![]() ![]() “We wanted to do something that hasn’t been done before.” The setting is very appealing,” Algreen said. The traditional sandbox mode is accompanied by a skirmish setting where players can focus entirely on combat strategy against the game’s AI.īut mostly, running around commanding dark armies and plunging the land into eternal, gothy night is the lure here “Everyone at the studio is a fan of the gothic vibe we’ve got going here. Players will take command of one of three factions in a story-driven single-player campaign estimated at around 20 hours of game time. A basic example Algreen gave is recruiting new units in an area where a player has no agents, physically. The card-playing layer he described isn’t a deck-building game, per se, but more like a perk system - basically, your dark lords have access to certain spells (and better or more effective ones as they rank up) that allow them to do things a more conventional strategy title wouldn’t. “We thought that was a nice twist to the genre it allowed us a big of flexibility.”Ī set of nine images here show the setting as well as the standard gameplay elements note the tray of perk cards at the bottom of the screen.Īlgreen promises Immortal Realms isn’t simply kitting out a familiar nation-building exercise in a puffy shirt and a cloak with a chain and pointy collar. “It’s turn-based combat blended with empire management, with a fairly unique concept of a card game,” Algreen said from Kalypso’s E3 booth. “The concept of the dark vampire world, it’s not something that’s really represented in this genre,” said Johan Algreen, the studio’s chief executive. Now Kalypso is cloaking its efforts in the gothic and occult themes of vampires, with Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars, from new studio Palindrome Interactive of Sweden. Their themes have been all over the map - railroad tycoons, banana republic dictators, evil dungeon lords, World War II commanders, ninjas and prohibition-era gangsters have all gotten closeups. Kalypso Media’s genre, broadly speaking, is strategy and management games. During the cutscenes, there is some decent art for the various vampiric protagonists, but there's nothing here that I'll remember after I've finished with this ho-hum adventure.Though sometimes confused in the necessity of making an easy, elevator pitch for a game, there’s still a big difference between a game’s genre and its themes. It's a visually plain game with basic battle animations, bland unit designs, and a series of maps that mostly consist of spooky, nighttime forests and mountain regions. Immortal Realms' graphics didn't do much to draw me in either. Although fighting is a big part of Immortal Realms, so doing this means you're practically skipping half the game. Thankfully, there's an auto-resolve option so you can just skip combat if you're sure to win. The cards definitely help to spice things up, but I found myself feeling immensely bored during these battles. There's nothing unique or enthralling about the combat and it takes up far too much of the game. You can spend ten to twenty minutes just clicking on each unit and doing damage until one of you is dead. RELATED: The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope Review: Quick Time Eviscerationīut for the most part, these fights are just moving your units, attacking, and then using a card to cast a spell. There are also specific spaces that may activate a specific power like gaining health for killing a unit or teleporting to another spot on the map. Some units will have special moves, such as a long-range attack or the ability to gain armor. Each battle has you placing your units on your side of the battlefield and then moving towards the enemy. I actually wish more card-battling elements were put in place rather than the mediocre turn-based combat. It's like someone took a bit of Hearthstone and decided to shove it into a Civilization game. It's a unique gameplay mechanic for a strategy game. As you gain experience, your vampire lord will level up and that means you can upgrade your cards as well to make them more effective. During combat, cards are used as offensive or defensive spells that require mana to cast. They'll perform different actions like buffing, healing, and upgrading your units, or finding new members to join your ever-growing vampire army. When on the map these can be used in exchange for blood. You'll gain a hand of different cards that can be used in and out of combat. Cards are actually a very significant part of Immortal Realms' gameplay. ![]()
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