All Will Rise is a conversation-based card battler about avenging a murdered river

When it comes to picking apart an enemy, or defending the indefensible, sometimes you have to change the battlefield in order to win. All Will Rise is a narrative courtroom deckbuilder that puts you at the helm of a team of idealists who are trying to challenge the law for the betterment of the public.

With a tagline like ‘The river burns. A god dies. A city awakes.’ you know that you’re in for a good time. I’ve had the pleasure of playing All Will Rise at several events now, most recently as part of Gamescom, and each time I’ve come away from it excited to see more of it. (That’s why I said I’ve played it at several events, even if the demo hasn’t changed much.)

All Will Rise places you in Muziris, a slightly futuristic feeling city that is struggling with a lot of the issues that our own world is: Corruption, uncontrolled capitalism and corporations that have skirted the oversight of a rampaging bureaucracy. You take on the role of Kuyili, a lawyer who is fighting back against the destruction that corporations have dealt to the world by changing the rules of combat — in the case of deckbuilders, quite literally.

You won’t fight with magic, buffs or nerfs though. ‘Combat’ is more a battle of wits, with you shifting topic, wrestling emotions and shattering illusions with fact.  To underline exactly how this plays out, you kick the whole thing off by getting the river that runs through the city declared a person, and soon after you’re building a case to have the company who destroyed the river — killed the river — arrested for murder.

You’ll gather new conversations through dispatching your, incredibly well-written team to investigate things around the city, all while snooping around and meeting important people around the city. Every conversation feels loaded and relevant, and even failing a conversation with a snitch, holy man or official will result in you walking away with plenty more topics that’ll allow you to command and contradict conversations later in the experience.

Solace State puts you at the heart of a political, emotional powder keg

All of that said, commanding a conversation doesn’t play out as simply clicking the right choice when it appears — assuming you’ve hit the pre-requisites to have it — otherwise this would simply be a narrative title. No, you’re attempting to do three things at once: Firstly, you have to have it make sense; Secondly, you can’t dead-end the conversation; Thirdly, and critically, you need to wear down your opponent’s statistics (Mind, Heart, Soul) while protecting your own.

Your rivals have pretty robust stats, so you’ll need to refine and strengthen your arguments to persist, and that’s where I’m most compelled, that’s what I’m desperate to see more of.

All Will Rise‘s ‘neo-India’ style art, characters and setting make for a fascinating background for an already fascinating, tantalisingly-political game. I can’t wait to see more of it.

All Will Rise is currently in development, it’s expected to hit PC and all consoles when it releases.