Buy Northmark: Hour of the Wolf

I'm actually really enjoying this game. I'm a sucker for a good card-battling game and this one doesn't disappoint. There's an adventure mode and a quick-battle mode where you can pick a character with pre-made decks. It may not be as refined as a M:tG or Hearthstone card battling game, yet it's simple, straight forward and fun.

You do quests which will usually net you experience and some gold. Experience you can use to level up and improve your main stats, and gold naturally lets you go to shops to purchase new cards. The game does a good job at explaining the basics of how the cards work when you start the game, so don't worry about needing any prior knowledge of card-battling games when going into this.

My only gripe is that I would have loved it to have a versus mode with multiplayer, but that's a small gripe considering the price and the value I have gotten out of the game already.

Okay I'm going to try to keep this simple as honestly I'm pretty confused how I feel about this game.
I enjoyed every minute of playing it, but at the end of it I'm feeling empty. I literally did everything I could, fought every battle visited every location cleared every arena and got every achievement. The game could be finished easily a lot faster than my own clocked hours,
I was crawling and searching through the dust hoping for more content.
What is here is really solid, good battle system, a decent selection of cards.
Replayability? Little to none, personally I doubt I will play through this again. There are no random encounters, just scripted story encounters. There are the arena battles which personally I found the most interesting as some of them had unique foes that could be a bit more challenging.
Difficulty wise overall I would say it is a bit on the easy side. Not too bad but there is no difficulty setting option so one size fits all in this case beginner to veteran.

So to summarise-
Do I regret buying this game?
=Not at all, I did enjoy the time I played it.

Is it value for money?
=Overall yes, cheaper than a movie and prob about twice as long without hurrying. Though there are better value for money games out there at this price or less. I would probably wait for a 50% off sale on it

Would I recommend you buy it?
=Conditionally yes, just don't go into with huge expectations. I would say most people will play through once, enjoy it and shelve it. Without a multiplayer or random battles it is not long enough to warrant a replay.
It is unfortunate as what's here is good.


Hopefully some of that helps, hopefully some of that makes sense ;P

This is a collectible card game (CCG) with a few riddles thrown in for good measure.

Storywise, there's an attempted assassination and a conspiracy to uncover. You do this by traveling around the world map, exploring locations and fighting baddies.

The card game is fairly simple. You can have up to 3 units, limited by your command points (gained by leveling), and each unit can take one action per turn. An action is playing a card, whether an attack or a boost card. Units have built in cards that you get by clicking their picture, these will refresh after a while. You attempt to get high attack values, so your attack cards will penetrate your opponents' defense values, damage and eventually kill them by reducing their health to 0. There’s both physical attack and a number of different magic attacks, and it’s really impossible to guard effectively against all of them.

Since cards do not have casting costs, only costs to obtain, there is rarely any reason to use lower damage cards, unless they bring some sort of debuff or damage over time effect. You can only have 12 cards in your deck at a time, from about 100 that you can obtain, and since most of them will be lower tier, there is very limited deck construction. Balance is definitely an issue, what with no casting cost, and some of the units are really overpowered. Generally speaking, the 5000 cost cards are the ones worth the price.

The AI is not anything special, most opponents can be easily overwhelmed if you build a half decent attack heavy deck, with a few buffs and healing thrown in. The sole exception to this is the broken card which switches your hand with your opponent’s. When the AI uses this on your tuned deck, and you get a hand full of crap, there’s a good chance you’ll auto lose.

There are a number of bugs, ranging from a quest that may become uncompletable to text that doesn’t properly reflect the gender of your character, should you choose the female avatar. For most people I imagine the 4 chapters of the game can be completed in 3-4 hours, less if you’re an experienced CCG player. As you near the end of the game, the English writing gets progressively worse, giving the game an unpolished and unfinished feel. This is further compounded by the ending which doesn’t resolve much.

Graphics and music are decent enough, though there are some issues with the cropping of the character images.
I would cautiously recommend this game for people in need of a quick CCG or simple RPG fix, but you have to take into account the simplicity of the card game and the short length of the overall game. It starts out fairly fun and refreshing, but once you understand how to best stock your deck and obtain the power cards, the excitement tapers off.

