Last year, we spent some time playing Hellcard, a multiplayer deck builder that had some surprisingly unique ideas going for it. Today, the game exits Early Access and introduces a fourth playable class called the Tinkerer. Thing Trunk, the game’s developer, describes the Tinkerer as a slower, more strategic class that slowly builds up to snowball later in battle. The Tinkerer brings with it 101 new cards, eight starter artifacts, a new location, six new outfits, new resource-based mechanics, five new AI Tinkerer Companions, and a full voiceover done by Ed Mace.
Coinciding with the Lunar New Year, Thing Trunk has also included themed outfits to celebrate the Year of the Dragon. A significant change in version 1.0 is the reworked Endless Mode. Now, every couple of floors introduces the choice of a new Torment Modifier. Players will have to choose one of three and it will have a random power that stays active for a random number of floors. This allows players to have some control of the difficulty.
With the game now out of Early Access, stay tuned for our full review in the upcoming weeks. For now, you can read our first impressions from last year.
Hellcard 1.0 Launch Trailer
Hellcard 1.0 Full Changelog
- New playable class: Tinkerer. An adept of the same university as The Mage, with an engineering degree rather than a theoretical magus diploma.
- Completely new Tinkerer’s mechanic utilizing two new resources: Screws and Cores
- 101 new Tinkerer’s cards
- 8 new Tinkerer’s starting artifacts
- 6 new Tinkerer’s outfits
- New location unique to Tinkerer
- 4 new seasonal dragon-themed outfits for the Chinese New Year, one for each class
- Total overhaul of the Endless Mode – players choose difficulty modifiers every second floor, monsters not only scale their HP and Strength but also their abilities. Difficulty modifiers can have different strengths and different floor spans
- New endless modifier: Arachnophobic – Start each battle with a random number of webbed cards
- New endless modifier: Freezing – Start each turn with a random number of Freeze influence
- New endless modifier: Gutted – Lose a random number of max HP
- New endless modifier: Mugged – Exhaust a random number of cards at the beginning of the battle
- New endless modifier: Shielded – Monsters start the battle with a random amount of block
- All random values in Endless modifiers are affected by the difficulty scaling algorithm
- New artifact: Other Shoe – Gain a +2 damage bonus for the next turn, if you haven’t used any Skill cards this turn
- Added avatars next to other players’ choices when selecting Endless mode modifiers
- Sped up repeating actions of selected monsters
- Balance: Flawed Ruby artifact now gives 3 additional mana on the first turn but takes 1 mana back afterward instead of taking 2 mana on the first turn and giving 1 additional afterward
- Balance: Friendly Toad artifact now heals 4 HP when skipping Card Rewards instead of 10 HP but doesn’t lower the number of cards on Card Rewards
- Balance: Stone Mask artifact now gives 3 Max HP instead of 1 after the battle where the owner didn’t lose any HP
- Fixed a crash when leveling selected companions
- Fixed negative XP when finishing a run with a very high XP
- Fixed Devourer getting stuck in the intent loop when a large number of monsters were killed at the same time
- Fixed some monsters not properly scaling their features and actions in the Endless mode
- Fixed some monsters not properly showing their scaled features and actions in the Endless mode
- Fixed skip modifier incorrectly being displayed as chosen after the selection was changed
- Fixed incorrect monsters’ intents after they were double moved (using Stamina Burst, Bookmark, etc.)
- Fixed Blighted modifier increasing even the 0 damage attacks
- Fixed companions doubling their deck when entering Floor 2
- Fixed retiring a companion always retired the one on the left when using Large UI
- Fixed code logging crash debug data
- Network traffic optimizations
