SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech

Review

A long time has passed since the hero Gilgameh defeated the Behemoth with the Heart of Evil, who was created by the gods! Well, that was during the early age of SteamWorld. Since then, nothing drastic has happened in that world. Well, that’s until two friends, a knight and an alchemist, were walking into the forest to find a rare mushroom - a peppermint puffer. The mushroom itself could do wonders for the SteamWorld community, but what was happening close by in a small village was the start of an incredible adventure. The army of a Dark Lord set the village alight, and these two friends would need as much help as possible in the adventure of SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech!

SteamWolrd Quest: Hand of Gilgamech is an adventure/card/strategy game developed by Image & Form Games and Published by Thunderful Publishing, and it was released on the 31st of May 2019 on the Steam platform.

Before I start talking about this game, I must say that I am a huge fan of Image Form Games Studio and I had the pleasure of playing all their SteamWorld games so far.  It seems to me that they are getting stronger each time they release a new title, and this one’s an absolute cracker!



The game consists of 19 chapters, each with a boss to defeat. You can choose to play the game in three levels of difficulty (Squire, Knight or Legend). As mentioned, you’ll start with two characters at your disposal, Copernica the Alchemist and Armilly the knight. As you progress in the game, a few more characters will join your party. In my case, after 14 hours of play and having completed 12 chapters, I have another three characters.

The levels are set up as rooms, through which you will move your party. Entering each of the rooms may activate a dialogue between the characters (which you can skip if you want to), but mostly you’ll encounter enemies and go straight into a fight. If you manage to sneak behind them and attack them first, they will take on a small damage before entering the fight. The other rooms will have objects such as books, roots and boxes to smash to pieces, and you’ll be rewarded with coins when destroying some of them. Let me tell you, you’ll need plenty of coins to upgrade and create your deck of cards, as well as for procuring weapons, accessories and other gizmos at the old rusted merchant caravan.

You can only have three characters in a fight but will occasionally face up to five enemies per battle. The fight is set up as a turn-based system and at the start of each battle, you’ll be given 6 cards to choose from. If you use three characters (which you will), you might have 2 cards for each of your characters, but most of the time it’s totally randomized, which is super fun. In each turn, you can choose to replace 2 cards of the six that you have in your hand. Some cards will cost you nothing while others need a certain number of gears to activate.  The gears tab is located at the top of your screen. Each time you select a card without a cost, one of the gears will become orange, which means that you now own one gear. The other way to activate gears is to create a chain of cards. The trick is to activate as many gears as possible to gain access to more powerful cards each turn, but it can be tricky. You see, you can only use three cards per turn. Usually the cards that don’t cost gears inflict low damage to enemies, regenerate a bit of health or sightly improve your armour. If you use three of these cards in one turn, you’ll earn three gears for the next turn and then you can use more powerful cards. If, for instance, you can pick up three cards from one of the characters in a turn, you’ll create a chain which will give you either an extra attack, armour, or health in that turn. So yeah, try to produce these chains of cards as many times as possible.   At the end of each turn, the three cards you used will be replaced by another 3 new cards, and so on and so forth, until you win or loose the battle.

There are items that you can use during a fight, such as repair potion, revive a hero and others. If you need to do so, it will become part of the three you use per turn. Maybe all heroes will need a repair potion at once, and therefore that will become the set of cards for that specific turn.

At the end of each battle, you’ll be rewarded with coins, materials and items.

In each of the levels, you’ll find an old (rusted) merchant with her caravan. There, you’ll be able to buy or sell weapons, accessories, material and recovery Items. You’ll also be able to upgrade your cards or add new cards to the hero’s deck. To do so, you’ll need the right materials and coins.

I really like everything about this game! You have a good story with great humour, the interface is easy to use all way around, and it is challenging, too. On top of that, the graphics are fabulous! If you enjoy adventure, card games and strategy, this game is for you. In my case, I found myself playing the game until the early hours of the morning. It’s a GEM!


Positives

+ Great graphics
+ Fun story with good humour
+ Stacks of cards
+ Plenty of different enemies
+ Challenging bosses’ fights
+ Very addictive game
+ Trading cards and achievements

Negatives

- I don’t have any!

Review Summary

Join Copernica and Armilly in the cracking adventure of SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech. What a Gem!

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Zeepond Rating: 9/10

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