For any trading card game enthusiast (think Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering or even Pokémon from back in the day), there's something indescribably satisfying about playing a series of cards and buffing them all up into your own private army, pitting them against an opponent and imagining in your mind what the ensuing chaos would look like. However, it's that core idea of seeing things come to life that's never been perfected in the gaming realm, until little-known developers Defiant put out Hand of Fate, a brilliant genre-bender comprised of Batman: Arkham-style combat, choose-your-own-adventure quests and a contextual setup that plays it all out on a table between you and a mysterious trader. The whole game has such an innovative and original premise, it cements over any frame rate or polish issues; but it's when you first enter combat and literally watch your hero spring out of the card in front of you - their armour and weapons coming to life only to be grabbed out the air - that'll just strike such a positive chord with any who've been playing trading card games in real life, no matter how long.
