It can be tempting to point out what category stands strongest in a genre-blending experience such as Hand of Fate. Is it the RPG like mechanics of stat gain through item collecting that serves it best? Or the deck-building strategy of adapting to a scenario, using cards you worked so hard to acquire? In a situation like this it's best to ignore genre and take Hand of Fate as a whole experience.

The game revolves around two core concepts. A pregame strategy session; where a scenario with unique rules asks you to bring cards from your collection to fulfill a required number of equipable items, usable items, and even some of the encounters themselves. The other half is the dungeon crawl, a random assortment of encounters composed of what you've chosen and what takes place in this scenario. Each encounter can come at the best and worst possible time with everything in between.

It is also tempting to give significant weight to the combat, as you might, in any game that includes action oriented combat. However if combat is to be considered the third pillar of the game it is by far the weakest. Combat is merely a physical skill check. A simple reflex test that is made easier by items and harder by curses. Strangely enough, combat is often used as a punishment for not succeeding in traversing an encounter correctly. While you can lose some health on these normal fights they typically are never quite difficult enough to defeat you at full or even close to full strength. Combine the fact that your character's health can be lost outside of combat to negative encounter results, and a mechanic where food supplies are used every step resulting in damage when falling short, combat can become a game of inches. While not being a deep experience, combat can still be an exhilarating challenge where taking one hit can end your run.

The game's greatest strength is the immensely satisfying process of collection. If your video game preferences include the word 'hoarder', then you are already in. Rewards come in the form of tokens, and are gained at the end of encounters. Encounters themselves are like your proto-typical RPG quest. A story that includes choices, trials, and eventual conclusions, with varying lengths. Some will end and reward you after completing it's first experience, while many others will continue on in a chain of events that you must choose to take with you and find in the next run. I find the stories to be generally well written. However, it can take a little while to reach the next encounter in the quest chain, resulting in forgetting what the hell was going on the next time you reach it. An interesting angle is that encounters can be rewards in and of themselves. A purely beneficial encounter can save a run in the more difficult scenarios. Also, when failing to complete an entire scenario, the encounter tokens you earned along the way are still rewarded to you, separating the sense of accomplishment between these side stories, and the overall goal of reaching and defeating the final scenario against "The Dealer."

This is one final note to take with you, Hand of Fate is presented as a game within the game. The Dealer is a powerful and mysterious individual who works against you and ever mocks you throughout. He has a thorny personality and while a clear adversary that motivates you to beat him, can really add flavor to the game.

Hand of Fate offers all of this in a tight package. An experience that will feed you early satisfaction and slowly draw it's rewards back behind challenging adventures. I recommend this game to anyone who might find the thought of collecting short stories in the form of a digital board game/dungeon crawler interesting.