Can’t. Stop. Playing. Sword. And. Poker! Upon careful thought, the name may sound a touch vulgar, but I assure you, the game is pure family-friendly gold. Recently released on the iTunes App Store, Sword & Poker seems to be one of Japanese studio Gaia’s few English releases, which makes me very curious about their other games. Anyway, Sword & Poker is a dungeon crawling puzzle/RPG/poker hybrid that falls right in line with games like Puzzle Quest. You move through simple map-like floors battling enemies and collecting gold and equipment. Battles take place on a grid with a 3×3 arrangement of playing cards in the center. Both you and your opponent take turns placing cards around the center to form a poker hand. The more powerful the hand, the more damage you deal to your opponent.
Sword & Poker isn’t a one-trick pony, and that’s where its dangerously alluring qualities come into play. A shop opens up after a few floors, allowing you to upgrade your hit points and buy new weapons that do different amounts of damage depending on your hand. It’s not always “bigger weapon make bigger hurt”, either. For instance, I’ve kept this delicious hammer weapon equipped for some time, as it does enormous damage when forming straights and flushes, but creating simple pairs (and some pretty rare hands, too) only hits for a few points of damage. See the trade-off there? It’s a gamble, but it’s paid off very well so far. After another few floors, spells, status-changing weapons, and shields are introduced, along with enemies that can rearrange the playing grid, adding just the right amount of complexity at the appropriate time to keep you interested in playing.
Sword & Poker is extraordinarily well-balanced with a good mix of luck, skill and strategy, especially in later levels. It’s got that irresistable “just one more floor” quality of addictiveness to it, and I haven’t managed put the game down for very long. If you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, pick this gem up right now. There’s a free lite version, but if you play it and like it, you’ll have to start over when you get the full version.
