Sunday 6 December 2015

Player Preview - Duelyst




Title: Duelyst
Developer: Counterplay Games
Status: Open Beta

Official Site:
http://bit.ly/1N6zmM1
Steam Page: http://bit.ly/1MZKyvO
 
 
Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a look at the multiplayer turn based strategy game, Duelyst, developed by Counterplay Games, a small start-up studio consisting of a couple of industry veterans. Duelyst has you playing as a commander, able to summon powerful monsters and conjure devastating spells as you try to defeat your opponent on the battlefield.

The game plays out on quite a small playing field being a 9x5 grid starting with only 2 units in play, the 2 opposing teams’ commanders with 25 point health pools each that when depleted will have that commander lose the game. There are also these 3 floating mana orbs that can be captured to give you extra mana to use for a turn. The game borrows a couple of mechanics from Hearthstone as Duelyst is a card based game including its mana system were you start with 1 mana to use a turn, then 2, then 3 and so on. The first cards you draw can also be mulliganed for another so as not to end up with a hand full of 7 cost minions. During your turn you’ll be able to move all your minions already on the field up to 2 spaces horizontally or vertically but only one space diagonally making positioning and placement of units extremely important. On top of that any minion that you try to spawn onto the battlefield can only spawn adjacent to one of your other minions with a valid strategy being to overwhelm your enemies commander and not allow them to spawn in any minions.


Each minion in the game has an attack value and a health value and when in combat the enemy gets a chance to counter attack so you have to weigh up each available attacking option to get the most out of your minions. Some of your minions will also have an additional ability or passive to take advantage of with things like provoke that essentially taunts all other enemy minions around it, disabling there movement until the minion is killed or rush that allows a minion to avoid summoning sickness, able to attack on the round it spawns. There’s a bunch more of these abilities as well as quite a few minion specific bonuses like spawning a 1/1 minion at the start of your turn or friendly minions summoned next to this minion gain 1/1 to their attack and health. There’s quite a lot to consider especially once you start adding in spell cards that are usually cheap on their mana costs but still extremely powerful completely changing the tide of battle. For example being able to attack with a minion twice in one turn at a 0 mana cost or giving a minion +3 attack for 3 mana. Finally there are artifacts that can only be equipped by your commander that can be extremely beneficial however they are fragile and can only withstand 3 attacks before breaking. Numerous artifacts can be equipped at the same time and can provide the commander with +4 attack or the ability to deal 1 damage to the enemy commander for every spell you play. To balance all these cards out you are only allowed to have 3 copies of the same card in your deck, preventing any kind of ridiculous plays likes a +26 attack commander that can 1 shot an opposing commander.


The cards that are available to you in your hand aren’t set in stone with the game allowing you to mulligan 1 card each turn which can be useful in getting rid of cards that are high mana cost and replacing them with maybe a better option. It’s best to this at the start of your turn as you may get a card you really want to use. At the end of your turn you will also draw 2 new cards into your hand providing fast games with lots of action. Both of these mechanics work well in never really leaving you with zero options for a turn, almost always able to get something out on the battlefield.


As you’ve probably noticed there a multiple different factions available to play in Duelyst, 6 to be exact, each with their own unique minions, spells, artifacts and style of play. Some opt for overwhelming your opponent with weak minions, while other rely on faction specific mechanics like Zeal, giving minions significant bonuses when near their commander. Finding one that suits your play style shouldn’t be too hard and trying them all out is incentivized through daily quests like win 4 games with ta certain faction. While each faction does have its own unique cards there are also shared common cards that can fill out your decks. Constructing your own faction deck will have you selecting 40 cards, playing for the first time though it’s probably better to just use the random decks as they will be somewhat balanced around the cards you have available and allow you to learn the game without being too overwhelmed. Once you do get some more cards you will be able to create decks that focus on particular play strategies like buff decks, Death watch decks and so on, very similar in how you can build hearthstone decks.


The main way of obtaining new cards to use in constructing custom decks is by using the games in-game currency of gold to purchase spirit orbs, basically a card booster pack containing 5 random cards, one of which is guaranteed to be a rare or better. These spirit orbs cost 100 gold each with you earning around 20 gold for winning a game plus extra gold from daily quests you complete. As you would expect, being a free to play game you can also purchase these Spirit Orbs with real world currency with one spirit orb costing you around $1.50 or your regional equivalent.


Duelyst has multiple game modes with the main ranked competitive mode being a seasonal ranked ladder that resets after each month. The ranking system works almost identically to Hearthstones with lower level wins gaining you a rank but the higher you go the more wins you will need to secure. Rewards are given out at the end of each month for ranking milestones that consist of 4 brand new cards added to the game plus gold and spirit to craft cards you don’t already have. Other game modes include the gauntlet, basically the Arena in Hearthstone where you choose 1 card out of 3 possibilities until you have your 40 card deck. This game mode is only available once every now and then though purely due to the games current player base and server stability but it will eventually become a permanent feature of the game, possibly even in the next couple of days. There is also a single player mode were you play both sides of the battlefield providing a place to learn mechanics freely. Lastly there is the training grounds that starts off with you learning the basics of the game through a tutorial but later introduces various amounts of challenges and situations that you will have to overcome, rewarding you with gold for each completion. The challenges are actually really well made and can take quite a while to figure out and there are plenty of them to complete if that’s your thing.


Other features of the game include a small amount of statistics showing various lifetime achievements in the game like amount of ranked wins, Gauntlet wins and longest win streak. You also have your current ranked season progress and most played faction displayed here. In the near future a normal or casual game mode will also be added to the game so you don’t always have to play in ranked matchmaking if you’re maybe trying out a new deck and don’t want to lose ranking.


Altogether Duelyst is a really cool tactical game that allows for quick pick-up and play sessions much similar to Hearthstones pick up and playability. The games combination of both the collectible card game and turn based strategy genre provide for more strategical gameplay, weighing up both what plays you have available in your hand and what you can do positionally on the board. If you’re looking for a more involved experience than say hearthstone were you not just thinking about the cards, then Duelyst is definitely worth a look. If you’re more of a Turn based strategy kind of person then Duelyst is still worth checking out but it doesn’t really excel at that part of the game.


Anyway, that’s been my player preview for Duelytst. The game is currently in open beta for PC and mac, and will eventually be coming to iOS and Android devices at a later date. If you want to find out more about the game check out the links below. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you guys next time.

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