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Card Thief (iPd)

Status: Stopped playing - Something better came along
I started playing this game on Tuesday 2 November, 2021  //  I stopped playing this game on: Saturday 13 November, 2021
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.

November 13, 2021 07:59:26 PM
I've been playing this for a week and a half or so while I ride the bus home. I find I'm able to both concentrate on the game while listening to a podcast.

The game is definitely less interesting than what I initially thought - though to be fair I think I first bought it MANY years ago and it's been riding around on my phone(s) since. I think I might have done the tutorial once, long ago, but at least I've now been committed to trying it out more fully.

The game has an interesting setup, you have a deck of cards you need to "run through" and you're a thief trying to both steal gold as well as loot a chest. The chest is a card in the deck that can appear anytime in the 2nd half of the deck and if you don't loot it when it appears it gets more valuable each turn (but also harder to break into! I didn't realize this until later, to my regret). The higher level the chest means you get more "tokens" and you need 10 tokens to unlock the next deck of cards (or the next level, really).

So, it's really quite grindy! Each chest comes with 3 things (cards), and if you only get one token you'll need to run the same deck 10 times to unlock the next one. It also makes the other cards (which are "loot") worthless. At least I haven't found that they add up to anything in the game - no inventory of loot or overall score or that sort of thing. So what's the point of them? I have no idea.

You can also buy (eventually) special cards - so, you have a hand of three card slots, but it's really only two because you need one to have the chest. At least I think that's the way it works - perhaps you need to use your cards? Anyways, you only start with one card and can buy more - but they're expensive and I've only been able to buy one card so far. Perhaps you buy the cards with the loot? I don't know - it's all a bit more confusing than I think it should be.

In terms of gameplay, you have a thief with movement points and you need to move around a 3x3 card grid avoiding guards and conversing your movement points. It's ok - but there aren't usually that many options. I guess if this was a physical solo game I'd be more impressed? There's some system where gold pieces cards (collecting them also doesn't seem to mean much - perhaps those are the currency for buying more cards?) increase after moving around and you can also pickpocket cards, but in general I'm not that excited. I did play enough to unlock the 2nd deck/scenario though. As expected, there are tougher guards but I think I'll just uninstall at this point.


 
kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria