A chain of islands protected by maidens for generations now faces impending doom. A traveler vows to save the people of this land with the aid of a cast-out maiden Laty. With a story taking place entirely within cards, the narrative and combat is representative of traditional table-top role-playing games.

While simple at times, “Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden” manages to provide fun combat scenarios with varied and intriguing characters.

A wandering traveler finds himself docked on the central islet of an archipelago named Omega island. It is here he discovers a cast out maiden, who has failed to complete the ritual to protect her island from destruction. Determined to save her people from impending doom, she seeks the aid of the traveler to gather various maiden relics from the surrounding islands and find a way to become a true maiden.

The entirety of the game is played out on a table top through cards. This means that the world, the characters, enemies and encounters are on cards that flipped over as I traversed the environment. This was a refreshing experience, as I hadn’t previously encountered a game that was told this way, and I’m glad the developers went all in on it.

While it certainly limited the amount of detail, the cards still had personality, as movement and other actions had amusing animations to go along with a narrator speaking throughout. On the topic of the narrator, I certainly enjoyed having someone reading out the story and dialogue, but it became a bit annoying hearing him quip out various lines during combat. This is especially grating when they are cheesy lines, such as “team work makes the dream work.”

The story was interesting enough to keep me going, and I enjoyed traveling across the seas to each of the islands to discover new monsters and people. While some characters get reused, such as the merchants, there were enough unique faces to make it compelling to greet strangers on my quest. However, outside of the main narrative characters the villagers don’t offer a whole lot in the form of personality.

There was one point in my journey where I found some perfume in the wilderness, addressed to someone in the nearby village. After delivering the package, it turns out the perfume was actually a pheromone that attracted monsters, and she died shortly after the delivery. The game’s narrator told me that the villagers wore forlorn faces, and gloom hung over the town, but it didn’t really sell me on this because of the plain interactions I had with them. I think that this is one drawback of having the cards as a storytelling mechanism, but the game certainly does its best to craft intricacies where it can.

Achieving my goals wasn’t always a walk in the park, as the archipelago is home to many dangers. Combat plays out in a turn based order, meaning I would perform my actions, then the enemy would respond. There is also a box of gems that regenerate after each turn, essentially a magical resource that allows for special actions like elemental strikes or team buffs.
Engaging in combat with monsters and fiends that crossed my path was fun, with each attack having its own animation which made it more than just selecting an action. As I gained levels and experience, my team members would learn new skills that either offered a passive bonus or a new action such as a stronger heal or a sweeping attack that hits all enemies. My only issue is that the frequency of random enemy encounters felt a bit high at times. There were plenty of times where I would take two steps after just defeating a group of enemies only to be interrupted by yet another fight. I could always flee the battle, but it made exploring tedious at times when I was getting stopped every other step I took.

After I had finished the main storyline, I felt accomplished and satisfied in my journey. Some of the story beats were quite predictable, but I still felt they were enjoyable to experience. While not as in depth as some role playing games, I believe the elements of the card system still make for an intriguing playthrough. For people new to these types of games this may be a great place to jump in, while still ensuring more experienced players stay engaged.