Over the last year, I have started really enjoying card-based games. Forward, a game from the 7DLR challenge feels inspired by Slay the Spire. It’s an experience where you can slowly move forward, a card at a time, trying to defeat monsters and collect gold.
Forward is a pretty simple game. You are able to choose from a selection of characters that you’ve unlocked before going into a dungeon. In front of you there are rows of up to three cards, which you can then move your hero onto. Your character can only move to cards that are touching them, meaning that if you are all the way on the left, you cannot suddenly move to the rightmost card, as you need to hit a middle card.
Landing on cards in front of monsters often have the monster above attacking you. If you kill them then the card above is replaced with a monster egg, which you can collect. This means that you always need to think one ahead. There are more than just monsters on the field though; You can find potions, shields, bonus items and chests. Chests take you into a separate place with some choices regarding bonus items — while bonus items in-game can be scrolled over to understand what they are doing, some of these bonus items really do change the game. I got a ring that did not allow monsters to auto-attack me if I had an even amount of health points, and another that gave me more max health and made shields work as healing potions.
There is some randomness to Forward, which is really lovely as you play again and again. When you get to the end of a dungeon, you get to pick another world to go into, until you have completely finished all of the different areas. On the title menu you can unlock other characters in hopes to do better. It’s a really lovely game which provides a bunch of fun and it’s hard for me to pull myself away from another dungeon.
You can play Forward for free, on itch.io.
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