed to be layered like so. The NPCs have cute dialogue, and there's a couple tiny subplots where they do various things. I like the little jokes and the general relaxed feel the game is nice.

The game borrows some or much of its art from the studio's earlier productions, either as that studio or from the team members' work. Some people might find this clashes a little or doesn't quite work, but I actually found I rather liked it and it made me interested in their other games, especially Muri. It's a very laid back affair, on the most part, and it doesn't bother me that they didn't create totally serious art across the board. I do have a complaint that the game doesn't very firmly explain to you which packs drop which cards. It is fine for there to be some mystery, but I prefer the game be willing to inform me as I encounter a card where it is from. An expansion symbol would be fine; most of the cards have limited usage of their actual presentation, so it isn't a space issue. Its just unpolished which forms a theme for the game.

There is a store where you can buy singles and a card recycler that turns 20 points of cards into a new booster. The store is about the only way to use money in the game, which felt odd since there are NPCs who only pay out money for beating, and the recycler is the only real way to use left over cards. There is also a card combiner, where you can add card A to B, but the system is pretty terrible, which we'll get into now.

The deck building UI is awful, and sorting through your cards is unpleasant. There is a certain lack of crispness to the game, a certain feeling that it needed a bit more polish and playtesting when it comes to the UI. NPC dialogue can get irritating, especially on re-attempts on bosses, and the card alchemy thing is just asinine. You need to use this feature, it is the source of many of the strongest cards, but it is sluggish and to make an example - Let's say you open the feature up and you stick "Mama" in. Mama combines with "Really" to make "Mama and Son".

The game doesn't highlight this, you just plunk the card in, and then the library dims, so you have to scroll through. It'

s a minor thing, but it is unpleasant and unpolished, and indicative of a programmer just not caring very much. The UI starts to really feel like this.

The other big issue with the game - other than the cheating AI bosses - is that the game's second half play is often very centred on area denial, disabling and rotating. It is hard to balance your deck around reacting to each of these elements, and getting rotated usually requires you have access to removing your own cards rather than rotating them back. None of these mechanics, to be honest, are fun in a casual player's eyes. They're basically mana screw in Magic, and since there isn't much in the way of ways to manipulate your library or recover tempo, the game can end up feeling rather dismal and frustrating. Sometimes you simply don't draw answers.

The Cheating AI boss, of which I am certain there is one since it tells you straight up it is going to cheat, I was really only able to beat through dumb luck. Though, to be honest, if I went online and looked up how to polish my deck, I'd probably have done better but eh I don't really feel like a casual CCG should force that effort on me. I just wanted to play the game.

so is this good, or like

There is sort of an issue that it can be really hard to snap evaluate cards, which generally makes the whole "collectable" element to the card game rather monotonous. You may realize something is more valuable than you thought it was, but you generally get your reward boosters and don't see anything you care about. It reminds me of loot in modern ARPGs, where you get "Brassdigger's boots of Frivolousness" and the time spent processing if you got something good lessens the delight to the point you just feel like you did a math problem instead.

To briefly address the core storyline of the game, you show up on the floating barge that is card city, then you play cards. I'm not going to say I was disappointed with the game's story, but it feels like it could have done a little more. You just go around playing cards to gather "the legendaries" so you can play against some guy at the end for a cash prize. That's it. Oddly, the little character moments were nice, meeting the various characters and seeing them interact, but the overall story just isn't there.

So while I had fun with CCN and enjoyed learning the basics of the system, the game doesn't really nail down good card game design at all, and the lacking layer of polish on basically every interaction with the UI takes away from it as well. The game lacks that rush you get from cracking packs in other games, and the whole weird thing where coins barely do anything was really odd too. The middle to late game, where the AI cheeses you with broken tempo plays or you get rotated out of a game but win the match since the AI is bad anyway, doesn't feel very good. It's sort of funny to me, see, because you look at Shandalar or MMDOC and think about how brutal the games are at first, and how you expand into a better position that gives you the mental illusion you've risen in skill. CCN doesn't do that either - some of your early opponents literally can't win the match, as they will eventually deck out or just flop over. So you coast through the dumb dumbs, then move onto opponents you crush with your tuned deck until you hit one of the brutal fights. I think I found there was about three, though the one I think I was doing a bit before I should have in the game's progression.

It's also sort of mediocre as a deck building game. I played one deck through the whole game. I tried the other strategies, but they either took too long or just tend to be too vulnerable to select cards that randomly show up.

It actually doesn't

It's not really a bad game, but it lacks the loot treadmill feeling, doesn't feel all that casual and doesn't satisfy where it counts. I still had fun with it, but I got more player hours out of random MTG products, let alone f2p stuff like MMDOC or ye olde Shandalar. I think if you fall in the middle ground, between being a total silly casual and an advanced serious business player, CCN will probably hit the spot for a good ten hours or so, but I would largely shy away from recommending it to most people. I do appreciate the sense of humor, and the writing the quirky sort of fun that the art style really messes with well. All in all, a decent experience for me, I'm just not sure about it for you.