Artifact review in progress – a complex CCG with the Valve touch

Artifact has a ridiculous number of moving pieces. Imagine three Hearthstone boards lined up side by side. You’ve got to aim for victory with specific strategies in each one, yes, but you also have to manage resources across all those lanes. Your most important cards are five heroes which can be deployed to any location, and they keep coming back after they’re destroyed. The whole game is continually shifting and evolving, and the changes on each turn means you have to frequently reevaluate where your resources are, where they need to be, and what they’ll need to do at the next opportunity. Yet Artifact has that deft Valve touch - an elegant design that keeps a wildly complex game from overwhelming you with its intricacies. There’s an indicator on display at all times that shows the status of each health pool, where every hero on the board is, and how long it’ll be until dead heroes respawn. You can double-click any card in the game to look at it up close, and then hover over keywords to uncover succinct descriptions of what each of those many abilities do. Once both players are out of actions and have elected to pass over to the next lane, the turn ends with a massive clash - one that sees all the heroes and creeps you and your opponent have laid out crash against each other in a wave of offensive energy.

from PCGamesN https://ift.tt/2Bf0HPV