Xenoshyft Onslaught
Some of you who read this blog know that I am an avid (rabid?) board gamer. I like all kinds of board games and am always interested when they make the jump to digital format. I am usually more drawn in by ones that are designed specifically for and take advantage of the format (Hearthstone, Sumer, 7 Grand Steps) but flipping over a physical game to digital is all the rage now. A lot of these games hit the IOS/Android market first then trickle over to PC (at usually higher prices - but that's another conversation) and it's interesting to me to see how they make them playable. Also gives me a chance to try a game I may buy a physical copy of much cheaper, like a pay-for-demo.
I got Xenoshyft (ugh that "y") from a Humble Bundle but have heard of it from BoardGame Geek and it's publisher CMON. And as I needed a "X" game to play from my list it was a good chance to try it out.
Xenoshyft is sub-genre of card games called a "deck-builder". You (and the other players) start the game with small deck of cards that you draw and play from. As the game progresses you acquire new cards from a selection and place them into you deck - thus building it up as the game goes on. This style of game was made big by Dominion (the best IMO) and had a lot of follow up games. This game is also co-op, all the players are working together against a common enemy - the game itself. Each player represents an arm of the NorTec Corporation defending against waves of alien attackers. Sounds fine enough.
The basic play of the game for players is to place military unit cards into their battle line, enhance them with booster cards (you can even play these on other players units to help them out) and fight off an opposing battle line of alien units, who if break past your troops will damage the player's home base, causing them to lose if its destroyed. All the while you are purchasing new cards to go into you deck and make it stronger. Initially this all sounds good. A fairly easy to understand user interface makes this all flow smoothly (though you can definitely tell that the GUI comes from phone/tablet origins).
Unfortunately the random elements of the game combined with the mechanics of purchasing new cards makes the whole thing seem like a crap-shoot rather than a good co-op game where you can plan with your fellow players.
The way you acquire new cards is by spending "money" cards from your hand then picking from the pre-allotted choices - standard fare for this style of game. The problem is the money cards eat up valuable troop and boost card draws that you need to fight the aliens every turn. In most deck builders this is a balance mechanic, but those game are player vs player and it serves a purpose, in Xenoshyft you spend some money, get a small amount of cards back into you hand as a return then HOPE you bought the right cards for the aliens (which are hidden face down cards) for the turn. Or you can just buy cards for future turns and tough it out this round. Or what usually happens is you don't get enough money to buy what you really need/want and don't have enough left over troop/boost cards in you hand to make up for it and you end up with a mediocre turn and just hope you fellow players can either help you out or drew a better hand. The deck management mechanics are good in principle but are too slow to really trim and shape your deck for the difficulty presented.
Now I am not against difficulty in a co-op but Xenoshyft's "fake" difficulty via random hidden information just feels lousy. Each round you have to fight off the battle line of aliens that are only revealed one at a time, the next card isn't flipped until you defeat the current one. In between alien card flips and actual combat resolution you and your fellow players can play their boost cards to help out these doomed troops. This is where the real guess work comes into play as you have no idea if you should play a card now to help out or if it will be better used later in the round. Use a card wrong and it could spell doom for the whole battle and you don't really have enough cards to go around even if you guess correctly and there are so many different triggered alien abilities that will toss your whole plan in the trash regardless of what you play...well you see where I am going with this.
At the battles end if there are still aliens left they damage the player's base, otherwise any troops played stick around to fight the next wave. Again because of the randomness if you loose all your troops early on recovering can be next to impossible unless you are lucky. Far too often I could see the game was lost during the first alien wave, long before making it through the remaining two waves (player victory comes by surviving 3 waves, each wave being 3 rounds for a 9 turn game).
The main problem is there is no learning curve. There are too many different alien types that can be in a single wave (and they get harder each wave) that trying to guess and be prepared is impossible. The fact they come out face down and then leave the battle line after attacking your base means you can't learn for future rounds (see Pandemic). Far too often cards played just turn out to be useless due to timing or other factors. It just becomes a game of trying to get the biggest numbers and hoping it's enough to over come the hidden alien values. It could have been so much better.
The real kicker on top of that is that the digital version of the game has been abandoned by the developer (or so it seems) and that the final expansion for the physical version, that contains a bunch of balance changes and overall improves the state of the game, was never patched in. So the "best" version of the game isn't even available in this format.
Over the week I played about 3-4 hours of Xenoshyft and didn't once come close to winning, even on the easiest difficulty setting and had next to no fun. There is potential for a good game here, but a lot of elements would have to be reworked from the ground up. I'm giving this one a hard pass.
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