Hand of Fate asks you to sit across a table from a man who deals cards, and then it asks you to fight what he deals. The 2015 release from Australian studio Defiant Development is a deck-building roguelike with a brawler hiding inside it, and the tension between those two halves is the whole story.
Trailer, via Defiant Development.
The Dealer in the Cabin at the End of the World
You are a nameless wanderer. He is the Dealer, voiced by Anthony Skordi, and he narrates your journey from a cabin at the end of the world. He deals the cards, the rewards, the penalties, the lore, and the commentary. He is also the final boss.
Hand of Fate wears its inspirations openly. Tarot, tabletop dungeons, and the roguelike loop all feed into one system. You build a deck from equipment, hero class, and encounter cards, then walk a tableau of face-down cards across two or more floors. Every flip is a choice or a fight.
The Dealer has his own deck. It grows as you do, and it holds the nastier encounters and monsters. That is the smartest thing in the game: your progress feeds his hand.
Cards, Combat, and the Third-Person Switch
When a card turns hostile, Hand of Fate drops the tabletop and becomes a third-person brawler. You have to time attacks, blocks, and dodges to survive without losing all your health. The shift is abrupt, and it is the point.
The two modes do not always agree. The board rewards patience and reading. The combat rewards reflexes and spacing. Players who came for one will tolerate the other.
Story Mode sets thirteen bosses in your path: twelve court cards and the Dealer himself. They represent the royalty of each suit, and they must fall in order. You can return to earlier bosses to challenge again and unlock new rewards. Clear enough of them and Endless Mode opens, an infinite run of floors with rising difficulty and every card you have collected.
Tokens are the connective tissue. Finish a dungeon, win or lose, and you earn tokens that buy more cards for the next deck. The game never punishes a failed run with nothing.
- Linux, Mac, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One all got the game
- A PlayStation Vita version was announced, then cancelled over development issues
- Early access began 7 July 2014; the full release landed 17 February 2015
A crowdfunded physical variation of the game followed the positive reception, and a sequel, Hand of Fate 2, arrived in November 2017.
Where the Deck Runs Thin
The structure has a cost. Here is the order of what matters most in a run:
- The Dealer’s narration, which gives every flip a voice and a threat
- Deck construction, which is where the real strategy lives
- The brawler combat, which is competent but the least distinctive part
That ranking is the review. Hand of Fate is at its best when you are choosing, not swinging. The Dealer’s commentary turns a random draw into a scene. The combat turns it into a fight you have fought in a dozen other games.
The randomized dungeons also mean the game can deal you a bad hand through no fault of your own. Roguelikes accept this. Hand of Fate softens it with tokens, but it does not solve it.
What holds up is the framing. A nameless hero, a mysterious figure, a cabin at the end of the world, and a deck that keeps growing on both sides of the table. Defiant Development built a game where the antagonist is also the narrator, and that idea carries more weight than any single mechanic.
Hand of Fate does not fully fuse its two halves. It stacks them, and one is clearly stronger. But the stronger one is genuinely strange and genuinely good, and the weaker one is never bad enough to sink it.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