(Completely updated review after first completion of game)

Summary: this is a good, fun game, but short with not a whole lot of replay value...

Pros: Easy strategic depth with some layers of complexity, stable and efficient programming, decent story with variety of tone, pleasant surprises (riddles, hidden chests, etc.)

Cons: Scope of game is quite small; not a lot of cards, characters, quests, etc... I beat the game just shy of four hours. Difficulty curve vanishes after you 'figure it out.' Would also be nice to have a text speed option; lots of clicking to get through dialogue.

I still recommend as a good/fun game, and the price is fair. Interresed to see if they expand/develop a new (bigger) story line at some point...

EDIT: The fact this game is short could actually be a PRO, because now I actually feel like I've completed a game in my library :)

Northmark is a very good introductory card-based RPG. The level of difficulty will be very low for someone experienced in these types of games (I have played very few games of this type and still only died twice while 100% the game) and the playtime is short as well (about 5.5 hours to 100%). Northmark was quite fun though and the best part in my opinion is definitely the artwork, I really like the style that they went with. All in all, defintely a good game to get on sale or in a bundle since the length does not completely justify the price.

This is a rather fun game. The card game aspects are fun and solid, it has some nice 'hidden object' mini-games for finding bonus treasure, and you can also solve riddles to open treasure chests. The story is entertaining (even if the main character is 'Lawful Stupid' and can't see through the Jafar-esque villain who gives himself away just by his wardrobe), and it has some nice pacing.

With that said, it's got some flaws. For starters, it's so short that I thought I had installed a demo when I suddenly completed it. I spent four hours on it, doing a completionist run on my first play through. There is no replay value, so the fact that it's so short is a serious problem. Also of note is a bugged out quest that prevents you from accessing one of the stores in the game. That's not a huge problem, but it does mean you can't get all of the cards and may mess with some builds.

All told, I'll give this a positive review, but I'd highly recommend picking it up on a heavy sale. Compared to just about every other card game on Steam, this doesn't justify the high price. It's not bad, but you'll beat it the first time through and you'll likely never touch it again.

Fun RPG/card strategy game, very unique combat system. Hoping for more content.

Northmark is a pretty nice, though very short, single player CCG.

The actual combat mechanics are different from other CCGs I've played. There are 4 types of cards - Units(soldiers, etc), Buffs, Debuffs, and Attacks. Before the fight starts, you select up to 3 unit cards and 12 of the other cards from you inventory for your deck. The units start out right on the battlefield - no need to "summon" them, and your "Hand" contains 7 cards randomly selected from your 12 card deck. As each card is used, it is replaced by another one, and the deck never "runs out." If your deck contains fewer than 12 cards, the remainder are a random assortment of very weak cards.

Units have two attributes - Health and Defense. Defense is subdivided by element - Physical, Magic, Fire, etc. Every unit in play gets a turn - if you have 1 unit and the enemy has 3, they take 3 turns for every one of yours. Every unit has at least a couple of cards of its own. When the unit takes its turn, you can have it use either one of its own cards or one of the 7 cards in your hand. Its own cards aren't "rotated', but instead put on a cooldown for several turns after use. Every action uses a card, for example an Attack card needs to be available in order for the unit to attack.

The goal is to eliminate the enemy's units. Damage calculation is simple - if your Wolf uses its Wolf Attack card, which does 4 physical damage, against an enemy's Soldier who has 1 physical defense, the result is 3 Hit Points subtracted from the Soldier's health. Your unit actually gets attack and defense bonuses from your hero's stats, which you increase when you level up, and the enemy has their own bonuses, so if the enemy hero has +3 to defense and you don't have any attack bonuses, the Wolf will not do any damage. That's where buffs and debuffs can come in - I often found it a useful strategy to have 2 units use their turns to buff up the attack strength of a 3rd unit, which would then rip through any enemy defenses.

There are no resources like mana or energy in combat - if you have a card in hand, no matter how powerful, any of your units can use it on their turn, so it pays to try to get the most powerful cards you can. This doesn't quite apply to the units themselves. Your hero has a "leadership" attribute (which increases either as you level up or as you proceed in the plot, I'm not quite sure,) and each unit has a set level of 1 to 5. The combine levels of the 3 units fielded in battle cannot be greater than your leadership value, so if you want to use 3 level 5 units, you need leadership to be 15.

