Northmark: Hour of the Wolf

Northmark: Hour of the Wolf is an adventure game with RPG elements and card-based combat, I think. It doesn't quite hit the mark at the start and it only goes South from there with a predictable story and unpredictable mechanics.

The game begins with a quick introduction to its core gameplay loop of clicking on things until something attacks you and you play kind-of-cards. Herein lies the problem: the kind-of-cards are kind of random. In my four hours playing Northmark I hadn't quite figured out how to determine how much damage my attacks would do. How it works, in theory, is that the player character has stat modifiers and the three hero cards have further stat modifiers determining attack and defense, each hero has hit points which determine how much damage you must do to kill them and once all your heroes are dead, you lose. You have two types of cards in your hand - buffs/debuffs and attacks. You play the attack cards which get added to your modifiers to cause damage to your opponent's heroes. All sounds pretty standard and straight forward but the numbers never quite added up for me.

So, here's an example: my character's attack mod is 2, hero's mod is 3 and I've used buffs worth of 5, which gives me a total attack bonus of 10. My opponent's defenses are 2+1+3, adding up to 6 and they have 20 hit points. In theory, a 6 attack should do 10 points of damage but instead it does 15. WHERE THE HELL DID THE EXTRA 5 COME FROM?! Another time a 5 attack with 2+4+4 does 3 damage to a 2+1+0 character. The thing you might notice missing from all this is consistency, something trading card games tend to rely on, allowing players to plan their moves effectively. Here instead, I found myself buffing up and hoping for the best. It's lucky really, that the combat never becomes a real challenge so this randomness doesn't become a source of frustration. The downside of course, is that the combat is altogether boring and the game relies on its narrative instead.

And here's why the game isn't notable: the one thing it truly relies on to carry it - the plot. It opens with the obvious plotting villain and then drags you through several stereotype-filled fantasy locations to arrive at the conclusion that the obvious plotting villain whom we've stayed away from for most of the game is a plotting villain. The only reason I still remembered the villain is because I was waiting for the obvious reveal. Now, that could be the point - fantasy plots often have an obvious evil guy paraded as not necessarily bad (Final Fantasy X is my favourite culprit). It could be a Trump reference (it's not, the game came out in August 2014). The problem is that it doesn't actually make any point, it just happens to be a bad plot. There are amusing aspects to the story: there's a bit where you run into a bar owner that looks just like a vendor in another city and the game points that out to you citing indie devs' limited funds; there is a bit where you get sent to rescue a young woman from barbarians only to find she actually conquered them. Those and the general light-hearted nature of the game make it bearable but not wholly enjoyable,

Northmark: Hour of the Wolf is playing Texas Hold 'Em with a mixture of Yu-Gi Oh! and Pokemon cards against Adam Sandler, Michael McIntyre and a random nerd/10