Are you a purveyor of collectible card games? Have a penchant for the cowboy lifestyle? Fancy a bit of the ... undead? You're strange.. but you're also in luck!

Dark Country: American Gothic Card Game is coming to solve just such a need for all lovers of the cowboy/occult/undead (?) genre with the upcoming April (Q2) launch of their beta browser platform game. In preparation for the main launch of the game; sales of a pre-order 'Starter Bundle' are currently available for the price of 19.95 USD (0.09843783 ETH) at the time of this writing. The sale is for a limited time and includes 10 Rare card packs, a Legendary card pack, Life-Giving booster packs, and an additional item. 

The web browser portal supports purchases via 3rd-party payment systems as well as crypto payments through several wallet configurations like Meta Mask and Coinbase. Supported crypto includes BTC, ETH, and EOS as well as a variety of others which shows some flexibility for in-game purchasing in the future. I purchased the starter bundle using Meta Mask for ETH and the transaction was successful after only 10 minutes with a final Gas Price of 2 Gwei (0.000000002 ETH) and Transaction Fee of 0.000042 ETH (0.01 USD) which pushed the items from the contract to my account smoothly. 

Now that the boring bit is out of the way let's explore details of the game..

Play-style

The game appears to play like most table-top online card games where players take turns drawing cards, playing cards of certain cost values against a resource, with the central goal of causing enough damage to the other player to reduce their 'health' to 0 and win the game. Though presentation in this respect is painfully average--I am hoping to find the play-ability supplemented by the mechanics, flavor, and balancing of the game upon release and with future development. The developers claim the game will offer a variety of additional game modes including, CCG: Classic, CCG Auto Battler mode, and Living board CCG to give players a bit of flexibility. 

If you think about it--most successful CCGs come from humble beginnings (right?)....

Aesthetic Appeal

For me personally I was excited about the unique theme being presented. This whole thing has a creepy-skeleton-gunslinger vibe that I find creative and served up well with some strong artwork and sharp graphical outlay.

The game consists (currently) of four main races:

The Ancestral Guard

"The Ancestral Guard includes both tribal warriors and the mythical creatures that they once hunted."

Resolute Rangers

"A combination of cowboys, doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and lawmen, the Resolute Rangers are adept at planning."

Cunning Crusaders

"The Cunning Crusaders are a loose alliance of opportunistic criminals who saw a chance of gaining from the catastrophe of the risen undead."

Destructive Horde

"The Destructive Horde is a mix of undead and unforgotten evils that tribes had subdued centuries ago."

Seriously--it's skeletons with guns. What ... uh ... could go wrong?

Blockchain Features

The game isn't only limited to purchasing with digital currency; the developers claim a variety of blockchain-related features. These features include asset tangibility, customization within account meta features (skins, etc.),  asset ownership (buy, sell, trade via contract), as well as some flexibility in multichain framework design. These could be considered as good indicators against the integrity of your currency/token footprint within the game structure and allow the players full-control of all items and characters as promised. 

Navigation

The interface is your typical browser portal with nothing that I noticed uniquely progressive but everything seems to be working pretty seamlessly and the interaction simple and straightforward. Remember my bundle I purchased? Well the assets show up in my 'My Items' section of the account but I am currently unable to interact with any of the booster packs or other items as the game is currently not active. 

My spicy Necronomicon-looking card packs are idly waiting for me to tear in to them once the game is made available in April (Q2). The pre-order packs are part of the Exodus Card Series (100 cards) and are only available till Feb. 14th after which these unique cards are supposedly no-longer available. I find valuation (whether or not the price justifies the ends) difficult when a new game launches and have no idea if I will get my money worth--but I am certainly excited to add some hard-to-get items to my collection. Dark Country will celebrate the launch of the game with a some type of 'Card Opening Event' indicated on their development roadmap.

Company Roadmap

The team at Dark Country [Immortal Games] has made available on their website a promising (and maybe a bit aggressive) roadmap for the development of the game with a new Game Feature being projected as early as first quarter next year (2021). It will be interesting to see if this remains on track as the public beta launches and your typical wear-and-tear begins to make a impact on the development direction. However, Dark Country seems quite engaged with the community (and responsive) which could lead to swift reaction to issues and the collaboration of solutions. I feel the game shows a promise of active development and we can expected movement forward.

These roadmap goals include: 

• Q2 20

Packs opening event, Public beta launch of Dark Country

• Q3 20

Game expansion pack 1

• Q4 20

Co-authorship functionality

• Q1 21

New game mode

Source - Dark Country affiliated website

Dark Country staff engage actively with the player community through their Twitter and Discord as well as a variety of other social platforms. Take a look if this is of some interest to you and read up on the game before making a decision.

Hopefully everything will go as smooth as one can hope at launch and I will be able to provide more articles as I play with the different aspects and mechanics of the game. Look for more coverage at my blog. 

So grease up that six-shooter, put on your boots, snap your femur bone back into place (?), and let's ride our decaying horses into town..

EDIT: Originally stated that Feb 15th was the launch of the game however this is the end of the pre-sale event for the Exodus card set. Launch of the beta version of the game is expected in April (Q2) as per the company roadmap but there is not an exact date available at this time. I will post an announcement once this information is available!