Star Crusade

Star Crusade

GENRE: Free to play CCG
PLATFORM: Windows
DEVELOPER: ZIMAD, Inc.

OVERVIEW

In Star Crusade players control their own army of science fiction themed soldiers and machines in a battle amongst the stars, six mighty factions clash with one another and the player takes the role of a leader in the faction to fight in one on one card battles.

KEY FEATURES

- Six available factions with unique cards
- Hundreds of cards to collect
- Build you own deck to your preferred play style
- Tactical combat battles
- Multiple game modes
- Free to play

GAMEPLAY

The game focuses on building up your own deck by acquiring new cards for your preferred faction, though players can build a deck for multiple factions and switch between them freely. Each faction has a unique style of play associated to it and unique cards that can only be used by that faction. Players will build up a deck and take on different game modes going up against other players to earn rewards, new cards, XP and rank in a PVP ladder.

THE CARDS

There are different types of cards, but the most common card is the Unit card, which is played from your hand and placed onto the battlefield; each card typically has three main components:

Attack Value – The amount of damage a played card can do when attacking another unit card or when attacking the enemy Commander

Hitpoints – How much damage the card can take when attacked before it is destroyed and removed from play; damage inflicted will permanently lower the hitpoints of a card between rounds

Special Traits – Some cards have special abilities that they can perform when certain requirements are triggered (typically just playing the card), such as increasing the attack value of all played allied units, healing up a units’ hitpoints, giving shields to absorb damage, being able to attack immediately when played (normally a unit cannot attack on the same turn it is placed), attacking twice in a turn, and more.

Players can also use Tactic cards, cards that are played directly from your hand and have special effects such as direct damage, adding traits to a unit, healing cards and other traits.

The six factions (Hierarchy, Consortium, Annunaki, Shan’Ti, Hajir-Gog and Terrans) each have different strategies that are supported by their card types and unique mechanics, such as the Shan’Ti are able to mutate their own cards and change their abilities, or the Terran summon weak ground infantry Guardsman and use huge powerful spaceships for their unit cards.

THE TURN

At the beginning of the game players randomly draw a handful of cards from their pre-assembled deck to place into their hand, from here they will take it in turns to place cards onto the battlefield or use Tactic cards. Players start with 1 resource on their first turn and so can only play cards with a resource value of 1 (if they have any); each turn their resource total increases by 1 and over the course of the game they are able to spend more resource to place multiple cards in a turn or more powerful high resource cost cards.

The objective is to deal damage to the enemy Commander and remove all their hitpoints, in doing so the Commander is defeated and the attacking player wins the game.

GAME MODES

There are multiple game modes available including a Casual mode for players to play against each other, try out their deck and earn XP in order to level up, which in turn gives them access to new cards for their faction. Ranked mode works in the same way but players will be paired against similarly skilled/levelled players to try and earn ranks and gain rewards for their position.

Raid mode has players build a completely new deck from randomly drawn cards; starting with choosing your faction players will go through various rounds of deck building able to choose one card from three randomly drawn cards to place into their deck, creating a unique deck that the player must then try and battle with.

EARNING CARDS

Players can acquire new cards by levelling up their faction, using the Fusion feature to destroy unwanted cards and gaining materials to craft new cards, or by spending in game or real world currency on Booster packs to acquire new random cards.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENT

O/S: Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8
CPU: Intel Pentium D or AMD Athlon 64 X2
RAM: 2GB
HDD: 3GB
Video: GeForce 6800, Radeon X1600 or higher
Sound: Compatible with DirectX
DirectX Version: 9.0