Voyager: The Turn of an Unfriendly Card

When MicroProse Software originally designed the Magic: The Gathering computer game, it was intended to be a single-player adventure game enhanced by the possibility of having online play (at that time, to be hosted by the GEnie network—the proto-Internet online network that used General Electric’s worldwide mainframe bandwidth). One would adventure through the mysterious realms depicted in the Magic novels, encountering other duelists with which to match wits (and decks).

This concept went out the window when the bean counters discovered that the design was too aggressive and Sid Meier brought his programming skills to the process of just getting the game out. The aborted version of the game looked like a three-quarter oblique view adventure game and had as much depth as many role-playing games. The final version was basically a deck-building tutorial with a few excuses for practice matches.

In many ways, Voyager reminds me of that original prototype for the PC version of Magic: The Gathering. The main difference is that you do not navigate through a typical adventure game interface. Instead, you choose from mini-postcard scenes with artwork that remind me of the mana cards in MTG. While you are in this screen, you can leisurely make your decision while being serenaded by delightful music reminiscent of the Renaissance.

In other words, the structure of the game involves navigating a scenic maze. Each “postcard” has a pop-up description that appears when you scroll over it (not the same in each game) and the “maze” is different in each playing. As a result, your first decision point in Voyager is reading these descriptions and determining how risk-averse you intend to be. Are you willing to risk losing essence points for great reward? Will you give up two random spells (cards) from your spellbook in order to gain one relatively powerful card? Are you willing to enter an area where you might be robbed, but you might double the amount of treasure you could collect from a victorious duel? Would you rather enter one of the areas where the Wizard’s Games (more on these later) take place? If you can survive ten of these risk management decisions, you successfully finish the game.

Scenic Maze

TRICK OR TREAT Part of Voyager is determining which regions are full of dastardly tricks and which have the treats that can lead you on to victory.

Sounds simple? Yes, it is. It is also a game that you can play relatively fast. But there are several reasons why the game is better than it initially sounds. First, behind each postcard in the scenic maze are random events, games of chance (the aforementioned Wizard’s Games), and magical combat engagements (card games). These events, games, and card combats behind the scenes are not the same in every game. So, you can’t create a master list of probable outcomes to find the optimal path through what I call the scenic maze.

And how do you win? You win by amassing the largest gold total possible as a result of your ten moves through the game. Your survival isn’t guaranteed and you have no guarantee of potential gold acquisition with each move. You simply have to read the descriptions and choose your poison…er, possibly, your fortune.

Johnny’s Quest

The random events provide color similar to descriptions in a graphic text adventure. The descriptions are usually interesting to read and there is a nice variety to them, but there is very little interaction to be found here. Sometimes, you will find artifacts that boost your gold total, but generally, it will be no result (a wasted turn) or the binary decision to take on a quest or refuse it. Frankly, the game would be considerably richer if there was more interaction here, but Derek DiBenedetto of Stormcloud Creations made a design decision to limit the interaction outside of the magical combat to a minimal number of clicks.

TAME EVENT
Many of the random events in Voyager have no result, meaning you have wasted a valuable turn.

However, the binary choice of accepting/refusing the quest does offer more than mere binary results. If the quest is successful, it can enrich you with additional gold. If it is unsuccessful, you can become an instant victim—dying without any opportunity to save yourself. In between, you can be unsuccessful without losing or gaining anything. Actually, since you are limited to ten moves in the course of each game, having to refuse a quest (sometimes the wisest course) or having a neutral result means you have essentially lost one of your ten potential opportunities.
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QUEST BEGINS AND ENDS
With such information as provided in this first screen, you choose whether to risk your life or essence for possible but disproportionately low rewards.

That being said, no game plays the same. Each combat is different and, though the Wizard’s Games tend to repeat themselves, they don’t appear in the same places at the same points in the games. You can’t count on being able to play Voyager’s version of a slot machine or wheel of fortune at any particular point in the game. You can’t count on having a dragon hand you a random amount of gold in every game. You can’t depend on being able to build a pyramid of wealth by avoiding the wyvern in one game or finding the jackpot of gold in another. Sure, these are the ultimate in casual games, but one strategy for racking up a high gold count (the game’s measure of success) is to try to choose venues (the mini-postcard scenes) where you have the maximum chance to encounter a wizard and play one of his games of chance.

