Card Games in Video Games and SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech
The credits are rolling on SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech.
Watch the rest of the Game’s Over Video Game Reviews here at this YouTube playlist.
I like the SteamWorld family of games. The team at Image and Form are my kind of game factory. They produce video games that have some consistent elements…in their case, mostly character design and robot puns…but each game is an entirely different genre. They’ve done a tower defense game, a turn-based XCOM-like 2d thing, a couple of 2d platformers, and now a Magic the Gathering style card game experience with SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech. See, I told you they had puns.
Okay, so what I’ve described is less of a factory and more of a very creative company with a bankable IP making unique things. So, the opposite of a factory. But they do traffic in robots, and robots are made in factories, so, I accept your apology.
I always feel weird playing a video game with card game mechanics, like I’m dismissing the work put into those rectangular pieces of paper. Like I start off acknowledging the handiwork, “aww, those cards are cute,” but then “how about some animation? And here’s some spoken dialog to ruffle them feathers. Go back to the 1800s with your hanafuda nonsense and your pre-antiseptic death sentence papercuts.”
I like card games. I do. Sometimes when the excitement of video games by myself gets to be too much I yearn to be bored in a group. I like the cruel, sadistic assurance that even though lots of people may be having a better life than me right now, I can rest assured that these four other people playing Crazy Eights with me in my unfinished basement are, like me, not having fun. The world is a better place when we can all commiserate.
There’s a romance to card games, sure. The hyper focus on tactile placement. The inherent mindfulness necessary to strategize. These things remind us of simpler times. You can pretend you’re in pre-video game pioneer times, playing card games around the fire with your wife and your remaining three children after two of them have been killed by the cholera. And you’re not gambling with secular concerns like money or token sentimental trinkets, but instead the loser has to reset the bear traps down by the riverbed using your own gangrenous leg for bait. “Ha! Full House. Sorry Jebediah! Take some extra leg meat with ya this time. I hear the bears are mighty hungry.”
I understand that when boiled down games, whether paper-based like playing cards or fun-based like video games, are seeded similarly with rules and mechanics that inform strategy. Video games may have more complex interactions, player affordance, more impressive visuals, and immersive aims, but card games have something video games will never have: heated debates over the rules.
Oh farts, this video is supposed to be about SteamWorld Quest. It’s really fun. Like a card game.
Music Credits
- Pump Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
- EDM Detection Mode Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
