Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales Review

It began as a tutorial campaign for a multiplayer card game and grew into something with a genuine claim on your time. Meve, queen of two small kingdoms, is invaded, and the campaign follows her retreat and counterattack across hand-painted maps you explore for resources, encounters and recruits. The card battles use a modified version of the studio's competitive rules, tuned into puzzle encounters with fixed win conditions rather than a fair fight, which keeps them varied far longer than a straight deck builder would manage.

What makes it work is the writing. Meve is asked to choose between atrocity and defeat repeatedly, her advisors hold incompatible politics, and the game tracks a morality that is about pragmatism rather than good and evil. The art and the voice work sit well above what the format usually gets. It is too long by several hours, the resource management between battles is thin, and anyone allergic to card games will not be converted. But as proof that a spin-off can carry real authorship, it is a quietly impressive thing.