So I Tried… Cardpocalypse

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never played before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time, I happened upon the trading card game Cardpocalypse!

What I thought it was

I’ll admit, Cardpocalypse is not the kind of game I’d buy outright. While it does look charming, the general look of the game didn’t seem to be for me. However, due to a pinch of fate, it ended up in my library from a Fanatical Mystery Bundle (I’m not addicted, I can stop once I win a spending spree, I swear). While looking for a game to kill time on, it caught my eye, and here we are! My original expectation was another spin on the Hearthstone, Marvel Snap, and Legends of Runeterra format, having some single-player content but focusing on PVP gameplay and maybe some microtransaction silliness.

What it actually is

Well, I was correct as far as it was a card game! It turns out Cardpocalypse is very much a narrative, solely single-player, experience about kids playing card games in school, then encroaching threat of mutant demons and tubular '90s-themed action! In the game, you play as 10-year-old Jess as she attends her first day at Dudsdale Elementary. Being a new kid on the block, she is very anxious about making friends but quickly manages to bond with another kid on the bus via the medium of the hit card game Mega Mutant Power Pets! What follows is Jess exploring the school, learning about the game based on her favourite cartoon, and making friends left and right, as one does in the 90’s.

In the half-an-hour allotted, I explored the playground, found participants to attend a Gamatochi funeral, learned the basics of the game, and even met the local bully, Bruce. Cardpocalypse did a good job at getting me invested, as my time was up just as purple ooze appeared on the grounds, and things were escalating!

The card game itself was a pretty basic but enjoyable experience. Each Mutant Power Pet master (or player, if you’re boring) has a Leader card with special abilities and 30 health; once that’s gone, the game is over. Each turn you have an increasing amount of points to spend on playing minions or mutations with which to either protect your leader, take out the enemy, or gain buffs. Once your Leader hits a certain threshold in health, it’ll turn Mega and get additional abilities, adding to the strategic side of the game. It was good fun and easy to learn!

Will I keep playing

Definitely! As I said, I had to stop around the time the plot got interesting, so I’m curious to see where it all goes. So far, it seems pretty wholesome and fits the '90s theming perfectly. I usually dislike deckbuilding in games, since I don’t have the patience for it, but I’m hoping the game’s method of slowly giving you cards will help in that. If nothing else, Cardpocalypse seems like a good game to pick up and play every now and again.