Written by Jonathan Lee, August 23, 2016, 11:00 a.m. Tweet to: @Writerscube
The Huntsman: Winter’s Curse is a game developed by Desert Owl Games, the same makers of the online strategy card game Pox Nora. I’ll admit, I first thought it was one of those direct tie-in games for the Universal Studios The Huntsman movies.
I was a little skeptical. Maybe a little unsure of what to expect. After all, I’ve tried movie adaptations before, and I’ve been really disappointed time and time again. The last time I genuinely enjoyed a movie adaptation video game was the Lord of the Rings action games on my Playstation 2!
Fortunately, I was surprised. This wasn’t a direct adaptation, but a trip to an expanded universe.
Winter’s Curse is an RPG with card game mechanics. So strategy gameplay, check. It was going to have some sort of leveling up system. A simplified skill tree? Check. Character dialogue and the occasional choice on what to say? Check.
What’s The Huntsman: Winter’s Curse About?
This game takes place in the world of The Huntsman franchise. Queen Freya is on the move with her army, there are dark things living in the woods, and not all is well in the land. You play as a young lady named Elisabeth. She’s handy with a sword, has no lack of bravery, and she has lost her brothers. You see, the bros wanted to set out and find power. Well, we all know how that generally turns out.
On your quest to find your brothers, you will run across various characters from the Huntsman movies as well as new characters entirely unique to the game’s storyline. Here’s where the game begins to break through my armor of skepticism and suspicion.
As I had mentioned earlier, this game follows a unique story line in an expanded universe of the Huntsman franchise. Elisabeth exists in the same world and has her own trials and tribulations that she must overcome. We have a female protagonist that’s pretty self-reliant and is competent in combat.
While there are a number of moments where her conversations with characters lead them to unavoidable battles (or would’ve been avoidable if they had just gone somewhere safe BEFORE talking), it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the game.
Understandably, these conversations are needed to develop the characters and progress the narrative because the graphical presentation is with 2D animated characters that more-or-less don’t move very much. The sound effects and music were used well to liven up the dialogue scenes.
Combat
Maybe it’s because I miss card-based RPGs, or deck-building combat systems. Maybe it’s because I haven’t played one since Phantom Dust on my dusty Xbox. But the combat in this game actually was really fun! It looks simple on the screenshots. But you have to consider a good handful of variables in order to beat your opponent, especially in later chapters.
There’s your combat order. This is determined by your character’s speed and abilities you use, which can either speed you up on the order line or slow you down. Naturally, there’s also your damage output. Different cards do different amounts of damage along with the occasional added effect—it’s important to have a healthy mix of damage dealing cards and stat boosting cards to enhance your damage.
But as mentioned before, there are added effects to some cards. It’s not all about just bludgeoning your opponent to death. Some battles can’t be won by just straight-up hacking and slashing. In later chapters, I found myself having to really think about what status effect cards I wanted to bring to the battlefield ALONG with my attack cards.
How many healing cards should I have? How about ones that slow? Or stun? Or give my attack power a boost? The process of developing a good strategy for the next battle was fun, engaging, and kept me looking forward to seeing how well my deck would work out.
Final Thouhgts
Desert Owl Games did something good here. Nothing groundbreaking or new, but it was a nice Card-based/RPG blend with all your usual fantasy tropes. You had your evil queen. You had your dark forest and monsters.
But it’s one of those games where the story is not an attempt to “live” the movies (and crash and burn in the process). Desert Owl Games made a good choice to instead go for the Expanded Universe approach. And it is that fresh angle and look that kept me in the game, and curious about what would come next.
The combat system is lots of fun! Don’t let its simple look fool you. It gets deeper as you progress in the game but without the exhaustive skill trees. The combat is one of the main reasons why I enjoyed playing through this title.
Playing all the episodes, this game takes a nice bit of time. It’s a good way to treat yourself to a fun game that’s strategically engaging, without being overwhelming. And it’s easy to pick up with little to no learning curve since the tutorial really spells it out for you as you play. And it auto-saves at about every conversation you have, so it’s easy to put down when you want, and continue when you’re ready.
So check it out, folks! For the casual gamer, this is a good pick. Desert Owl Games’s The Huntsman: Winter’s Curse is available now!
