Keep Playing Those Caaaaaaaaaard Games... yeah
Cheating my way through the French elites
Yes, I used a John Lennon reference for the title. Why not?
This week I have mostly been playing card games, or at least, I played some card games in addition to Victoria 3, as the economic juggernaut that is the textile industry of southern Italy marches on.
In particular I started making significant inroads into a historical video game, but more of that in a moment. Some quick general thoughts on card games.
I love card games and I'm not sure why. I'm not terribly good at them, but if I get in relatively early enough I can enjoy them for a time. The best example of this for me is one of the most successful card games of the last few years, Blizzard's Hearthstone. I was able to enjoy that game for a long time but these days if I log back in... woof.
Hearthstone has skewed back to the mean of this type of game, which is as it goes on and on and on the dilletantes like myself find something else to do and you're left with people who are VERY angry that such and such a card offers two points of damage under a specific buff rather than three and this game is garbage anyway because of RNG (random number generator) and anyway this game is terrible and is weeks from death, I only played seventy-three hours of it this week, that should tell you everything...
So anyway. This makes the game challenging for relatively normal people to get back into. The biggest obstacle, really, is deck building. The truth is I'm not very good at deck building and it's never really appealed to me. Though it doesn't appeal to me because I'm not good at it. I can build a deck that will work wonders if the cards come out in a certain order and my opponent just lets me do all the things I want to do. Not much use there.
I'm not the only one, it's clear, who WANTS to love card games but struggles to feel loved back after a certain period of time. Design, across a variety of games, is arcing towards continued accessibility. Riot Games made a big step in this direction with Legends of Runeterra, which changes things up in the core game and gives you different things to do outside of a ranked 1v1 ladder. The most aggressive move towards accessibility in this genre comes from a former Hearthstone dev, Ben Brode: Marvel Snap is a new mobile darling, a major selling point of which is it can get you in and out pretty fast.
It also somewhat sneakily makes deckbuilding workable for plebs like me. Decks are much smaller, and you typically see almost all the cards in your deck in a game and can engineer it so your last couple of turns are fairly reliable. The game is also over quite quickly, before throwing you back into the next one. I like Marvel Snap a lot, and it's worth a look (I thought this was a nice explainer). Personally, my favourite thing about it is that I feel like I'm actually playing the game instead of just googling power decks and copying a deck code to use in Hearthstone, or Gwent, or Legends of Runeterra like a shameless, scurrilous rogue.
Speaking of scurrilous rogues...
I've been playing Card Shark, a game set notionally around the concept of playing cards and set in mid-18th century France. As a card game, it is completely different from Hearthstone and the like; there are cards, sure, but really it's a game about cheating. In truth, it's a game of mini-games: move your thumbstick one way, then press buttons in a certain sequence, go again. The whole thing is very reminiscent to me of various DS games I played in the early 2000s. Which is to say, in theory it shouldn't work all that well but if it does land you find yourself getting into the various games. Card Shark, for me, does this well though I confess to a couple of false starts. It also looks and sounds absolutely lovely, which helps.
The moment that got me over the hump was probably cheating an aware, willing and enthusiastic Voltaire in a cafe in Toulouse. The game telegraphs that you will be hanging out with historical figures early on; your protagonist is taken on as a protege by the Comte de Saint Germain, a renowned bon vivant who got around in the 1700s and has been an inspirational figure for historical fiction writers for some time. Still, I found the Voltaire exchange to be charming and fun. You meet him in Toulouse during the fallout from the Calas case in 1761, when Jean Calas - a Protestant merchant - was accused of murdering his son for converting to Catholicism. The incident proved an important moment in Voltaire's career, as he began to leverage his immense political capital among the French elite into highlighting inequalities in the French system.
Of which there were many, of course. Voltaire joins you at the card table as you demonstrate for him how to manipulate the dealing of cards, giving your friend the Comte a hand full of Kings, Queens and Aces. He is thrilled and amused, and wanders off with food for thought.
The entire game plays this way, sitting comfortably in the context of an eighteenth century France dominated by an avaricious and arbitrary landed elite but full of people trying to get by. Your protagonist is a mute waiter and serving hand taken on - adopted, really - by the Comte after a tragedy leaves him homeless, without what family he had and in fear of the law. He soon brings the player to meet Roma allies, and the Comte himself, at least in this fictional iteration, exists it seems almost solely to flaunt the self-assured arrogance and casual cruelty of the elite who control society. The game brings in Voltaire, one of the most conspicuous people of the period, and has him chat philosophically while learning how to cut cards before he goes back to his coffee. This willingness to go big and small at the same time makes the game feel grounded but fun. The game lives in eighteenth century France and does not really make much sense out of that context, but remains primarily a mini-game collection that looks and sounds gorgeous.
I am looking forward to playing more. I have been quite good about avoiding spoilers, so I wonder how far the game will go. The revolution of course is 28 years away, within the lifetime of the protagonist, certainly. I should put together a short video for History Respawned on it after Thanksgiving, so look out for that!
Speaking of, if you celebrate Thanksgiving I hope you have a lovely holiday. If you don't, treat yourself to a turkey sandwich and some dessert this Thursday. International solidarity is important.
Thanks for reading! Before you go, check out the latest History Respawned podcast. Bob talks to Kate Cook and Jane Draycott about their new edited collection, Women in Classical Video Games.
And consider checking out Card Shark, available on PC and Switch.