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Screenshot from Gwent: The Witcher Card Game
Screenshot from Gwent: The Witcher Card Game

Title: Gwent: The Witcher Card Game

Platform: Windows, Xbox One and PlayStation 4

Cost: Free, with optional in-game purchases available

Rating: Teen, with violence, blood, harsh language and crude humor

Gwent is the latest offering in the popular and increasingly crowded collectible card game genre. Originally, Gwent was a minigame available to play inside the fantasy epic The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt by Polish game studio CD Projekt Red.

Video games have been putting games inside of games for decades, but the positive reaction to Gwent spurred its creators to produce first a physical copy, available with limited, collector's editions versions of the game, and then a full-fledged video game directly challenging the dominant giants in the field, such as Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering.

Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering focuses heavily on unit-versus-unit interactions. Players place minions on the game board, and those units clash against one another, strength versus strength -- reminiscent of the classic card game War.

Gwent eschews that direct confrontation with a more strategic approach, and while its hundreds of cards make it far more

complex, it has more in line with games such as bridge or mahjongg, where cards and tiles are played to score points over multiple rounds of play. Playing cards nets each player points. Whoever has the most points at the end of a round wins that round. The match is complete when one player wins twice.

The game has an in-depth tutorial mode that explains the ins and outs of play, so I won't get into that too much here. As an overview, though, Gwent is a two-player card game. Each player chooses one of five factions -- Roman-like Nilfgaard, Viking-like Skellige, the dwarvish and elvish Scoia'tael, the medieval Northern Realms, and beastly Monsters.

Each faction has its own "playstyle" -- Monsters overwhelm with numbers; the Nilfgaard use subterfuge and spies, etc.; and each faction has dozens of cards from which a deck of 25 to 40 cards is built.

The lore for the cards comes directly from the Witcher series -- many of the unit cards are characters or creatures encountered in the role-playing game. What differentiates Gwent from others in the genre is its best-of-three format and the divided game board where units are placed. Ten cards are drawn at the start of a match, with two more drawn in Round 2 and one more drawn in the final round.

Managing cards properly and having good synergy are keys to winning. Sometimes it's best to purposely lose one round of battle and retain cards for the next round in order to win the match.

The Gwent application is a smooth and easy-to-use experience that also lets you play practice matches against the computer. Competing in multiplayer battles earns you experience and rewards with which to craft and buy more cards. When they gain enough experience, players go up a level, unlocking rewards and more aspects of the game.

There is no requirement to spend any money in Gwent. Daily quests, which involve simply playing games and winning rounds, unlock free rewards and card packs, which are used to upgrade decks in countless variations.

There are two multiplayer modes -- casual and ranked. In casual matches, the computer tries to match players of similar ability together. Once enough casual matches have been played to rank a player up to Level 10 (which takes hours, by the way), the ranked mode is unlocked. Winning matches in ranked mode pits players against successively higher and higher ranked opponents and unlocks more rewards.

For those who have already played The Witcher 3, Gwent has gone through numerous balance changes as it has transformed from a single-player contest into a competitive, multiplayer game.

Gwent had been in a closed beta status since October, but May 24 it transitioned to open beta. Open beta means that while anyone can download the game now and start playing, the makers are still making adjustments and tweaking game play based on player experiences and are still creating more content.

Despite its beta status, optional in-game purchases are already available, but any purchases made and all account progress will carry over when the game leaves beta and is officially launched.

When that official launch date hits, Gwent will also have a single-player campaign mode, which likely will offer more rewards while completing a new story line set in the Witcher universe.

Gwent is available on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and on Windows exclusively through GOG.com, a video-game distribution platform owned by CD Projekt Red. Downloading Gwent through GOG.com will also score you, for free, the first game in the Witcher series, which I highly recommend playing.

Gwent was reviewed on the PlayStation 4 and Windows 10.

Cross swords with Jason at

jbennett@arkansasonline.com

ActiveStyle on 06/12/2017

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