Game Overview: Riftforce, or Elemental Domination

Riftforce doesn't look like much: cards bearing artwork and numbers, along with a smattering of other cards and a few dozen tokens. That said, most card games don't look like much. The components are small and flat, and no matter how nice the artwork or how satisfying the feel of the cards or how compelling the gameplay, images of cards on a table look...plain.

Which is a shame given how good the gameplay of Riftforce is. Ideally I can convey this goodness through words to make up for the images accompanying them.

Riftforce is the first release from Austrian publisher 1 More Time Games, which was founded in 2019 by Julian Steindorfer and Roman Rybiczka, who previously worked as editors and developers at Edition Spielwiese, including on that company's 2017 release Memoarrr! from designer Carlo Bortolini.

Apparently Bortolini had appreciated their work because in May 2019 Bortolini approached Steindorfer and Rybiczka with a prototype of the game that would become Riftforce. At SPIEL '19, 1 More Time Games demoed a non-finalized Riftforceas part of its effort to develop (and publicize!) the design prior to a Kickstarter campaign that funded in October 2020.

Prototype at SPIEL '19

The finished game started reaching backers in the first half of 2021, and the U.S. licensing partner Capstone Games debuted the title at Gen Con 2021 in September. Here's how I described it in one of my reports from that show following an initial playing against fellow BGG News writer Candice Harris:

Quote:

Riftforce is a two-player dueling game in which you compete to score 12 points first, with points being scored when you eliminate an opposing card or control a field with no opposition during a reset action. On a turn, you can:

• Play up to three cards of the same guild or the same health (5/6/7).
• Discard a card to activate up to three cards of the matching guild or matching health.
• Refill your hand to seven cards and score a point for each uncontested field you control.

Candice contemplates her second play

Your deck consists of cards from four guilds, and each guild has a unique power, e.g., fire does lots of damage, but injures a nearby ally because it's indiscriminate, while air moves to a new field, then scattershot hits up to three enemies. You want to combo powers when possible, say using air to attack so that you can move it away from a field and not get hit with friendly fire, but you'll probably spend your first few games going, "Yeah, this is going to be devastating! No, wait, that doesn't work like I thought it would."

Only two points to go...

In our game, my crystal goobers were worth 2 points instead of 1 when killed, but I managed to do massive amounts of damage with them before Candice could shatter my hopes for winning. I've since played Riftforce three more times, and I'm slowly starting to piece together how to draft guilds before the game begins in order to create competent combos as opposed to the nonbos I had initially.

I've now played Riftforce six times on a review copy from Capstone Games, and the pattern continues to be "Arrgh, this doesn't do what I want to do", followed by a replay with the same guilds accompanied by "Yeah, that's more like it!"

On each of your turns, it seems like you want to maximize whatever you're doing. If you're playing cards, you want to play three; if you're activating, you want to activate three; and if you're refilling, then ideally you have nothing left in hand because that probably means you did the other things well, so you're getting the most out of your breather action — with perhaps a point or two as a bonus. No half measures!

The problem, of course, is that your opponent is also playing and activating cards, so in the end Riftforce feels like rolling waves of forces crashing against one another — and while you want to make big plays, you often find yourself making necessary plays: These three fields are empty, so if I don't play the one or two cards that I can, my opponent is going to refill and score 3 points. Or my opponent just refilled, so they have lots of choices of what can be activated, so I better strike now to finish off one or two enemies to lessen their chances of overwhelming me.

Obligatory midgame photo

Each choice you make — playing, activating, or refilling — means those other choices weren't made, which means you're giving up something in the hope of gaining ground elsewhere. Along those lines, to activate cards, you have to discard a card in hand, which means you can't play it, so you're burning potential energy to transform it into kinetic energy elsewhere. Science!

While making all of these choices, you often have a second opponent working against you: random chance. All too often, you draw a hand of cards that will allow you play three 6s or three earth elementals, but you then lack a fourth 6 or fourth earth to activate what you just played. Should you play only two of those cards so that you can activate them with the third, or do you set up the engine now and hope to pick up the key in the next refill? No answer is automatically correct because you don't know what your opponent will do or what you'll draw. The game becomes an extension of yourself, a representation of your nature as you struggle against outside forces.

As I mention in the video below, in which I demonstrate gameplay in more detail, I find Riftforce far more engaging than Unmatched, a family of dueling games that started in 2019 and that many people have praised to no end. I've played Unmatched three times, and I feel like I'm throwing darts randomly and hoping something hits, with the movement being somewhat arbitrary given that I don't know what the opponent can possibly do.

Yes, I realize that's the nature of a combat game, and over time I'd come to learn what's in each deck, but Riftforce puts more information out in the open, with me knowing every attack that could possibly come — you can activate one of three numbers or one of four guilds! —and what the result of those attacks would be since the guild powers are visible...and yet I don't know what's coming. Your hand is a mystery, and I have to intuit what you're trying to do or hoping to draw. I can possibly respond in a more effective manner to the possibilities (depending on what I have in hand) because they're all out there, and I have to play cards myself to create threats and opportunities, while leaving myself the option to pivot to back-up plans. At least that's the hope, but with eight more guilds coming in Riftforce Beyond in 2022, I'm not sure I'll ever become fully proficient in the game.

For more thoughts on Riftforce, check out this overview video: