NOWHERE PROPHET Beta Impressions on Steam

A roguelite deck-building card game that makes players consider the ramifications of their every move, Sharkbomb Studios’ forthcoming release, Nowhere Prophet, is set to make serious waves. Evoking a dystopian cyberpunk feel akin to the ethos permeating the Mad Max movie series, Nowhere Prophet situates players in a wasteland and tasks them with leading a tribe of followers across several worlds. In Nowhere Prophet’s recent beta, Sharkbomb Studios allowed players to traverse the barren desert that constitutes the game’s first world. Boasting a complex card combat system and an interesting narrative, Nowhere Prophet is a project that card game fans should be on the lookout for come its release date this summer.

Nowhere Prophet contains two distinct elements: a story in which a tribe struggles to make its way through a harsh, desolate world and a card-based combat system. The game melds these two seemingly disparate components into one cohesive whole extraordinarily well. The events that transpire in the narrative impact combat, while in turn the outcomes of each battle have serious implications on the player’s ability to progress the narrative.

Players take on the persona of a prophet in Nowhere Prophet. In terms of combat, prophets act as leader cards. Leaders can learn several different abilities that players can utilize in battle. Using a leader ability costs energy points, which players have a finite amount of on any given turn. For example, should a certain leader ability cost five energy points to play but the player only has four energy points available, the player would not be able to use the move during this turn.

The ultimate goal in combat is to fully deplete an opposing leader card’s health. Utilizing leader abilities is one of way to achieve this goal, but a second is to make use of the prophet’s followers in battle. Just like when executing leader abilities, placing a follower’s card on the combat board will cost energy points. Attacking with the follower on any subsequent turn after it is placed on the board does not cost any energy points. Certain followers also have abilities in addition to being able to inflict damage, which creates potential for great synergies.

The best tactic in combat is to utilize a blend of follower attacks and leader abilities to bring down enemy leaders. What brings challenge to the game is the fact that AI adversaries can also use leader abilities and summon their own followers. If the AI manages to kill a follower in two separate battles, that follower’s card will be permanently lost. In the same vein, the player’s prophet does not automatically regain health lost in any given battle. Should the prophet’s health drop to zero at any point of his arduous trek across the map, players will need to start a new game.

Surviving in the desert wasteland thus becomes a game of attrition in which it becomes an imperative to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. However, this fact makes the story’s dialogue options all the more interesting. Acting as the prophet, players are given agency to decide on a physical route through the game’s map. Traversing the map, which involves moving from one node to another, triggers events to occur. The specific events that occur are randomly generated, but they always pose moral quandaries. For instance, in one situation players can choose to rescue slaves or to quietly pass by the scene entirely.

While some of these occurrences may seem black-and-white when divorced from context, they in fact are anything but. By avoiding the battle, players keep their followers healthy and alive. In a world that compels players to use every resource at their fingertips in order to survive, altruism and fairness may come at the price of followers’ lives. Nowhere Prophet pits a player’s sense of morality against practicality, which makes for deliciously tense situations.

While some kinks remain for Sharkbomb Studios to work on prior to Nowhere Prophet’s release this summer, there’s a lot going for the game. Featuring nuanced gameplay, a well thought out world, and an intuitive interface, Nowhere Prophet has the potential to be one of 2019’s best card games.

Check Out the Nowhere Prophet Trailer:

Nowhere Prophet will launch on Steam for PC, Mac, and Linux in Summer 2019, and on consoles in 2020. Players can now sign up for the closed beta at discord.gg/nowhereprophet.

Jori Grossman

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I'm a recent graduate of Columbia University. Gaming has been a passion of mine my entire life; I enjoy everything from RPGs and FPSs to stealth and narrative-driven games. I love the deeply immersive quality that good video games inherently possess, and am looking forward to highlighting games worthy of acclaim. When I'm not studying or reading, you can catch me playing games like Uncharted, Dishonored, The Witcher 3, and Far Cry.

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