When you begin a new game, your character will start out with 3 cards specific to your chosen class, including 1 Unit card and 2 cards for your battle deck. Some of the other cards you will find after combat, in hidden stashes, or be given as part of the plot or reward for completing a quest. Most cards, however, you will purchase from shops with gold (which is found after combat, in hidden stashes, or given to you as part of the plot or reward for completing a quest.) Various of the cities you visit have arenas in which you can fight, with no penalty for losing, until you defeat each of the opponents. The gold rewards for wins are very nice, not to mention the XP gained, so it is highly recommended to do these whenever possible.

The graphics are serviceable, and the music is very good though there isn't a large variety of tunes. Interface is decent, with the strange exception of when it comes to modify up deck - clicking on one of the twelve slots let's you select replacements, but you can only see 3 cards at a time, and have to click the arrows to scroll the 3-card view in any direction, 1 card at a time. Obviously this can be quite maddening, as your card inventory grows. You can view your inventory at and see 18 cards to a page, so it makes no sense why a similar large page view can't be used to select the cards for teh battle deck...

As I stated in the beginning, this game is rather short, too short in my opinion for the $9.99 asking price. It can be completed in 4 hours, and there's not very much replay value besides seeing how it plays with a different character build (ex. putting all your level up points into Ice Attack and seeing what happens). While you do get to pick a character and class when starting the story game, these have no effect beyond the couple pre-allocated skill/level points and the 3 cards you start the game with. And the final boss feels more like a "Saruman" than "Sauron", leaving the the whole story feeling more like a "Part 1".

There is also a Quick Battle option in the main menu, where you can select a character and level for yourself and the AI, from 13 different types of characters which you might face in the story campaign. Each of these has their own cards and units, and this is your chance to use some cards which you've only had used against you in the story.

In the end, due to its short length and lack of multiplayer, I'd recommend this game on a sale. If you can get it for <$3-4, it's a good value. For a more "meatier" single player experience, you'd want to look at other titles, like Spectromancer .

Really short, not great. The writers tried to be funny and failed. Other dialogue is dreadfully mediocre and poor at best. There is very limited strategy to the game. Most fights are really easy but a few are a bit rough if you tackle them too early unless you spent your points in the right places. Usually I just buff the snot out of one stompy unit and focus attacks on one enemy unit at a time. I also couldn't see the point in spending many stat points on defence since the faster I kill off one of the enemy's units the sooner I'd win the fight. Focus on attack and spread those points around to several different damage types and you're guaranteed to hurt anything you hit - even if only for a few points.

Even though it's not a great game something made me stick with it until I played the whole thing through. If you like card-based RPG game mechanics, can put up with bad writing and a poor story line with "twists" you can see coming way before the game "reveals" them, so-so graphics and generally a *meh* feeling all the way through you should buy this one. On sale. Like 80% off. Or more. Yeah, can't recommend this - you've been warned.

Story-driven rpg/card battler with limited character development.

This is a very nice little game for a budget title. Unfortunately it has several issues - the main one being that it's just too easy. With the cards and spells you have at your disposal you become very powerful fairly quickly and this means you will breeze through this short game with ease. Also, for some inexplicable reason, the English used in the text, after having been near perfect throughout, suddenly becomes a mess at the end of the game. Almost as though they rushed it out at the last minute. These issues aside, the short time you will have with the game is a blast and it's clearly meant to be only the first of a series. How you rate it depends on what around five hours of fun is worth to you. I give it somewhere between 67 and 70 percent.

Northmark is not a terrible game, but it’s not a great one either. For every tactically thrilling fight or interesting side quest, there’s a dull slog-fest and excruciating piece of dialogue to put up with first. The developer has the technical aspects down fine, but could have improved the experience greatly by hiring a professional writer and spending a bit more time varying and balancing the card effects. 4,99€ while sales = 7/10.

The game was very fun to play and I enjoyed it. However, it was too short, easy and unbalanced.

