In this new game from developer Realm Archive players experience what would happen if Hogwarts met Pokemon in “Kamifuda,”. Playing as the main character Tarot, they explore the world of Gloamrot and the supernatural horrors within with the ultimate goal to defeat other characters in card game battles to earn more cards and progress the story. 

Starting the game, players are immediately thrown into the story. Tarot, the main character, is in jail about to be executed for an outburst of magical power. However, before the execution, a professor from a magical school called Gloamrot comes to take Tarot out of confinement and give him a second chance at life. This school is made for students who have sworn a pact with otherworldly beings with great power called eldritch masters. In order to control the power provided by these otherworldly creatures and avoid execution, Tarot must attend this school, where he is forced to join the Kamifuda club and channel his powers into cards instead of destruction. However, a murder occurs and Tarot and the other club members are determined to discover the truth.

“Kamifuda” creates a great visual novel experience as it combines an interesting storyline and cool card play to create a unique experience. The design of the game is also unique, but still familiar, with easy to navigate controls. Building a deck only requires clicking on the cards you want in your deck, but the strategy that goes behind playing those cards, especially as the game progresses, is anything but easy.

With nine different classes of cards, there is a deck that works for every player, whether they play defensively, offensively, or somewhere in between. While the mechanics of the card game portions are complicated, once I finally understood how they worked, it made for a complex yet enjoyable game. But when I finally started getting comfortable with my deck, new opponents /’with a drastically different style of playing would force me to change up my strategy and improve my deck.  Most of the time I used a blood deck that would take health for power. I really enjoyed the challenge of balancing the two aspects while fighting an opponent. But when my opponent would take too much health too fast I would switch to the plant deck that was just as powerful but allowed for more conservative moves.

Beyond the card game, this is a simple visual novel. As the story progresses and new information about the main character is revealed, I could not decide if the main character was evil or if I wanted to have sympathy for them. With Tarot being an unreliable narrator who would prefer not to think about the truth, it was even more difficult to come to a fair conclusion. He would think one way about himself, but tell a completely different story to the other characters around him, making it difficult to gauge what was to be believed and what was not.

My only real complaint is that they drew some of the dialogue out, especially if it is coming from a character I didn’t care about. Even then, there is an option to skip through the dialogue, so it was never really an issue. If I ever skipped too far, there was also a transcript I could go back and look at. 

Not withstanding the dialogue, it was still easy to grasp the tone of each scene. The art is well done with slightly different lighting, color palettes, and music associated with each character. The game keeps the school creepy and mysterious, while still being able to portray light hearted moments, largely thanks to the music.

I would highly recommend this game if you don’t mind reading. It is a great game with amazing visuals and characters, and is quickly becoming one of my favorite games.