Woods of War is a Tower Defense style Deck Builder. You run the gauntlet which consist of 3 seasons each broken up into 2 stages, finishing off with a boss battle unlocking cards and eternal glory. There are four seasons overall, each representing a school of magic: Spring is Nature, Winter is Frost, Summer is Fire, and Fall is Shadow. There will be 5 decks to choose from, one from each school of magic plus the Insight deck. For now, the upcoming demo will contain the Spring stages with a partial Nature deck.
You begin a stage with three randomly dealt Arcana Cards which you build around the tree -functioning like towers in a traditional tower defense game- that auto fire on incoming enemies. You are then dealt cards every 20 seconds to play as you see fit whether you wish to upgrade, build, attack or buff. When you complete a stage you choose whether to build your deck, level up the tree or rest. As you progress the stages become increasingly difficult and if you die, the run is over and you must start over. But you get to keep any cards you may have unlocked.
For the upcoming demo there will be around 10 playable cards but the goal for the final release -end of 2026- is to have 60 cards. Here are some other card types:
Spell Cards are area of effects, great for things like big damage, crowd control or mass heals but the draw back is they are a bit more expensive. You unlock them by slaying enough enemies to gain a death flower used to deal up to three spells you've added to your deck. Best for late game when mana crystals are flowing.
Insight Cards grant one use abilities like damage shields, dealing cards and universal upgrades among other useful buffs, abilities, and synergies.
There will also be light dialogue throughout the game telling the story of Gant, an elven ranger of the Greenridge Core Elves wrestling with the reality of his soul being bound to a tree with his friend Marian, a powerful druid and confidant, as they face down the orc horde.
The game is being developed live on twitch and youtube by RiyinArt (pronounced Ree Yin) on Mon/Wed/Fri both pixel art and C++ coding (Building a custom engine in C++ and SDL2). This will be the debut release from Riyin Studio, and hopefully the first of many. Thank you for checking out Woods of War, and don't forget to wishlist to be notified when the game is available!
