Asia Pacific’s biggest digital gaming event, Melbourne International Games Week (MIGW), is running from the 5th to the 13th of October as a live showcase for businesses, industry professionals, the education sector and consumers to get their hands on exciting new games, attend special events and gain access to interaction with the developers and publishers behind them.
Among the many events held as part of MIGW, there’s a special MIGW Steam page, with a curated selection of games featuring titles by developers from Melbourne, as well as Australia in general. Though the live MIGW event doesn’t begin until the 5th of October, the Steam page and the titles it’s showcasing are live now; the page can be found here.
One of the titles that’s caught our attention as part of the curated MIGW collection on Steam, is Dolven. Though at first glance looks like a relatively straightforward turn based strategy/RPG game, there are numerous layers to Dolven, which ambitiously, and cleverly, includes elements of deckbuilding, as well as mechanics that’ll be familiar to players who know their poker hands (and, in the wake of Balatro‘s enormous success, who doesn’t?).
In Dolven, players create a character to take into the game, with some familiar classes on offer: Archer, Cleric, Guardian, Mage, Rogue and Warrior. Each of these characters has their own set of abilities, skills and stats, along with their own strengths and weaknesses on the battlefield. Gathering other party members as your character makes their way through the game’s rooms, you’ll engage in turn based battles against monsters, with those very enemies often aided by a more fearsome beast, who acts as a sort of opposing player.
So far, this doesn’t sound much like a game that should have caught the attention of Card Gamer, does it? Well, that’s because I have yet to mention that both you and the opposing character have a deck of cards, which you’ll use to help your own characters, and hinder your enemies. You can collect new cards, and even build your deck to customise it to your own playstyle.
During play, players move their characters with two actions per turn, but also build up mana to use on cards in their hand, which are played on Pillars that correspond to columns on the battlefield. If cards line are strategically played on the Pillars in a way that makes their values line up to create poker hands, say pairs, three of a kind and so on, the player unlocks bonuses to aid them in battle.
Though at first all of the disparate elements can be a bit overwhelming, once the turn based strategy and deck building, poker-based combo opportunities click, Dolven becomes a hugely compelling experience. It’s worth noting as well that the game is currently still in development, with no final release date yet announced; however, developers Covyne Entertainment have been kind enough to give Card Gamer early access to the current build of the game.
You can try it for yourself, when the demo is released on Steam on October 30th (you can add the demo to your Steam wishlist here, and the game itself can be added to your wishlist here). You’ll also be able to see it in action at other events too; both PAX Aus (in Melbourne from the 11th to 13th October) and Gamescom Asia in Singapore, from the 17th to 20th of October 2024.
Perhaps most excitingly for our regular Card Gamer readers is the news that Covyne Entertainment are also working on a physical, two player card game based on Dolven. The game, titled Dolven: Runes Gambit, will launch via a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in 2025. You can sign up to be notified of its launch, as well as check out more details on Runes Gambit and its design, here.
We’re eagerly awaiting the further development and release of both Dolven and its physical spin-off game, and you can rest assured that we here at Card Gamer will be providing more details as soon as they’re released!
