Card City Nights 2
© 2017 Ludosity AB
This is a sequel to Ludosity's well-designed digital collectible card game. With new content, a revamped "match-three" game system and bigger story mode, Card City Nights 2 delivers an upgrade over the original, with new challenge runs and online multiplayer capability. The story takes place on the Starship Frivolity, a spacefaring city-sized vessel home to inhabitants of every shape, size and species who are of course still obsessed with The Card Game, the only card game played in space according to the game's description. Pacing is the same as before: Travel the ship's various points of interest and challenge strong opponents in search of legendary cards, building your own decks into a formidable force as you go. New mechanical changes make the card game much more interactive. Instead of two separated 3x3 boards, cards are placed by both players across a single 6x3 board, allowing strategic blocking by placing your own cards over an opponent's arrows, preventing their combos while building your own. Cards also have timers now, taking several turns once activated to resolve but making it possible to chain activated cards for longer combos. Some cards have effects that trigger for every turn they are active, some delay or tick down the timer, the design space here is more robust than before and thus there's a lot more possibilities when deckbuilding. Online multiplayer provides cross-platform support between the mobile and Steam versions of the game. From the beginning you can build decks from the full card collection to play against others. As of this review the game is two years old and its online player base is almost nonexistent, but you can still use a password feature to connect with friends and play your best decks against one another. If you are looking for a sizable card collecting experience, you'll love this game.
$58, Windows, iPad, iPhone, Mac OSX, Android, Steam
Teaches: strategy, deckbuilding, reading, puzzle-solving,
CTR Rating: 87.5%