TUAW's Daily iPhone App: Kard Combat
Kard Combat is a new universal iOS title from Hothead Games, the folks behind the Penny Arcade videogames, DeathSpank, and the iPhone's Bunny the Zombie Slayer. As you may have guessed from the name, Kard Combat is a Magic The Gathering-style card game, where you use a deck of cards that represent magic spells or creatures and fight them against each other.
To be honest, Magic the Gathering isn't really my thing, so I can't compare the two super closely. But Kard Combat offers some innovation, I think, in the way the cards are laid out -- any cards summoned to your side first attack cards laid across from them, and then the health pool of your opponent, so there's some interesting positioning strategy involved. You also oversee a few different types of mana that grow over time or based on certain cards you have out, so that provides a lot of complexity to the gameplay. There's a lot of content to play through as well -- four decks, each with their own single player "Tower" campaigns, and then of course multiplayer gameplay.
The game's business model is almost tougher to figure out than the actual strategy -- currently, the title is a free download with five single-player missions unlocked, though an in-app purchase of $2.99 will unlock everything. After that, there are more decks and cards to buy, of course, and more to come. In the end, Kard Combat is an excellent little turn-based title. It's definitely worth a free download, and then if you consume all the content there, you can see if you want to dive in deeper.
