journal 29 review: a tedious, incomplete puzzle book
The biggest puzzle I’ve encountered with Journal 29 is why this book exists at all. This has little to do with the quality of puzzles, which cover the same range of any typical puzzle book, from obvious to unfathomable. It’s…
hearthstone mercenaries mode is only good for the grind
The most recent new mode to arrive in Hearthstone was Mercenaries, in October 2021. Another distinct departure from traditional Hearthstone, this also differed from Battlegrounds and Duels in interesting ways. One notable trait was the procedural generation of maps of…
hearthstone duels is its best designed game mode, with the least support
Duels was the Hearthstone mode we all knew was coming. Its format was the most logical next step for a collectible card game whose number of cards and mechanics were growing at an unsustainable rate. Personally, I think Duels is…
hearthstone battlegrounds: a card-based auto battler experiment in game design
2019. The year before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world. In games, this was the year of the auto battler. Dota’s Auto Chess mod debuted in January, becoming a resounding success. By June, Riot had jumped on the trend,…
comparing hearthstone’s game modes: battlegrounds, duels and mercenaries
Hearthstone has evolved significantly over the past two years. In 2020, the introduction of its first new class, Demon Hunter, and the initially contested new rewards track have been two of the largest changes the game has seen so far.…
the best improvements to hearthstone’s rewards track
I’ll admit, I give Hearthstone a hard time on this blog. But that’s only because I have such a high standard for the awesome card game that captured my imagination way back in 2014. It’s been a mainstay on my gaming list…
what went wrong with hearthstone’s new reward system
In November 2020, Blizzard revamped Hearthstone‘s reward system in a major way for the first time since the popular card game’s release in 20141. But after the new reward system’s release on 11th November, there was an outcry amongst unhappy…
hero power creep in hearthstone’s new demon hunter class (part 2)
Last time, I talked about the game design challenges of releasing the first new class to the online card game Hearthstone. As a refresher, the Demon Hunter class was so powerful, and therefore problematic, that Hearthstone developers nerfed several new…
the rapid rise and fall of hearthstone’s new demon hunter class (part 1)
Let’s face it, Hearthstone’s new Demon Hunter class was always going to be trouble. In its biggest update since Hearthstone’s release in 2014, the popular online card game added the first new class ever to its roster of playable heroes…
