VEILWRAITH

It’s all there, in black and white

THall or Nothing Productions he universe has ended. After the battle to defeat the evil Overlord is lost, reality itself has shattered. The Veil between life and afterlife is in tatters, with lost souls flitting around a realm built from fragments of memory. It’s all a bit bleak, a mood reflected in this solitaire card game’s monochrome style, with every Tarotsized card rendered in striking black and white. But don’t let that put you off. What Veilwraith lacks in cheery disposition it more than makes up for with compelling, almost addictive gameplay.

Having mindfully built in oneplayer modes to all his games so far, from Gloom of Kilforth to 1565: St. Elmo’s Pay, designer Tristan Hall has here committed fully to the solo experience. Veilwraith casts you as a lonely spectral remnant of the shattered material plane. You must journey, fight and negotiate your way through a deck-based series of campaign-forming Vignettes to discover memory Keys and unlock portals back to salvation. You complete a Vignette if you manage to collect all five Keys, reveal and defeat all the Foes (basically boss monsters) and pass through the Portal. You lose if your Spirit (aka health) drops from

20 to zero, or you meet the Archfiend, an unbeatable boss shuffled into the Threat deck once it’s depleted.

Each turn, a new Threat is played, joining any others you were unable to contend with the previous turn. Similar to the Legendary Encounters co-op deckbuilders, you do not want them stacking up, because each undefeated card inflicts a Spirit cost. So you’re constantly firefighting with whatever you have in your hand. But Veilwraith isn’t a deckbuilder. If you survive a Vignette, you get to upgrade a Memory card – the means by which you contend with enemies and encounters – but it’s more a levellingup mechanism, with your deck never expanding.

It is in how you deal with those Threats that Veilwraith proves truly innovative. Some require you to explore, some to fight and some to influence. Each of these actions is represented by a card positioned below a “1”, “2” or “3” token. This number represents that action’s base strength for the turn, which can be boosted by Memories in your hand, or by having tilted the card in a previous turn to add a +1 power token. But when you use it at strength 2 or 3, the card shifts down to the 1 position,