Heretic's Fork
Dear candidate, we are pleased to invite you to take up the position of manager of Hell. You will punish sinners by using our deck-building computer system to construct hellish towers capable of keeping the endless hordes of the underworld in check. Best of luck!
Heretic's Fork is a deckbuilding, tower defense and arcade game
developed by 9FingerGames
and published by Ravenage Games.
Released on September 13th 2023 is available only on Windows
in 9 languages: English, French, German, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Spanish - Spain, Portuguese - Portugal, Traditional Chinese and Russian.
It has received 3,284 reviews of which 2,813 were positive and 471 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.3 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 4.87€ on Steam and has a 50% discount.
The Steam community has classified Heretic's Fork into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS: Microsoft 64bit Windows 10
- Processor: 64bit Intel compatible Dual Core CPU
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: OpenGL 4-compliant onboard graphics
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 2 GB available space
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Highly addictive collectible card tower defense game dripping with its own unique style. 10 hours later, I beat the game with multiple characters and conquered endless mode. At this point I feel I have seen 99% of what this game has to offer and its time to move on. + Beautiful original artwork and style. + Most of the music tracks are awesome. I really love the Dark Industrial Techno tracks specifically. + The game flows perfectly, in my 10 hours with it I was constantly unlocking new funny "emails", characters, and cards. + The menu "Desktop Screen" that you control between game runs is a cool original concept. + Loads of unique weapons to unlock and use, most have beautiful visuals and are fun to watch. + The actual upgrade system and the base structured game mechanics are well thought out. - Some of the musical tracks are a bit much to listen to. A game run usually lasts 45 minutes, so listening to industrial metal for 45 minutes + the sound effects of the game can be annoying on the headphones and cause ear fatigue after awhile. - There are no boss fights, which the game is sorely missing. - Needs more enemy variety. - There is an abundant of useless cards. I would say during endgame, 80% of the cards received are useless. - There could have been more of a story to each of the playable characters. The playable characters do not have "Endings", when beating the game, you just get a results screen. - Endless mode is way too easy if you make the right cards, I could have gone forever, literally. - Could benefit from a save system, perhaps after every 10 levels, and make the entire game longer. More levels in general, larger variety of enemies, boss fights etc. Overall Score: 8 / 10 Good but with a few tweaks could have been better! Sequel?
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As a warning: This game is not controller or Deck friendly. It's great, but not without the use of a mouse--playable, but very difficult and very hard to read on any small screen. This is the most cheeky, unique take on a Tower Defense I've seen in a very long time. You're taking the role of an intern charged with defending the exit of hell, where sinners are trying to escape. Hell is run by a bureaucratic corporation, so in between runs your poor intern will be inundated with emails to your corporate account (some of which are spam), messages from HR or management, viruses, and more. You build Towers or Garrison units in order to punish these sinners. Each layer of hell is broken into several waves, and after each wave you can choose a new card or cards from several drawn from the collection. Like-rarity cards can be upgraded into one higher, or you can banish cards from your deck (sometimes with a bonus effect) if they're not suited for your run. As icing on the cake, Heretic's Fork has an excellent soundtrack, full of dark synthwave of all sorts. [edit 31 July 2024] It took me about 58 hours to get all of the achievements. Part of that is luck, of course, as the cards are randomly drawn and even upgrading/combining has a high degree of randomness. I'd definitely buy this again.
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A neat card based roguelike, although I wouldn't consider it groundbreaking. TLDR: If you're looking for thousands of hours of playtime, or a conventional tower defense game, you may want to skip this one. If you like rng heavy roguelikes, and deckbuilding from zero, you'll love this game. Introduction First off, the game is technically tower defense, but if you go into it expecting depth in that regard, then you are going to be disappointed. Heretics Fork is really a card game with tower defense going in the background. There is no positioning or enemy variance to speak of. All towers shoot from the middle, and all garrisons start from the middle. And the enemies are rather boring, with very little uniquity, aside from the occasional bosses, which just have loads more health. In true roguelike fashion, most of the core gameplay loop is rng and gambling. You start each level with a (mostly) predetermined strategy, based on the character you choose, and your starting towers. After that, just try to make the most of whatever good or bad situation the game gives you. The good The atmosphere is on point. You start a game on a desktop that really sells you the fact that you're working for a company in hell. You'll receive various helps, nudges, and simply annoying messages from a paperclip that doubles as your boss. There is also an email system, which (without spoiling anything) can give you some extra entertainment through ridiculous company wide messages, random spam, and bits related to the game's story. The soundtrack is amazing. My only feeling about it is that it's complete overkill, and I love this game for it. At least 100 tracks of dark synthwave, goa, and some hard rock/metal. Definitely something that I will enjoy outside of the game too. And since the game has a full desktop for you, you have full access to a music player, that allows you to skip and go back any time. You can even favorite tracks if not all of them are your cup of tea. The cards have a lot of variety, making sure that most random pulls and upgrades are interesting/exciting. I think they struck a nice balance where getting a good card is actually exciting, without feeling like you're repeatedly and hopelessly pulling the arm of slot machine. Well, *most of the time*. The characters that you can play with are quite interesting. Most of them are not straight upgrades, and their different abilities definitively affect you playstyle. The game's approach to different characters is also quite nice. You get enough choices in the beginning to interest you, but not enough to be overwhelming. However, you'll start unlocking variants later, which bumps up the total character count quite a bit. Variants retain the character's base defining ability, and adds a twist on