Nowhere Prophet is a solid Roguelite Deck Builder that feels more like playing a Trading Card Game (TCG). It takes elements from all kinds of card games, most notably Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering, but puts them in a Roguelike deck builder situation with routes and random events.
After 23 hours of playing this game, I think Nowhere Prophet definitely has some innovations that feel fresh and unique, but some aspects of the game can feel suboptimal.
What makes Nowhere Prophet unique and fun?
In most Roguelike deck builders, when you pick a card to place into your deck, you have no way of taking them out. Typically, the deck is saturated with few, but high-quality cards. What makes Nowhere Prophet unique is that you want to have all the follower cards in the world! Since cards can be placed on the bench instead of the main deck, you can get 80+ cards, but you only have to make a deck out of 20 of them. It feels very refreshing to recruit as many followers as I wish to. It helps fulfill the fantasy of you traveling as a Prophet gathering a huge crowd of followers.
The most unique and cool aspect of the game is the wounded mechanic. Whenever your healthy creature dies in a battle, it becomes wounded. Wounded followers have 1 less HP and they cost 1 less mana to play, but if they die, they are gone forever. So the wounded mechanic creates really interesting play patterns and deck-building concerns.
On one hand, your wounded followers are technically superior to normal cards due to their reduced mana cost. On the other hand, you risk losing them forever. Not to mention, if your wounded follower deals the last blow, it gets fully healed and 1 ATK permanently! This creates an interesting dilemma in deckbuilding and gameplay because it incentivizes the player to take risk, and play the wounded followers into the battle.
Nowhere Prophet also fiddles around the conventional play pattern of “value trades” in TCG. If my one mana 2|1 bird trade with your two mana 4|2 beast, they both die, but I am winning in value and tempo. However, these kinds of value trades would result in your followers getting wounded. If you trade aggressively the same way you play a trading card game, all your followers will soon get wounded, and then your wounded followers will die, and your road of unification will end. This mechanic forces the veterans of this genre to shift their mindset, and it feels fresh.
Every encounter is a unique puzzle game where you are trying to minimize your loss as much as possible. It has definitely forced me to think outside the box and find incredible ways to win in dire situations.
Another unique thing is that you play with two decks instead of one! One deck is filled with followers, while another is filled with spells, and you draw one from each at the beginning of the turn. The dynamic is interesting because, on one hand, your followers are consistently evolving as the game goes on, But your spell deck is relatively stable in terms of available modifications.
Nowhere Prophet is also a game that is easy to play, but somewhat difficult to master, a classic formula for all good strategy games. Levels, upgrades, random events, equipment, resource management, they are easy elements to understand on their own. But these elements intertwine very nicely in Nowhere Prophet.
However, Nowhere Prophet has its problems.
The Nowhere Prophet Deckbuilding Problem
Reading the list of cards and equipment, it is clear that the designer placed many potential synergies intended for us to discover. In practicality, I find it hard to build a cohesive, highly synergistic deck.
There seem to be ~9 different factions in this game. As you encounter scenarios, markets, and events, you get a mix of followers from all of these places. For all the games I played, I ended up with a deck of followers that are “good value providers”, like the Draft mode for all TCGs.
However, drafting is more fun in TCGs. The difference between Nowhere Prophet and TCGs is that typical TCGs have built-in color/faction restrictions, these restrictions means that you cannot draft “best value cards in the game” without making some sacrifices. These limitations are helpful for making each draft in the game feel more unique.
Nowhere Prophet lacks these kinds of restrictions. The implication? High-quality cards such as Hardened Veteran and Shock Trooper, I am putting these cards in every single one of my decks if I get a chance to. This element reduces replayability because it can feel like every run is relatively the same despite the diversity in card design.
Sometimes, the game tells me that at X place, I can recruit bandits or beasts. This perhaps can be helpful for helping me planning my routes and recruit followers that are synergistic. However, the UI implementation that teaches us about which cards belong in which faction, is so subtle that it basically does not exist.
Roguelike deck building games are known for power fantasy, where the player can do crazy combos on the poor AI. But Nowhere Prophet’s lack the feeling of intense domination. It is a challenging, grindy TCG. A game where I feel less powerful than the AI because they can play without any concern for wounding their followers. Whenever the AI decides to aggressively trade, a part of me dies inside as I watch nearly all my followers have turned wounded.
