Harald: A Game of Influence

Simple card game. I noticed no major implementation issues, but several annoyances. Decent gameplay based on maneuvering to profit from your opponents' plays; some will enjoy it, but personally I don't expect to come back. Whoever goes last seems to have a noticeable advantage, because they can use an ability to mess up an opponent's combo and the opponent can't respond. Looks like it would have LOTS of kingmaking at 3+ players. In my first game versus AI, I scored lower than I expected because I misunderstood some key rules, but I still won easily; I felt like the AI was pulling punches, choosing to waste abilities that could easily have helped it. Several obvious UI issues: - The bonus on some cards is applied once per copy, but on others is just applied once regardless of how many copies you have, and the game does nothing to communicate this difference. - Opponent scores are only partially calculated for you, even though all information necessary to calculate them fully is public and can be freely examined at any time. - The ability to examine cards is disabled during the tutorial, making learning the game needlessly confusing. - While selecting from your hand, it covers important information on the board; not a huge deal because you can always close your hand again, but it's irksome. - You can't undo moves even when no new information is revealed.

Received as part of the humble bundle for Asmodee. Gameplay wise, it's basically just a dualing worker-placement game. Except you're playing cards instead of placing worker tokens (the cards are so generic they basically are worker tokens). It's... not very good, kinda buggy, simplistic, and clearly made for mobile. It's currently cheaper on mobile ($5 on steam and $2 on mobile), despite being the exact same game. Though even at that price point I couldn't recommend it.

Boring. Unfun. Dumb.

DO NOT BUY ANY GAMES FROM TWIN SAILS INTERACTIVE (rebranding of Asmodee Digital). I encourage you to check how many bugs their games have, and how little they care about fixing them. Go stroll over their products and the bugs reports, but most importantly, the developer's reply. They have the habit of releasing stuff and strolling to the next product without ever looking back. This one is SO BAD that they removed from the store. Usually, this means that the game still works but cannot be purchased by new players and online functionalities are disabled. This one here gives you a black screen. Hopefully one day Steam will take action an BAN THIS SCOURGE DEVELOPER FROM HERE. Before that, simply do your part and DO NOT BUY ANY GAMES FROM TWIN SAILS INTERACTIVE.

Harald is a pretty good card game. The objective of Harald is to gain the most points at the end of 10 rounds. The game is played in either 1v1 or 2v2. Gameplay-wise, you only need the mouse. You have a choice of 7 cards, Goat, Boar, Bear, Fox, Wolf, Lynx and a Badger. Each one represents a role and has its own special power. You gain points by multiplying the number of matching creature cards in your Village with the number of matching creature cards in the Council. There are also bonus points for completing an objective with each creature. Each creature card that goes into the Council adds to the value of that creature. Each creature card that goes into your Village give points multiplied by the number of same creatures in the Council and triggers an ability. Goat is the Seafarer: Boar is the Blacksmith: Bear is the Warrior: Fox is the Bard: Wolf is the Scout: Lynx is the Merchant: Badger is the Guild: Conclusion, Harald is worth trying. It is a most interesting game. Note: Harald was made by Asmodee and 3D Duo.

1/10 3 years until i got around to trying this game. 1 more for the hidden game abyss

poor quality, but it can be good table or mobile game

A very tough one to decide. And I've gotta be honest: I'm mostly thumbing this up because the (currently limited) reviews of thumbs down don't do it justice. But equally so: I wouldn't rate it above a 6.5/10. And the android port is much cheaper AND plays out better. So...this is probably not the 'thumbs up' review the devs want to see. :-\ Let's get the good news out of the way first: the technical implementation is okay. Aesthetics, looks and sounds are good. Basically: what you see in the screenshots is what you get. On controls...this is clearly a port from mobile, and that shows. Intuitive things like dragging a card to a zone simply won't work: you have to use single clicks often (you can hover the mouse all you want; it won't show the card's info). But that's the minor issue. The major issue - for me - is actually the game in itself. The game rules are simple enough, the cards in itself aren't too complex and the end goal (get the most points) is also straightforward. But oh, boy, the card interaction. All the cards have mechanisms that change the way the board looks (your village, the neutral court, their village) AND a scoring mechanism that feeds off the other cards. And because there's a fairly large "take that"-factor (meaning: lots of opportunities to mess with the opponent), things get unpredictable fast. I admit: I'm BAD at this game. But it's a sort of intriguing kind of bad. I've had games that I won, but hardly had an idea how. If the bad reviews are worth something, it's that they have more experience with the kind and the learning curve is "a bit high, and at a certain level a total flat line". That could be...I honestly don't know yet. I got it as part of a humble bundle (I've played it much more on android), mostly to test it on proton/linux (which works). My first advice would be to get it on mobile. But either so: it's an intriguing game about intrigue. Should this fancy you, I honestly don't think you'll be disappointed. :-)

Harald is a game in which you have to manipulate three zones to create the best combination of cards compared to your opponent. Each turn a player send a card to the council, which has no effect but counts for mutual scoring. Then they send a card to their village which does have an effect (various forms of changing cards in zones) and counts for your score. Each card has a condition that allows you to score bonus points based on their relation with one other type of card. E.g. the Blacksmith gives +4 points if you own more Warriors than Blacksmiths. I'm not sure why people have such trouble understanding the rules. The tutorial is solid, the game is just lacking in presentation. It would have helped a lot if the bonus point indication used colour coded icons to instantly show which card type is relevant. It took me 2-3 matches to beat the AI in part because of that. Harald is fairly simple but fun for a while.