For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Card-en-Ciel, from the developers Inti Creates.
Reading the eShop listing for the game, i was interested in the game. i thought the story idea was different and i was curious how the card mechanics would work. this demo seems to be from the start of the game and i think it's a great start. the tutorial, the story, the mechanics are all introduced smartly and in a way that feels right for the universe.
After playing an hour, the only thing that felt off was that the text on screen didn't auto scroll and that there didn't seem to be an option to turn it on. This is an older demo but it felt quite polished, which leads me to think that perhaps the Japanese release of the game has already happened.
One great feature of this demo is how it does the tutorials. it doesn't just put up a block of text, there's a video showing it in action. the text could have multiple pages, each with their own video. but what i thought was really cool and something i don't remember seeing else where was how the videos could be made full screen. i've played plenty of games where the picture/gif/video used in the tutorial is small, but here, the ability to make it full screen really felt modern and something that other developers should be looking at implementing.
This first hour is basically the tutorial for the game and each point seems to add a new mechanic to the game. each one isn't huge, but by the end it did feel like there were quite a few things to think about each turn. i don't know if it's a case of too much too soon or just too much in general. i enjoyed the simple mechanics at the start where each card could either do an action or move your character. i thought this was an interesting twist but then the game adds cards which, for example, can be used to avoid an enemies attack and counter them.
After my hour with Card-en-Ciel, i'm genuinely impressed with it. this demo is the start of the game and it shows that Card-en-Ciel is an approachable game that has a good first hour. i would recommend people trying out the demo first. this is a game that ties together a few different genres like card battling, visual novels, and rpgs. fans of each of those may like Card-en-Ciel and this demo is a great place to start.
