With Hand of Fate 2 getting a Switch port last week, it was a fresh chance for people to experience the weird action-RPG / roguelike / deckbuilding / dice rolling mix from Defiant Development. And as a result, it's a good time for a Community Review.
Hand of Fate is a unique hybrid of deck-building card adventure and action role-playing game that came out of nowhere to become one of my favourite games of 2015. Hand of Fate 2 improves upon the original in every way.
It's always a good day when we get to feature the work of Australian games and artists, and an even better one when the game in question happens to be Hand of Fate 2.
The Switch train pulled into the station this morning, and it's brought some choice passengers along.
Aussie games don't get highlighted on Steam that often, so when they do, it's nice to see that they're received well.
Hand of Fate was a bit of a watershed Aussie game. Apart from the fact that it was uniquely difficult to describe - a deckbuilding roguelike with Batman Arkham Asylum combat and tons of RNG - it was also one of the few Australian games to be included in a publisher-approved console bundle.
That's rare. Aussie games don't get that kind of headline treatment. But Hand of Fate was always a little special, a little different. And the good news? Hand of Fate 2 has that exact same quality, nailing almost everything it does except for one crucial piece of its unusual puzzle.
Brisbane-developed Hand of Fate 2 is being released on November 7 on Playstation 4, PC, Mac and Linux.
The Xbox One version of Hand of Fate 2 was originally scheduled for release on the same date however Defiant Development have hit some unexpected delays.
Next week the sequel to the very good Hand of Fate comes out. I've been spending some time with the sequel, and you can check out 30 minutes of that here.
Australia no longer has a foot in the AAA industry, so it's natural that our video games wouldn't take the sideways step into other mediums or properties.
But every now and again, you get a surprise. And one such surprise at PAX Australia came from Defiant Development and Rule & Make, who have joined forces to turn the charismatic indie into a board game.
The 2015 Australian hybrid card game and action role-playing game Hand of Fate was surprisingly good, if a bit rough-edged. It built a following, sold some 400,000 copies on PC and console, added 1.5 million more through a free Xbox Games with Gold promotion and was successful enough that it's getting a slicker sequel that was shown off behind closed doors at last month's Game Developers Conference.