Close Encounters of the Combat Kind

Yet, the true heart of the game is the card playing combat mechanic. The cards look a lot like the familiar MTG style, but they lack two ingredients of the MTG formula. First, there is the minor loss of flavor text (the silly little quotations or words of wisdom at the bottom of the text box). Voyager doesn't offer flavor text on the cards. Second, once the card is played, you can no longer read the special abilities. So, you have no indication that an opponent’s card is going to reduce your Power total (the offensive value of your cards) by half or negate one Power point from each of your cards. You see the apparent Power values of all the cards played, but it is not until you end the duel that you know for sure that you have won or lost.

The basic card qualities are quite easy to understand, though. The number encircled in red at the bottom left corner of the card is the basic Power. The number encircled in blue at the bottom right corner of the card is the casting cost in Karma. It’s an easy mechanic, though the values for both casting cost and combat impact are often changed by card text.

In most TCGs, players have roughly equivalent deck sizes (at least, in most there is a maximum deck size). In Voyager, you generally earn another card (spell) for your deck (spellbook) each time you successfully enter a venue. But unlike MTG, you have no control over what card (spell) will be placed in your inventory/deck (spellbook). You always have a limited number of cards (spells) to play (cast) and, while that number of cards will often be more than the number of your opponent’s cards, this is not always the case.

So, part of the strategy is looking at the number of cards in your opponent’s hand and determining how to defeat said opponent with the fewest number of your own cards. In general, the artificial opponent will play all of the cards in its hand. If you do so, you’ll be behind the power curve as you reach those final encounters in your journey. Also, some cards in your spellbook will enhance the values of the cards played if you are playing multiple cards. So, sometimes, you will play more of your smaller value cards in order to get the bonuses and defeat your opponent.

TOTAL CHAOS
The card game encounters are won or lost by the grand total of Power points. Unfortunately, all text information disappears from the cards when played, including details on special powers in operation.

In terms of actual play, you don’t have mana cards to raise your casting ability. Rather, the casting cost comes from your karma points. This is a total that can be raised or lowered by events throughout the game (some venues offer an increase in karma and the expense of something else—usually essence), regions traversed (some regions have a percentage chance of a karma bonus), or treasures earned from winning card games (not all treasures, but some have a karma and/or bonus card along with the gold).

Unlike MTG, you don’t have to wait for a turn (summoning sickness) for the monsters/heroes/minions you summon to come into play. They add to your total right away, but combat is not resolved (and final penalties assessed) until all desired cards have been played. So, there is no head-to-head combat between monsters and minions. Likewise, there is no assessment of essence point (life point) penalties until the conclusion of combat.

The essence (life) points can be lost as a result of unsuccessful combat and can be lost from venturing into the wrong region and experiencing a negative result from an event. Once the total reaches zero, your character is dead and you must restart the game.

GRIM GRIMOIRE
In Voyager, you're always working with a small deck.

Summon Conclusion

Voyager is an interesting experience. The first time I played it, I reached the conclusion and asked myself if that was all there was. Then, I reflected on the first time I played MTG (the card game, not the PC game). It had gone so fast that I had asked myself the same question. Yet, the original concept for MTG was to have a fast-playing game that could be set up nearly anywhere, yet have the game play changed on the basis of the player’s decisions.

Voyager does have a few disconnects. The game lost an opportunity for additional color when the design decision was made to measure everything in gold. The treasures/artifacts you locate have interesting names, but they only change the game in the sense of changing the score (# of pieces of gold). If an artifact could allow you to draw an additional card upon entering a region or exiting a combat, that would be that much more interesting. Instead of changing one’s character and enhancing the breadth of playing style, all you get is gold.

Further, the artificial opponents really use no subtlety. They always (at least in my experience) play all of the cards available to them. Even if they do play a card against you that has a subtle effect, you often don’t realize it because the text has disappeared from the card. Game play is still a challenge due to the random mix of cards and the limited resources with which you are often functioning, but there is still a desire for a little more flair.

Then, even when you reach the conclusion of the game and you have a gold value serving as your high score, you are supposed to be able to access the worldwide high score list on the internet—the so-called Great Adventurers Guild. The game has a built-in mechanism for doing so, but it doesn’t work. Since the game does have its custom high score list--Hall of Records, this isn’t a huge problem. Unfortunately, the Hall of Records is merely a list. The game doesn’t even sort the list by high score.

Reviewer’s Snapshot: 5 (something there, but is it enough?)

Musical Score 7 (nicely done and quite appropriate)
Graphics 5 (not unattractive, but not quite MTG, either)
Artificial Opponents 2 (strictly random play)
Replayability 7 (works well, but may not motivate)
Price/Performance 5 (roughly the same as two MTG decks)

Reviewer’s Bias: 4 (originally thought it was too static)