A card adventure for one to four people. Play it on your own, or pass one device around the table and see how far the voyage gets.
Brave wild worlds. Bring the light home. Don’t let the fire go out.
Painted worlds, a hunter on the road, and a turn of an actual fight.
Turn-based on two rows. Back takes its turn first and sets up, Front goes after and finishes, and somebody has to hold the Front. They take the hits aimed at Back. You spend Wick to play a card, and what you don’t spend is gone at the end of the turn.
Shellwake Beach. Cindercaldera. Moonwell Hollow. You sail from the Hollow Star to one at a time and walk its road of dens, past a campfire or a shrine or a wreck, with a hunter walking the road behind you and a boss at the end.
You can play it on your own. You can also hand the device around: each hand stays hidden until it reaches you, and everybody has a name and a colour. A full voyage is a long sitting. The Daily Challenge is the one that fits in a short one.
Alakai didn’t have a video game to play, so he made one. He used Amazon boxes, a screwdriver, colored pencils and note cards. He drew every card by hand. There were spell cards, weapon cards, and wishing star cards that bring somebody back.
There was a board too. It was a world map, and you moved your piece a few squares at a time. Then you flipped a coin. Heads meant you drew a monster and fought it.
He built the rest with his dad, on weekends, a couple of hours at a time. The heroes and the cards came straight off the cardboard. The board stopped being shaped like Monopoly and turned into a road of levels, closer to Super Mario Bros. 3. Some of the monsters changed so they would mean something. The Starling was going to be an ordinary thing on the road. It ended up a boss.
It was called Warrior Island until we found out the name was taken.
It grew out of Dragon Quest III’s HD-2D remake, because of the way that one looked. The card side is closer to Hearthstone, Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering. It is still being made, a couple of hours most weekends. Players on a few continents send notes back. Two of the heroes are getting new names.
Every voyage starts with the same deck. What grows is the file around it.
Heroes unlock by doing things, not by paying for them, and each one plays differently. Sori’s arrow ignores cover. Vex names a thing so it wilts.
Every face, card, relic, hero and medal the game can stamp. A monster is met first as a shadow page and stamped once you beat it.
Every den remembers your fewest rounds, whether you ever won it with nobody Downed, and whether you did it without spending a Heart. Practice lets you fight anything your file has beaten, any time, without a voyage.
One den, the same one on every device that day, in three tiers: Spark, Flame and Wildfire. Keep a streak, climb a rank, and share a line that gives nothing away. No account and no leaderboard, which is the point of it.
A harder trip, and it ramps world by world. New files start on it, because the kids who playtested it said the game was too easy. Its own line: “A harder trip. The fire still goes out.”
The beta moves most weekends. Here is some of it.
No sign-up, no purchases, no tracking, and no names sent anywhere. Three files live on the device and that is the whole of it. It installs like an app and plays offline, so it works on a plane. It is built for kids and grown-ups to play together, and we are aiming for an E10 rating.
No download, no account, no launcher. Starwick runs in the browser on desktop and phone, and it is free to play.
It is still being built, so expect rough edges. Your voyage comes back, though. Saves are versioned and carried across when the rules change underneath them.
Open Options in the game and tap Install. On an iPhone or iPad, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. It gets its own icon, opens without a browser around it, and plays offline.
UPDATES A new version downloads quietly in the background, and the game offers it in a small note. Take it whenever you like. Nothing changes under you mid-voyage, and your files stay where they are.
