Riftwalker: A Storm Hollow Card Game Preview Review

Riftwalker: A Storm Hollow Card Game is up on kickstarter right now, and is set to end on Sunday. I got a chance to take a early look at it.

Overview

Riftwalker is for 2 to 4 players and takes 30-45 minutes to play.

15 Element cards
52 Rift cards

The goal of the game is to score the most points by exploring, shifting, and bursting rifts.

Set up is pretty simple. shuffle the element cards and lay out a 3 x 3 grid. The remaining element cards are set to the side as the element deck. Shuffle the rift cards and deal 3 to each player, and then set the rest to the side as the rift deck. Pick a starting player, and play proceeds clockwise.

On your turn, you take the following steps: Element, Rift, Burst, Refresh.

Element: Choose an element you want to use in the Rift step, and either flip or place it. To flip, you pick the element you want on the grid and flip it face-down. To place, take the top card from the elements deck and place it anywhere in the grid with the element you want to use face-up, and put the replaced card at the bottom of the deck.

Rift: Explore or shift a rift using the chosen element. Explore by putting a matching rift from your hand face-up on the table in front of you. Shift by rotating one of your explored rifts clockwise, increasing the number of points showing. Finally, whether you explored or shifted a rift, you now activate its ability.

Burst: Check the elements grid to see if there are three of the same element in a row (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally). If so, you may burst one of your rifts of that element, as long as it has been shifted at least once. Place the rift into your scoring pile, keeping its orientation so you know how many points it is worth.

Refresh: Discard any number of rift cards from your hand to the bottom of the deck and draw back up to 3 cards.

The game ends when there are no cards left in the rift deck at the end of somebody’s turn, or when a player has burst a set number of rifts (based on the number of players). Each of the other players gets one more turns, and then the game ends. Add up the values of your burst rifts in your scoring pile, plus any bonus points earned. Highest score wins, with ties broken by most rifts burst.

Riftwalker mixes a Match 3 system with combos,which can make for some decent game play. There tends to be a lot of strategy involved, as you figure out which element you want to go for. But some of the element powers can slow down game play depending on what the “power is” nothing that is game stopping or anything, I just noticed a few times when some of the powers tended to slow down play a bit.

Final Thoughts

Great artwork on the cards, fun game play. And Easy to learn and teach. So overall I would recommend this as a fun game to add into your game nights, It’s also nice to have a game that you throw in your rotation of games! and this is just one of that is fun and fast that fits that need well.