Animation Throwdown: Epic CCG 1.146.1

Collectible card games have become more prevalent in the digital realm since Since the popular spin off, HearthStone came out. Not to say that Magic: The Gathering Online didn't contribute. However, unlike Hearthstone, the free kind of CCG's (which include Animation Throwdown) have a very annoying feature and which I will address in a jippy.

The theme behind Animation Throwdown is that Futurama's Professor Farnsworth has messed up one of his experiments resulting in a multiverse collapse, which brings Comedy Central's animated shows together into a single plane of existence. Of course, theme has nothing to do with this game, as you will be collecting cards that represent characters, items and other instances which will be helping you to squeeze damage into your opponent before he does the same to you.

Gameplay is rather simple, On your turn you simply play a card from your hand. The card is placed right to any other cards you've previously played, then all the other cards "attack" opposing cards that are in front of them. Cards have attack and resistance values. The attack permanently weakens the defense, until it goes to 0 and the card leaves play. At that point any excess attack will do damage to the opponent. In the same way if there is no opposing card facing the attacker, the attack damages the opponent. So if you have more cards in play than your opponent, your extra cards won't have to 'dig' before hitting and likewise won't be attacked themselves. This concept makes the game so simple that even toddlers could play it (provided their parents are brain dead enough to let them near a tablet). It's precisely why I think these types of games only have the skin of a CCG but in fact are mindless draw and play fests that care nothing about the tactical element that should be present in a proper CCG.

be that as it may, cards in Animation Throwdown have some synergies and abilities. Some character and non-character cards can combine in play to form a single more powerful card. There are several levels of rarity which follows the standard booster collection rule. Random boosters are essentially free and contain a single card, while more advanced boosters can cost you some shekels as in-app-purchases. However, rare cards become quite interesting when combined. Resulting cards gain special abilities, such as healing, dealing extra damage, reducing opponent attack and so on.

Card synergy is the most important aspect of deck building in Animation Throwdown. While fairly limited at the beginning, through the off play 'research', you can unlock new possible combinations for your existing cards, which greatly increases the chance to bring up a powerful combo early in a match.

The game slowly introduces you to each aspect, so there's nothing to hard to comprehend and puts you to fight AI opponents before allowing you to challenge other players online. You can also join guilds which brings different benefits.

Conclusion

Animation Throwdown looks very good and plays smoothly. I can't say anything about balance, since I haven't played it that much. I suppose imbalance is not a foreseeable issue, since most cards can eventually energize with a lot of others, making everybody's deck full of combos in one way or another. This is also included in the free run. However, I find the gameplay style very, VERY restrictive and cannot enjoy something that seems to be playing by itself.