In Virandel, nobody stays dead. Coming back is never easy.
A story-driven card battler where every card in your hand is either a threat or the fuel to pay for one.
In development
In Virandel, death is never final. Everyone who falls returns through Enorispring, the glowing pool at the heart of an ancient ruin. Left where they fell, the dead come back days later with nothing. Carried to the water, they come back at once, with their gear. So carrying the dead home is a trade, part funeral rite and part salvage, and every road in the realm runs past the spring.
Each death still costs strength that has to be earned back. That makes powerful people careful, and it makes a fallen ally worth fighting for.
You fight with a thirty-card deck across a shared battlefield of painted miniatures. Between battles the story plays out as illustrated comic pages, and you walk the roads of Virandel from city to ruin to border village.
Discard for Resource
Nothing hands you resources for free. You discard a card from your hand to grow your pool, and every discard also earns a permanent pip in that card's attribute. Practise enough Weaponry and the demanding Weaponry cards open up to you. Every turn asks which cards are worth more as fuel.
Initiative
Every spell can be cast the moment you hold initiative, on your turn or in answer to your opponent's. Spells resolve last in, first out, and the board only locks in once both sides have nothing left to say. Holding back resources is always a real choice, because there is always a moment to spend them.
Living comic
Between battles the campaign unfolds as hand-inked comic pages, with speech balloons, captions and painted locations. Each fight has its own approach and its own outcome, win or lose.
The overworld
Travel a painted map of lakes, farmland, ruins and desert. Pick your next objective, walk there, and see what waits on arrival: an encounter, a story page, or a road that is still locked.
Papers of hire
Choose a face, a name and a trade. Your trade sets your starting pair of attributes and your deck: a Shieldbearer who turns the enemy's attacks against your walls, a Sellsword who strikes first, a Captain whose cheap units trade away.
Seven attributes
Every card belongs to one of seven attributes, and most decks are built around a pair. Each pair pursues its own plan, and a few rare cards ask for three.
The world
Virandel is a broad basin ringed by mountains. The spring lies at its lowest point, inside ruins so wide that crossing them with a loaded cart takes most of a night. No one fights there, and no one camps there.
The first campaign
An Aberlisian carrier is hired to bring home a councillor who died inside Kesterholm. Aberlis votes on the war the next evening, and her voice decides it. Left where she fell, she will miss the vote.
Kesterholm will hand her over. It wants a carry of its own in return.
Three days, two bodies, one border nobody else can cross, and a deadline that does not move.