High barrier to entry and the lack of ability to plan
It can be a difficult game to get into, especially for those who are unfamiliar with TCGs. My first run took me 4 hours to complete because there is so much to read and contemplate. Just to get completely screwed over at the end of the game. When I was trying to speedrun the game, it still took me ~2 hours, a bit long for my taste but others might like it.
The game showed me a map of levels 1-10. As I reached the end of the map, I thought I was going to win soon and I was facing the ultimate boss. So my tactical decision was based on those false assumptions.
I won the fight. I lost all my good units. As I was expecting a victory screen. It turns out that there were still 5 more levels to go. I kept on expecting “this level has to be the last, right?”, and then the game gave me a new battle to fight. I fought until I could not anymore.
I do see merits in keeping things as a mystery. The fights can be unpredictable, and that creates suspense in its narrative.
However, I think this is just one example of a major frustration point in Nowhere Prophet, which is the lack of ability to plan. Experienced TCG players know what deck the opponent is playing based on the first two turns, or that the hero/faction the opponent is playing tells us what are the powers/limitations of their clan. While roguelike deck builder enemies typically show what their next move will be, and you decide your action based on that.
For Nowhere Prophet, neither is the case. I would play all my cards onto the battlefield, just for them to get destroyed by the enemy's Area of Effect removal that I never seen before. Like typical TCGs, the AI is only able to play spells from one single class. The UI implementation for which class a spell belongs to, does not exist in the game, so it can feel like walking in the dark.
Typically, faction information is placed in the top right corner. The game is perfectly functional without it, but it would be nice if it existed.
Is Nowhere Prophet still a good game then?
Yes. The game is technically very polished. The user interface generally feels very satisfying to use, despite a few inconveniences. It has a great soundtrack that makes the game feel very intense and exciting!
The random events in the game are always interesting and difficult to make the decision. What I enjoyed the most is the events that pressure my high-quality legendary card to conduct a mission. If they succeed, I would get a lot of resources, if they fail, they may suffer fatal death and I lose one of the best cards in my deck. The other option, of course, is to make a choice that will likely backfire, but with fewer consequences. While some of the events may seem repetitive, many choices are not technically superior to one another, so the choice all depends on our moods or the situation of your stats and resources.
Nowhere Prophet, despite the problems in the deckbuilding experience, is still a very skill expressive game. Managing the food/hope economy, finding ways to win in seemingly impossible situations, pushing and pulling cards in key situations, always make me feel like living on the edge.
The lack of ability to plan, a big problem that I mentioned earlier, can be fixed by Nowhere Prophet’s modifiers! There is one modifier that allows me to read the hand of my opponent, it has definitely made my run feel psychologically fairer. Even then, the game is still incredibly tough to beat, as the goal is not just winning the match, but winning the match with as little casualty as possible. The AI’s draws and moves can be unpredictable which also makes it challenging!
I also think the AI in Nowhere Prophet is fairly smart, which is very important for this game to be functional. I often wish that the AI would do something stupid, but It makes the correct decision most of the time (curses).
The cards themselves all have interesting effects and keywords. While some keywords are directly implemented from other card games, the grid-based card combat gives a different meaning to those keywords. For example, Overwhelm units are generally very strong because they only take retaliation from one unit, but their damage can trample over to the unit behind without them fighting back.
“Robust” is the most unique, overpowered, and interesting keyword of them all, as units with Robust would revive instead of dying if their position allows them to move back one tile. It creates a lot of interesting scenarios with push, pull, poison, removals, and follower interactions, and allows you to trade with fewer worries.
Final Words
Overall. A strong and unique Roguelike Deck builder title. The game feels very interesting and satisfying to play. But sometimes it is frustrating due to the lack of agency and difficulty in assembling synergies. There are a few cool combos here and there, but I wish for more. Life as a prophet is hard and grindy, but with enough perseverance and care, you will be able to forge your own destiny. If you love a good challenge and love a tactical TCG, I would recommend this game!
Big shoutout to RaginRamen for giving me the key to this game!
You can checkout Nowhere Prophet for research purposes here.