🃏 Foretales Nintendo Switch Review 7/10 "Sometimes You Want to Just Smash Some Heads" 🃏 @DearVillagers @foretales_game #GameDev #IndieGames

Card battlers have really become a thing in recent times. Series like Final Fantasy has had them as minigames for years, and then there's Witcher 3's Gwent, as well as standalone offerings like Slay the Spire and Monster Train.

Foretales sort of comes from this tradition, although here, the big focus is on the plot rather than battling. In this game, you progress the story by playing cards from your deck.

Depending on which character you use and your playstyle, you can mostly avoid enemies, instead moving through scenes with clever use of card effects.

The world is populated by anthropomorphic animals. You play as Volepain, a hornbill thief. You are tasked with stealing a powerful magic item at the start of the game, and once you get your hands on it, things start to go wrong. You become plagued by visions of terrible events that are soon to occur and take it upon yourself to try and keep them from coming to pass. 

The hard part is that you can't stop them all - each mission you complete moves time forward a 'turn', meaning that some of the events are unpreventable in the time you have. This adds replay value while making your choices have real-world consequences.

The game is narrated by a combination of text and voiceover, and for the most part, it works. The narrator does tend to repeat some lines though, so a bit of extra studio time would have been welcome. The graphics are bright and colourful, suited to both docked and handheld play, with smooth movement in both modes.

You start each level from the mission select screen. The challenges are nicely varied, ranging from preventing striking miners from being killed to saving a companion from prison or trying to stop a town from burning to the ground. 

Once a mission starts, you use your cards to move through locations, while avoiding enemies where you can (unless you want to fight, of course). Everything is taken from two decks, the exploration deck and the enemy deck 

The exploration cards are set out in front of you, and you use cards from your character deck to interact with each location. Some locations have enemy cards on them, meaning you must either fight or find an alternative if you want to interact with that particular card. The mission is complete once you fulfil the main objective, such as stealing the magic item, or convincing the miners that they're about to be attacked.

Most in-game situations can be resolved in more than one way. The narrator may hint that a guard can be bribed - if you have gold in your deck, you can play that and the guard will let you progress, rather than you just lamping him. You can also build up Fame or Grim points, meaning some characters might either be in awe or terrified of you, which gives you another way through some situations. You can also use the rest option to freshen up your deck by picking up already-played cards, generally at the cost of some food or gold.

Of course, sometimes you want to just smash some heads, and battling is fairly straightforward. You win by either reducing enemies' health or morale to zero, so they're either dead or run away. You can auto-battle, which is just your health vs the enemies or play manually, using cards to buff your team, triggering special abilities or even calling in other characters you've recruited during the mission. This becomes particularly important in some of the later missions which can be really punishing.

I enjoyed my time with Foretales. The colourful graphics and quite funny narration make the game move along at a fast clip, and the multiple ways to resolve situations set it apart from traditional card battlers. 

Some of the puzzles are a bit obscure, and the game can get a bit repetitive if you can't get through a certain bit, although judicious use of the rest mechanism can help.