I didn't loose a single fight and just when I thought the game was about to really begin it ended. :o
The most expensive items seemed to cost 5000 gp and by the end of the game I had over 70 000 gp.

I recommend this game only to fans of this genre but do not buy unless it is on sale.

I normally stay away from card based games, but this is a cute little one. Its really easy though, and seems to be a mobile port. Besides that, its pretty fun. The rules are simple to learn, each stat has an attack and a defense, so like 3 fire magic -2 fire defense is 1 point. Theres basic attack/defense and then ice, fire, and poison. Your hero, of which there is a few classes to determine your starting cards and stats, also has base stats which boost the cards. You wander around a map, each location has little icons you can click (and hidden ones too with gold you have to search for). Theres also riddle chests (like in Betrayal at Krondor, one of the best RPGs of the 90s). The riddles are easy, but fun.

The combat is all card based. YOu have a group of 12 cards that is your deck, and you can get "unit cards" which have a level. You can pick up to three units, as long as their levels combined isnt above a set number. So if your number is 10, you can have 2 5th level units, or a 5 a 4 and a 1, or 2 4s and a 2, and so forth.

Its really easy to understand and pretty fun - if simple and kind of easy. The only complaint I have is no matter if you pick the obviously female Ice Mage character, all the text refers to you as "he". Annoying.

Fun, simple game where you need to think about which cards you want to bring into battle. The game isn't all to difficult or long to complete, but I had fun playing it. The price tag however is a bit steep when buying full price compared to the amount of gameplay you will get from it. 7/10

This is an indie title that costs less than $10. Having said that...

6 hours of gameplay. Suitable for the price.

Pros:
-Simple but compelling gameplay.
-The art style is well suited to this game.
-Amusing writing style.

Cons:
-Few enemies. You fight the SAME units over and over. The final battle was split into two against the villian, but both times he had the SAME three units. Dull.
-Few units. You have access to the same units as the enemy, just even fewer. They're in tiers, so a lot of the low level ones become moot before you can even get them.
-Few spells/attacks. Everything gets more powerful as the hero's stats get added to damage. But I was still using most of the same cards throughout the game.

Overall I had fun, commensurate with the price. That's what really matters ;).

Enjoying it a lot. Simple game, easy fights (but you can make it more difficult in arena's), fun story which is predictable, but it's still a nice game to play. It has a lot of charm and the gameplay is fun. It just feels very nice.

A surprisingly good game! I expected it to be good but I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. I hope to see more titles in this franchise because it is very well made. Good gameplay, good story and good music score. Definitely one to get!

A nice indie game, albeit would crave for a bit more content.

I will start by saying that the combat sections and the way the game is presented is very good. finding the right cards and tactics to defeat certain encounters is very enjoyable. The dialogue for the most part is well presented aswell, a few spelling mistakes here and there but nothing major.

The main thing i wanted to talk about is something i feel is just casually mentioned and brushed past. That is of course the length and content of the game. my play time is not representitive of how long the game is since i am not very good, went afk, needed to retry several encounters multiple times and run around each shop looking for those cards to give me an edge.
I think the content of the game is around 3 hours, you fight very similar battles and multiple tries help inflate the game but for pure content i think 3 hours is about right.

I cant help but feel that the game had more to offer and just didnt deliver on it, like the game was pushed out the door early or just not enough care and attention was put into it. I understand its an indie title and its only £5.50 (7 if not on sale) but there are indie titles around that price that have far more content then this one has and far more replayability. By the end of it i just felt like i was missing that little bit more.

whether the game is worth the price for the content it offers is very much personal preference and you can decide that for yourself. If this game was more expensive i would not recommend it to you but it gave me a few hours of fun for just over five pounds. I dont feel ripped off, just a little disappointed. If you enjoy these kind of games then absolutely give it a try.

Lets keep this very simple

+ straight forward, simple card game, with lots of interesting cards
+ nice humor
+ nice, albeit a bit generic story line

- very easy. I think i lost only one fight in the whole game and that was right at the start when i didnt understand what i was doing
- very short. It takes about 3 - 4 hours to finish all quests and sidequests, even if you read all the story texts.

I still recommend it. It was a fun evening and i am hoping for more campaigns.