World War: An Age of Industry & Magic Reviews

Quick and fun card game.

Fun little cardgame to pass an afternoon with (I 100%'d it in 90 mins), big fan of the setting and themes and for 5$ its not that bad! Not even a fan of the genre but had a lot of fun.

It's a neat little game to pass the time. Initially, I didn't have any clue how to play and what the numbers meant, but through trial and error you can pick it up really quickly. The game has a great atmosphere, easily one of its strongest aspects, although I'm a little partial on the use of AI-generated art, not to get into that whole debate. The music is fine and works surprisingly well given the game's themes. My only real complaint, and this is just a minor nitpick, I wish there was a way to examine the cards in more detail in the deck builder. Either I'm a complete moron and couldn't find a way to zoom in, but I couldn't read the card text. All in all, a fun little game to pass an hour or two.

[i] My Experience [/i] I quite enjoyed my time with [b]World War: An Age of Industry & Magic[/b]. Although developer Ever Thus doesn't describe the game as "Steampunk," it very much has a steampunk feel to me. I liked the visual and conceptual design of the cards, as well as the subtle audiovisual effects that accompany their activation. The way that your deck is composed of 50 cards, coupled with the number of copies you're given to work with, gives you quite a bit of flexibility in putting something together. While you're only given a few copies of the most powerful cards you gain access to, by the end I still felt that I'd created something uniquely my own. And while I certainly haven't played every deckbuilder out there, [b]World War[/b] was the first time I'd seen something like the Bulwark mechanic. Cards with the Bulwark keyword can be played in enemy lanes. While they generally aren't the most powerful attackers, they have the added bonus of clogging up one of your opponent's lanes. Every card played in [b]World War[/b] must be played in a lane, so this can limit your opponent's options substantially. While there was a lot to like about [b]World War[/b], I also had a number of gripes: [list] [*]Most of the "vehicle" cards mention within their text box that you must pay additional mana to attack with them, but at least one doesn't. Perhaps developer Ever Thus could make it so mousing over the vehicle keyword informs the player that the summon in question requires additional mana to attack. [*]Some "combatants" can attack the enemy player while others are restricted to only attacking that player's summons. You can generally tell which are the latter by searching to see if the word "front line" is present somewhere in the card's text box. However, there is at least one card which breaks this rule. Perhaps developer Ever Thus could use a separate keyword to refer to summons that can only attack the front line vs. those that can only attack the player vs. those that can attack either. [*]It would be nice to know which cards pull another special card out onto the battlefield, with perhaps an explicit reference on that card. There is a giant creature named "Chompers" that is summoned when you play a certain card (you can't put Chompers himself in your deck), but I had trouble remembering which card pulled him out. [*]If your opponent has a full hand of cards, their profile won't be visible for you to attack (it resides underneath their cards). Therefore, to attack I had to blindly draw a line with my mouse to where I thought it would be. [*]I couldn't find any way to actually quit the game. I used Alt+F4 to quit after each play session. [*]Although there was one opponent that required me to put together a custom deck to win, I bested the vast majority of the game's opponents on my first try. I wouldn't therefore call [b]World War[/b] a particularly challenging deckbuilder (especially once the "War Buggy" card is unlocked). [/list] While there are aspects of [b]World War[/b] that could use work, I don't regret any of the time I spent with it. It's cheap, short, and introduces some interesting ideas to the deckbuilder space. What else could I ask for?