14 DAY TRIAL // Hand of Fate is a card-based roguelike game in the works, created by Defiant Development of Brisbane, Australia, responsible for mobile titles such as Heroes Call and Ski Safari. Team members have also worked on established titles like Homeworld, Fable and Total War.
The game's key features are stated as being a unique take on dungeon crawlers, with visceral action-RPG combat and hundreds of encounters, items and mysteries to unlock.
Its main innovation is the integration of tabletop elements, namely the deck building mechanic that allows players to choose both the types of loot they will gain and the type of adventure they will embark on.
The player builds a collection of cards into a deck used to deal out the dungeon floors where the adventure will take place. Upon entering combat, all of the cards the player has collected will fly into their hands as fully modeled 3D assets.
Customizing and controlling the game experience is a strong element of Hand of Fate, allowing the players to employ their favorite combos of weapons and abilities by stacking their decks, in order to increase their odds.
The developers say that every piece of new gear should be a game changer, and promise to offer powerful defensive and offensive effects on the weapons, armor and artifacts you'll stumble upon during your adventure.
The game's progression is structured along a framework of twelve court cards that will act as dungeon bosses, each victory bringing players closer to facing the game's ultimate challenge.
Defiant Development have started both a Kickstarter campaign, in order to raise the necessary funds needed to complete Hand of Fate (10 more days to go), as well as a Greenlight page that will allow the game to be released on Steam, and are relying on the community's support in order to get selected for distribution.
Hand of Fate is very close to Alpha, according to the developers. Everything they want to build into the game is complete and the overall structure of the game is already in place, all that is left is for them to polish and balance their assets. They have a projected delivery date of early 2014.