I'll do some larger games soon, but am spending too much of my time coding right now to give them proper attention. Until then, I thought I'd touch upon this little hidden gem for those of you who enjoy a bit of turn based strategy gaming. This game is completely free to play with no hidden costs or add-ons, which makes me feel kinda bad for the selfless fellow who builds it since it is a high quality game with solid production values.
Elements is an online card game, in the same basic genre as Magic the Gathering, but without the bloodsucking over-the-top pricing. Now everyone deserves to make money off their work, but MtG is pretty evil about it. Fortunately my addiction is done now, with only occasional flashbacks and gibbering in the night.
You start by picking your element - one of twelve, each with a different style of play. There's no 'wrong' answer here, since you will get to change it freely later on. But it does commit you to playing a particular style of deck while you are first learning and getting new cards. To begin with, pick anything that looks fun and then start getting a feel for what your cards do. Generally each element's starting deck comes pre-splashed with a second element since there are a large number of crossover benefits.
From there you'll get to select your games to play. There are a range of levels to play at, with the higher levels providing harder opponents, higher risk (each match costs you gold to play), and higher rewards. The lowest level match has no cost, but very limited rewards, so you can't ever get stuck in case you do horribly. More importantly, after every win there's a random chance of getting free cards copied from your opponent's deck (they don't lose said cards, you just gain them).
Between matches you can adjust your deck and buy or sell cards. I suggest not selling much, since its generally harder to get cards that gold. More importantly, there are a variety of rare cards that won't ever be for sale in the store, so you really don't want to sell these and then find yourself wanting them later. Sure, you can eventually find another, but it is really annoying to be stuck waiting for a specific drop.
Once you finish all the quests (there aren't that many) you're also given the option of upgrading cards. This generally makes a slightly better version of the original (lower casting cost, stronger defense, etc...), though a few of the upgrades have new powers or utility.
From there you pretty much just play for fun. The quest path is really short, but there's a great deal of fun to be had in building new decks and making them work. If you find yourself just playing one deck over and over and over, kick yourself and try something different. I occasionally let my kids pick an element and then build a deck around that for a change. There's a lot of solid replayability buried in this game if you avoid getting stuck in a rut.
On the down sides, the most competitive decks tend to be fairly predictable rainbow decks, using the most efficient cards from every element and pushing for a late-game win. Also, the top two npc opponents are just stacked with advantages to give them a chance to compensate for their lackluster AI. Double hit points, draw two cards/turn, three free mana/turn, ignore card maximums in deckbuilding, etc... Sure, they remain beatable, but losing because the opponent is drawing two cards/turn and casting the same spell 8 times in the first 8 turns is pretty bleh.
Anyways, I don't want to leave on a bad note because overall Elements is a really well made game, just leaps and bounds above the quality generally seen in free titles. If you enjoy strategy / card type games, it is well worth a play. Have fun!
Elements
Rating: 8.0
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