240 Microsoft Points has long been a tough price point for indie games. It doesn’t have the impulse buy feeling of 80 MSP, nor the suggestion of high quality that 400 points suggests to some people. Yet, “Duodecad” feels like the right price at 240 MSP.
The game is designed like a collectible card game (CCG). You don’t get the entire deck to start with, you can only get more cards by playing games and earning enough in-game points to purchase them. Well, there’s one other way, and that’s to win them in matches from other human players. Yes, “Duodecad” supports both local and online multiplayer in head-to-head matches. Speaking of nice features, you can also customise the font options, a great feature for those with smaller HDTVs, or standard-def TVs, that often find it very hard to read in-game text.
All the familiar CCG tropes are here. Collecting, deck building, and competing. For those who just want to play, you can do that, but for those who want to spend a lot of time building and customising you’ll appreciate the game’s depth, and all the better that you unlock the game’s cards over time rather than having to buy them. Each card has four values on it, associated with North, South, East, or West, which allows one card to not only attack another, but to choose what direction to attack it from, which is something I haven’t seen before. The game has a territory element to it that’s not run of the mill.
If you’ve played and hated CCGs before then there may not be anything here (other than cost savings) that might change your mind, but for the CCG enthusiasts, and those who have yet to try a collectible card game, there’s a lot here to like.
Here’s what the developer (Heavenly Software) has to say about the game:
“Duodecad is an arcade card battle and trading game. Configure each game exactally how you like it choosing to keep it simple or make it complex. Play against the AI or against a friend either locally or over LIVE and win yourself all the cards!”
Writings of Mass Deduction 