Forsaker: DingDing&Blade preview — Bloody cards

When I first heard about Forsaker: DingDing&Blade, I was immediately intrigued. Its bloody, gothic art style was striking, in addition to mixing the visual novel and roguelike RPG genres. Diving more into it, the game aims to be a dark fantasy adventure, weaving a tale filled with gruesome subject matter through the perspective of multiple protagonists. While there is no confirmed release date yet, a demo is available now on Steam to get a taste of Forsaker’s gameplay and narrative ambitions.  

Despite the demo being light on story content, it provided a glimpse at the world building and tone the narrative is going for. In particular, this snippet of Forsaker excels at balancing its tones of fun adventure while also taking itself seriously. This juxtaposition is primarily demonstrated with the two characters present in the demo. You have the upbeat Daeyi, who is itching to march through each quest with a smile, versus main character Ian, who views the world in a more realistic manner. It is a bleak world, filled with monsters, cannibalism, and discrimination, the latter of which is a complex subject matter that I hope the full game handles well.

The superb art direction also hammers home this contrast. Gorgeous hand painted backgrounds bring to life a world of gothic fantasy, all while grotesque monsters roam this beautiful land. There's your standard fantasy fair with wolves or demonic mushroom men, but there's some unique designs with the bosses, such as a fish with the torso of a human, or most deadly of all, an angry barkeep. What has me most excited about the art direction is its usage of blood. The game’s synopsis mentions how Forsakers devour flesh, and we got to see a brutal peek at that with an abrupt jump scare to a severed and bloodied hand. It caught me by surprise in the midst of a colorful world.

Once the characters venture out to their next destination, the two phases of Forsaker’s gameplay occur. First is the movement phase, where the party navigates through branching pathways, triggering various events depending on what space they land on. Certain spaces are traps, inflicting negative effects on the party. However, most spaces give some sort of value, whether it’s recovering HP, gaining money, or receiving cards to utilize in battle. There are also shop spaces too, allowing the party to upgrade or purchase cards.

Once a skirmish is initiated, either by landing on a battle space or reaching the destination in the movement phase, the player will fight in turn-based battles using a card system. Each turn has six cards randomly drawn from the deck, and the player can play any card as long as the sum of their action values do not exceed the amount of action points the player has. The early battles start straightforward enough, with cards that deal a small amount of damage to the enemy, or defensive cards that give the party Block points which function as temporary HP. However, the battle system begins to show potential once the player can get their hands on more cards.

During my first run, I got a card that boosted the number of action points I could use in a battle from three to four. This was a powerful boon, allowing me to more frequently use powerful cards that cost two action points. Unfortunately, this run ended during the boss, thanks to the combination of his increasing damage output each turn alongside being saddled with a card that made me take damage whenever it was in hand.

In my second run, I once again received the damage over time card. Knowing how devastating it was, I needed to get rid of it fast. Thankfully, this is where the synergy between the movement and battle phases shine. I aimed to go down a pathway that would lead to a shop that could remove that card from my deck, and to upgrade my stronger cards. Because of this, I received two beneficial cards that paired well with each other. One card would drastically increase the amount of Block I had, while the other allowed me to choose any card from the discard pile to the top of the deck for reuse. This meant I could endlessly farm Block points to endure the enemies’ high damage output.

This does bring into question how the game will be balanced for the rest of the campaign, as there is still RNG involved on what type of cards will be received during a run. But this short look shows promise of the synergy between the two sections of gameplay. Manipulating RNG in the movement phase to have more useful resources in battle. Thankfully there is still a permanent form of progression with a skill tree that grants helpful abilities that carry over each run. And while this feature wasn’t available yet, there will be a Reading Mode, which will bypass all the gameplay to get to the story bits. This is handy for folks looking to enjoy the story, but have trouble during the gameplay segments.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with Forsaker’s demo. My initial intrigue for the title has only grown deeper now that the game’s ambitions have become clear. While it remains to be seen if both the gameplay and story can hold up beyond its opening hours, I eagerly await to return to this cruel and bloody world.