Hearthstone

Originally, I was going to write about why Hearthstone is my 2014 Game of the Year. But I can’t really afford to play all the hot new games when they come out, so it would have been a really short list. While Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! was a lot of fun, I’ve already completed the entire campaign multiple times, maxed out three characters, and have acquired most of the legendary weapons worth having. Unless that next DLC pack is something truly amazing (unlike the previous three), I don’t see myself spending a lot more time shooting scavs on the moon. However, after just one long afternoon with Hearthstone, I knew this was a game I would be playing for a long time to come. Hopefully forever.

I’m not one of those people who play only one game—I love video games too much to deny myself. But since I’ve never been able to maintain a large library, I’ve always had one that was my game. The regular go-to, the one I continue to play compulsively long after I’ve mastered it. Like many of my generation, Super Mario Bros. was my first, and I have fond memories of the entire family crowding on the couch to compete for high scores. Later on, I would join the kid next door at the arcade to make the teenagers curse as they wasted roll after roll of quarters failing to defeat us at Street Fighter II. In high school my friends bonded by killing each other in Goldeneye. At college, it was Super Smash Brothers: Melee. I’ve written about my strange, turbulent love affair with Jet Grind Radio. For the last three years I have been unable to run out of stuff to do in Skyrim no matter how hard I try. Now, I sacrifice my free time at the altar of Hearthstone.

While Hearthstone has been spoken of very warmly by some members of the Giant Bomb crew, and almost every other gaming site out there, I completely ignored it. Although I had a tragically huge collection of Magic: The Gathering cards in my youth, almost every card-battling game I had ever tried on mobile was ultimately a disappointment. Even Duels of the Planeswalkers failed to capture the fun I recalled having during many school lunch hours spent throwing cards on tables. I doubted that a card game based on Warcraft, a universe I had no history with, would change my mind. But when I was faced with a holiday at my parents’ house, far away from my Xbox, I was searching for iPad games to pass a long bus ride and the intermissions between treasured family moments. Hearthstone was free and the bus had wi-fi, so I figured why not?

By the time New Year’s rolled around, I had not opened a single other app on my tablet. Every time I had a few minutes to spare, instead of opening a book or even browsing the internet, I was grinding out gold to buy more cards and loving every second of it. This game has been actively, exquisitely designed to remove all barriers to entry. The tutorial will hold your hand and provide a decent AI opponent to practice against, with an expert level to provide a challenge if you’re tired of playing against humans. It has an intuitive interface with helpful pop-ups that explain things in terms understandable to the newcomer. It makes it very easy to quickly asses the capabilities of any card, even if you’ve never seen it before. There’s also a slight thrill when you throw down a particularly nasty minion and you can see your opponent clicking on it to see how much trouble he’s in. Hearthstone rarely handles like a video game, except for the part where it does all the math for you. What would take a five minute turn in a game of Magic is accomplished in thirty seconds with delightful sound and animation in Hearthstone. I can get in a few rounds of the Hearthstone in an hour, while I rarely had time for more than one Magic match in a day, even as a teenager.

The biggest enhancement Hearthstone makes over its chief influence is the mana system. Both games players require to expend mana to cast their spells and summon creatures, but in Magic your mana are cards that must be drawn and played from your deck. This made it a little too easy for a game to be decided entirely by a lucky draw, where a player with a hand full of spells and no mana to cast them was just waiting for a mercy kill. A completely lopsided massacre is about as boring to play as it is watch, so my friends and I engineered our own solution: we would put our mana cards in a separate stack and draw one each turn. It kept the players on a more even footing and enabled more exchanges throughout the match. I was delighted to find that Blizzard had arrived at more or less the same conclusion, and even went one further by eliminating the color restrictions. In Hearthstone, a spell does not require a specific type of mana, only an amount, which means you’re never sitting with a 2-cost card you can’t cast because you have 5 mana and none of them are red. An added benefit of making mana just a resource is that it makes more room in decks for minions and spells, which ultimately makes for more exciting games. Even at the height of my Magic fever, watching someone else play could be a long and boring affair. Spectating Hearthstone can actually be quite compelling, the perfect combo of speed and strategy.

Like many classic games, Hearthstone is easy to learn, but reveals its infinite complexities the more you master it. You feel so clever when you discover insane ways to combo different spells and minions to create a sea of damage just waiting to wash over your opponent’s face. Almost every card has multiple uses, and players are discovering new ones all the time. On the surface, a 4/5 minion that can’t attack might seem useless, but combine it with the right spell and it becomes a formidable foe. Building your own deck is so simple, and so personally satisfying when it is victorious. You definitely feel like it was your planning and skill that triumphed over the other player, not manual dexterity or microtransactions. Hearthstone is the first game I have ever played that truly felt “freemium.” Not only is it free to play, but it’s really quite easy to earn a steady supply of in-game currency through regular play. Of course you can spend real cash to buy stacks of packs, but it’s still completely possible to build a solid deck for zero dollars. Even if you get stuck with a bunch of unlucky packs full of garbage, you can still get your gold battling in the “basics only” mode. And you can still get your hands on some legendary cards by crafting them from the remnants of cards you don’t need. Blizzard has clearly spent a lot of time and effort making a game that everyone can play.

Other than fighting games, I’ve never been a fan of competitive multiplayer, or online games in general. Losing a game you really want to win to something as fickle as a broadband connection is beyond infuriating. Also, finding a bunch of strangers to play video games online does not typically connect me with people I want to play games with. If you have to mute the people you’re playing with, what’s the point? Hearthstone nerfs the haters by removing all but six basic emotes for each character. And while sore losers still find ways to be jerks by spamming the soundbites during your turn, you can always silence them. His deck may still massacre yours in some really cheap way, but hate the player, not the game. The matchmaking is as well-balanced as the cards. I’ve never had to wait long for a game, and although I am occasionally pitted against decks full of legendary minions that annihilate me before turn 6, it is a rare enough occurrence that I count it as a learning experience rather than an exercise in frustration. For the most part, my opponents are always someone I stand a reasonable chance of beating, and if I am defeated it is because they played their cards better, not because they bought better cards.

All of these things, the pricing, the accessibility, and the matchmaking, are all just extra benefits to what is already an exceptional game. Hearthstone is not just a well-balanced ecosystem of cards, but a complete packaged experience. The way you flick a card onto the board, the smooth animations as you direct your minions’ attacks, even paging through your card collection all feel fluid and natural. Every match will challenge you in a different way. Even when you think you’ve finally figured it all out, the game will throw you another unexpected curve. No matter how good you are, there is always room to get better. Even one of the best players in the world can be destroyed by a well-played starter deck. This game captures all the fun I remember from dueling other adolescent wizards with little pieces of cardboard, and improves on the experience in every way. If you’re looking for a source of unending free fun, Hearthstone is the well for you.