top of it. Often simple, at times something that completely changes how you play the game. The bad Enemies are mostly boring. The only ones that stand out are the little buggers that accelerate near your tower, and that's about it. The rest are various levels of straight up meat shields. The bosses are just tankier blobs that try to reach your tower. The game mitigates this via different patterns the enemies approach in, but that novelty wears off quickly. There are a lot of gotchas in the wording of different game mechanics, and a few instances where the wording is simply ambiguous. There are major differences between power and item cards, and at no point does the game make this obvious. There is also a task that says "sacrifice 9 garrison cards". What do you mean sacrifice? You mean a card effect? You mean a character ability? You mean banish? (The last one is what it means). This seems like a nitpick, but clearly communicating what a card does and what the player has to do is vital in strategy and roguelike games. The amount of resources available for in-depth strategy is not great. This is a lesser known indie title, so it's not at all surprising. But you should be aware, if you have any questions beyond "How do I get this achievement", the only resource you'll have is steam discussions. I completed this game with 100% achievements, and I still don't know how damage is calculated. -_- The meh Balance could be better. Most shop cards are only useful on one character. Mixed garrison-tower builds are basically non-existent. Garrisons builds are often underpowered. Most of the strategy boils down to "this needs less cards, so less rng, so it's better". This isn't true in all cases, but most of the strategies that can clear torment 5 have this in common. There is a somewhat common issue with deck bloat. Remember when I said that this game has very few resources online? Well, if someone unlocks all the wrong cards (Good luck finding out what doing a task unlocks), it's entirely possible that that player will have a much harder time, because their card pool is bloated with a bunch of cards that are useless for any simple strategy. Around the middle of unlocking everything I did experience this, and with literally zero way of seeing what I should be doing (no info online or in-game, regarding what I should unlock) the game suddenly got a lot harder. Late-game has mitigation for this, but I think the devs should help out on making a lot of this info publicly available. Final words That's basically it. I think the devs truly made something unique. The game isn't perfect, but I think it's easy to love despite it's faults. This is likely not the type of game I'll pour hundreds of hours into, but I think it stands it's ground quite well. it took me 63~ hours to 100% the game, I suspect that for someone going in blind 40-80 hours of playtime is mostly realistic. Can't say I would play beyond that, but I also wouldn't be surprised if people did come back to do some runs once every few months.
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It's a very low-engagement, almost idle game variant of survivor's-likes. Rather than constantly move around, things come to you, and you passively kill them with different attacks, while accumulating power on a per-round basis. It's not great for if you're actually watching it, but it's very nice as a stimulating diversion with a solid selection of darksynth and metal tracks in the background. If you have two+ monitors, it's a good candidate for the side monitor.
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Before I continue my recommendation of the game is based on my own perception of the value it offers compared to its price. Heretic's fork is a pretty decent tower defense game/deck builder that is fun when you start but it slowly becomes pretty dull the more you play it. It offers a hands-off gameplay for the most part, with the deck building elements being the mostly the only involvement the player will have in its gameplay. Is not a rogue-lite game, so the replayability is very limited. The items you get in between stages is very limited and very boring. It has and endless mode that is pretty much the same, but you know, endless, and it has harder modes that are quite boring and simple (more enemy hp, dmg) and offer no reward other than money to buy more cards. Buying more cards is also an issue: the basic cards are pretty good (and straight forward like attack speed, damage, etc.) but the purchasable cards are very boring, and unlocking more cards mean having a bigger pool of cards meaning a smaller chance of getting the cards you want on each run. There is very little risk/reward plays and the few I saw are extremely punishing and run ending like destroying all your towers. There are ways to mitigate this (increasing your luck), but by the time you have a lot of luck, either you don't need it or it will screw you even more if you lose. Level 5 cards (the strongest) also felt very 'meh', most of them you could only use them once, others only changed damage type and other would give me perks I would rarely use because either they weren't in line with my current strategy or were very boring like a little bit of extra energy. Character selection is fine, I honestly think the different character skills are the best part of this game. Each character can make you play a little different. It has a story but it's kind of messy. I'll try not to spoil a lot, but sometimes you get an email after a run: some of them are funny (or supposed to be funny, as I found myself skimming over the last few ones I got) while others are 'story relevant' kind of. The issue was that since I was winning almost every run from the start (again, since I had less cards) by the time I reached the 'ending' I continued unlocking files and stuff in a way that felt disjointed. Progress seemed tied to how many times you played rather than if you won or not. I think the worst was that I was having very boring, very samey runs until I reached the ending and only then the 'hard mode' unlocked, but by then I had seen all the game had to offer before unlocking more cards and it becoming a drag, hoping I would get synergy due to the large amount of cards that were now in the pool. I can see the game has a lot of passion in it, and it's not bad, just very mediocre after a while. There is little risk/reward situations that are actually worth it, the items at the end of the levels should be game changers, not just more damage, health of structure slots. I don't want to bring its score down because there is legit love poured into this game, but I can't say I actively recommend it either. It's fine for a few hours (or more if you want something to play in the background while you work) but that's it.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 09 December 2024 00:49 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 20 December 2024 01:07 |
| Steam price | 23 December 2024 12:50 |
| Steam reviews | 23 December 2024 15:49 |
Online players
70
Developer
9FingerGames
Publisher
Ravenage Games
Release
13 Sep 2023
Platforms
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