Christophe De bont 
19/09/2018Since the rise of Blizzard’s card battler Hearthstone, there’s been a lot of game developers trying to emulate the succesful formula. Faeria used to be one of those games. Until developer Abrakam radically switched things up and made the game stand out from the crowd.
How they were able to do that? By dropping the free-to-play business model in favour of an affordable DLC-based one. Where a lot of strategy card games require grinding or microtransactions to allow players to build a competitive deck, Faeria lets players unlock all of the cards with XP earned by playing the game. You won’t win a game simply by overpowering an opponent with a better deck. You’ll need to strategically outsmart them.
As high level cards are available to everyone, competitive play becomes a lot more interesting. Abrakam is organising regular official tournaments that all feed back into the Faeria World Circuit, a seasonal based a seasonal based competition where players earn points by participating in ranked matches and tournaments. Each season, the top players will take each other on to compete for cash prizes. Top matches are often streamed on the game’s Twitch channel, and you can even get rewards for watching certain videos.
The game has built up a cosy community of avid players who are welcoming to newcomers. On the game’s Discord channel you’ll always find people chatting about the latest deck building strategies and there’s always someone to point you to the Faeria Academy, where new players are taught the basics of the game. Before venturing online in ranked competitive play, Faeria also features a lot of solo content that gradually teach you how to get better at the game.
The approach seems to be working. Since launching on Steam back in March 2017 Abrakam released expansion Fall of Everlife, introducing 40 new cards, and today marks the release of the second expansion Resurgence, adding another 40 cards to the mix. We have little doubt this second expansion will be embraced by players to widen their strategic options and to add yet more depth to an already engaging gameplay experience. Congratulations to everyone on the team and here’s to many more card expansions!
