Playing boardgames always has its own charm. That feeling of thinking what your ‘friend’ can come up with when it’s his turn, what the next dice roll will mean for your finances, and which of your characters will live or die the next turn because you were dumb enough to leave your character next to an enemy because you were hopeful of the next dice roll. Plus, as I’m always raving, TURN BASED GOODNESS!!! Boardgames are another way to carefully craft your next turn and let loose. What happens when you mix this classic concept of a paper (sometimes cardboard) style gameplay with pixels on a screen? You end up with something like Trials of Fire. Let’s take a closer look at this amalgamation of ideas, and see if it lives up to the benchmarks I’ve set for it in my head.

Trials of Fire is a post-cataclysmic single player, turn-based strategy game developed and published by Whatboy Games. It released on Steam Early Access on the 7th of May, 2019

Story and Narrative

The game starts you off with a party of three that is essentially on a quest to save the world. I refuse to spoil it, because the game is a visual novel, and anything you hear from me might spoil the game. What you need to know is that each party member is from a different class (ranger, warrior and mage) with different abilities. You’re going out on a journey to retrieve an artifact that can possibly save the entire world from the famine that is gripping it.

The story is told through interaction through other characters in the world. There’s no voice acting, but the dialogue is crafted well. It’s simple and to the point, and not too embellished. This makes sense, since everyone in the world is fighting for survival, and they won’t be much for talking.

After an initial tutorial which explains the map movement and the game’s combat system – more on that later- you are thrust into a procedurally generated open map. From here, the world is essentially free for exploration. Yes, there is a quest marker in the shape of a golden arrow that gently points you in the direction you need to go in, but that’s not mandatory.

Trials of Fire is a roguelike, in the sense that your party isn’t invincible and the characters aren’t gods. They’re three people who’ve banded together to survive, and if helping the world is in their quest for survival, so be it. And the game doesn’t shy away from this fact. You have limited supplies that are consumed by your party every day, be it food or healing, and it’s up to you to find more, by hook or by crook.

You can either slaughter innocents and loot a town or attack bandits that are terrorizing a settlement and loot them instead while helping the locals. The choice is yours. This affects your gameplay in the sense that you might get a follower for your party that grants a subtle buff to everyone. As an example, I once chose not to enter a forest only to have a wood elf follow me, and gave me a buff that negated forest movement penalty.

Points of interest are marked with a symbol, where you can take these actions. These points can lead to one-off encounters or slightly branching side quests. No point is a waste of time, and hiking across the map to the next point is rewarding. Not to mention, there are a lot of things to do so you won’t feel bored anytime soon. However, since this is in early access, the mission variety is slightly less, and they feel the same, even though they are randomized. This is something that can be fixed by the time the game launches, though. Devs, take note.

There are a lot of secrets that can be found, and I highly recommend you explore every nook and cranny of the map to find some sweet loot for your party, which will be of great help against the vile ratlings.

Gameplay & Mechanics

The main map is navigated by your party as a whole, and the movement is simple and efficient. Click to move, doesn’t get any simpler than that. While you’re on the world map, you can adjust your party’s card deck (this is combat related. I’ll explain), their loadout and decide whether to have a rest. Resting in settlements and secluded areas is better and heals your party as well. But you can’t just keep resting, as that consumes your food as well. Finding a good balance between the flghts/resting and moving around is part of the charm.

The combat in this game is something else. It’s such a unique mechanic I’ll admit I don’t remember having played any game with such a mechanic. The combat is turn-based, and each character in your party has a set of actions they can take each turn. These actions are based on the cards a character has. These cards are gained through leveling up or based on the gear the character is carrying.

Each turn shows 3 cards from your deck randomly, per character. Like most card games, to take an action, you need willpower (i.e. mana), which you gain from discarding certain cards. Movement on the battle map and offense/defense are also done through these cards. Each card has a different will power cost, and willpower is shared among your party.

I thought I wouldn’t like this mechanic as it was a bit too simplistic at first glance. But there is a lot of strategies involved in terms of which cards to use for mana, and which cards to save for the next turn. Yes, the cards refresh every turn if you’ve used or discarded them, but then again, since it’s randomized, you’ll want to save the powerful cards to use when you can afford the mana costs.

I can gush about the combat all day, and it’s likely that you wouldn’t understand much from reading it. To summarize, it’s like a combination of chess and duel masters, or chinese checkers and Yu-Gi-Oh in terms of how it plays. It is a really fun turn-based mechanic.

Sound, Visuals, and Performance

The sound design is not the best in the world, but it gets the job done. The sound of a character coin breaking to the sound an arrow makes when it hits are pretty good, but the melee combat and magic could use some work. The music, however, is really good, and is perfect for a turn-based game. The overworld map menu music is solid as well and kept me hooked.

The visuals are nothing to write home about either, but for an indie game in early access, it’s really not bad. The character sketches are sharp, and the animations are smooth in most places. However, on the map screen, the journal sometimes caused a bit of a glitch while opening, which was mildly annoying. The text is crisp to read and structured really well, which is very important for a game like this.

The game’s performance is, as expected, amazing. I faced no crashes or slowdowns on both Windows 10 and Manjaro Linux (running proton) with my Ryzen 5 1600 and GTX 1060. The game played smoothly and it clearly shows the polish that the devs have used. Kudos.

Verdict

Trials of Fire takes the concept of turn-based roguelike games and adds its own unique spin. The combat mechanics themselves make this game stand out from the crowd. However, being in early access, the game is heavily lacking in content. From the menu, you can only see one ‘quest’, and a lot more can be added in terms of perks, powers and class mechanics. Maybe something along the lines of archers taking more physical damage than warriors. The developers have worked really hard, and do deserve your money and support, but I would wait for some content updates in the game’s current state, as the current state of the content doesn’t really justify the price tag.