Wildfrost

Originally Posted 8/21/24

Brief Overview

Quick Overview

In Wildfrost, you build a deck of cards to fight waves of enemies. There are a ton of different abilities and play styles you can choose! The game also features some unique mechanics such as everything is on a timer system. So cards that are on the field (including enemies) all count down from some number, and once they reach 0 they'll attack or do their action. The number counts down each time you play a card or if you redraw your hand before the draw bell has reached 0. This forces you to really think through how and when you're going to do things, since everything you do gets the enemies closer to attacking. Also, the final boss mechanic is really interesting in this game.

In Depth Review

Wildfrost is a great game that I think is well worth checking out if you like deck building, card fighting sort of games. I also really like the snow theme throughout the entire game. The game is also pretty hard (at least, for me). I remember when the demo came out it wasn't uncommon for me to not even get past the first fight. Since then I think the game has gotten a bit easier, but I've only actually beat the game twice. And even then I'm not sure if I've really beaten it (see spoiler above if you're interested how that can be).

Gameplay Loop

Factions

The general game play loop is when you begin a run, you can choose between one of three factions (you may have to unlock these as you play the game). When you start a run each faction will randomly generate 3 heroes you can choose from to play as. The stats seem to be randomly assigned each time, though have some sort of balancing mechanic. So units with stronger abilities, health, or attack typically have a longer timer on them.

The base faction deals a lot with freezing enemies (which prevents their timer from going down) and their attack cards do 2 damage each.

The next faction deals largely with summoning units. Summoned units have their health go down each time they attack or use their ability. Summoned units can also die from being attacked normally. The other interesting thing about this faction is their attack cards deal damage based on however many other of the attack cards you have in your hand. Typically this means you can do between 1-5 damage depending on what you draw.

The last faction deals with having a unique type of health. Typically your hero cards don't have this type of health, but a lot of the cards within the faction do. For most cards health works pretty standard - if something that does 3 damage hits one of your cards, their current health goes down by 3. With this factions cards, each hit reduces the health. So if something with 3 damage hits one of your cards with this type of health, they just lose 1 health. The other thing unique to this faction is scrap. Scrap cards are cards that, at their base are worthless. Some of your stronger cards may require you to have scrap to recycle to use. There are also some other cards you can pick up along the way that either use the scrap in your hand or buff them. This factions attack cards start at I believe 1 damage, but increases by 1 each time you use them per battle.

One thing I'd like to point out here, is there are other "factions" in the game that you'll run into but not be able to play as your starting hero. For example, there's a berry faction that deals a lot with health. Either healing a lot, or dealing damage based on health, etc. Another faction for example are the Acorn people. They work with giving shields to their units which is basically like temporary health. There's a lot more you can either fight against or pick up as allies.

Battling

Once you pick your starting hero (It may be called "Adventurer" in game), you also pick a companion, and then get started with your first battle. Your deck has a limited amount of cards in it, mostly attack cards, but with a few faction specific cards thrown in. You fight in an arena that is two lanes (a top and a bottom) with 3 creatures allowed in each lane, for both you and the enemies (so 12 total spots on the screen at a time). You get to place your hero in one of the two lanes (cards immediately go to the front of the lane if nothing is in front of them) as well as any cards you've given a crown to (more on this later). After that, you draw your first hand of 5 cards I want to say, the enemies spawn in, and the game has begun.

Each time you play a card, the timer on everything ticks down, so you need to make sure you play your cards in the best order you can. Enemies will always attack before you do if both your creature timers and their timers reach 0 at the same time. Creatures will attack whatever is in the front of the lane across from them (unless they have an ability that says otherwise), and if there is no one in the lane across from them they will instead attack the other lane.

You do not get more cards at the beginning of each turn. You can only get cards by ringing the draw bell, which also has a counter on it. You can redraw your hand for free whenever the bell reaches 0 (it'll also stay at 0 if you don't use it immediately). If you want to redraw your hand before the timer reaches zero on the bell, it'll cause the timer on everything else to tick down by 1.

Each battle typically has a boss you have to defeat after first fighting a few rounds of enemies. There is typically a theme to each fight - be it freezing, poison, shielding, etc. It changes from fight to fight which causes your build to need to be robust. You keep fighting until either you defeat the boss (note: enemies will flee if you kill the boss before all the other enemies) or your hero dies. If your hero dies, that is the end of the run.

Adventuring

Once you win a battle, you are typically given two paths to choose from to go down. Each path will often have 2 or so stops along the way before the next fight, and each of those stops can be a number of different things. Sometimes it'll be a shop, or ways to get rid of cards, ways to double cards, ways to get money, ways to get allies, etc. Early on I typically try to go for the ally cards the fastest, as that gives you more things that will do stuff on their own and can protect your hero. I also typically keep an eye out for grabbing money early, so that when I get to a shop I can buy things. Shops typically will have extra cards to purchase, charms, and a crown.

Charms are items that you can attach to a card that will give it a bonus. The bonus depends on the charm itself, but can be anything from giving cards more health, to changing how they attack. There is a limit of 3 charms per card, however there are some abilities that let you increase this.

Crowns you can attach to cards and they let you play them for free at the start of a battle. Putting these on allies is often a good choice, however it can also be good to put on other cards that may help get a combo going. For example, there's a card that does I think 5 damage to all undamaged enemies. This can be a really good thing to put a crown on. Crowns are hard to come by - each shop will only carry 1. You can sometimes get them as rewards for killing big bosses.

After stopping at the locations along a path, you then start your next battle and that's pretty much the loop. Battles get progressively harder as the run goes on, and it all leads up to a final boss.

Final Thoughts

And that's pretty much the game. You get as far as you can each run, ideally beating the boss. I really like the theming of this game, and think it's a lot of fun trying out different builds, and playing through the game! The only sort of negatives I have about this game are negatives that I feel towards a lot of games like this - it feels bad if your starting options are just not good. It feels really bad if your deck is put against an enemy that simply counters your build. It's one of those things where of course those sort of things can happen, and is part of the experience. But I've also found myself just starting a run to purposefully lose so that I can get a hero that has more of the play style I'm looking for. This may just be a skill issue, and if you're a fan of rogue likes then that's probably not an issue for you.

Overall though I think this game is great. Any time I have friends over who like these sort of games I always make them try it, and they typically have a good time with it. For the price especially I think if the game sounds interesting at all to you it's worth picking up and trying. As far as I can tell too the devs are pretty active in their discord and respond to bug reports and such.