Afterland

Afterland is a collectible card game with a Gothic theme. It is set in Afterland where the balance between light and dark is maintained through a white and a black rabbit. When the white rabbit falls, the black one takes over and captures all the creatures that support the white rabbit. The goal of the game is to bring back light to Afterland. This is done through three activities: build, journey and protect. The player builds a powerful card deck with new characters and creatures that become available gradually after locating keys to free them. They need to be taken through a journey, battling the forces of the black rabbit. The player also has to defeat powerful allies of the black rabbit in the separate Protect battles.

A player's deck can hold up to fifteen cards and can be customized at any moment. Decks have a maximum value however and the combined strength of the characters cannot exceed it. With each new level up the overall strength limit is increased. There are three types of characters that can be used in a deck. There are Carnies, Souls and Creatures. Carnies have special abilities and can be upgraded using the candy currency. Duplicate carnies can be combined to create a more powerful version. Souls are cards that can be stacked on top of each other in the same formation space. They disappear when a battle is lost. Creatures are large and powerful entities that occupy more than one card space. When they die during a battle they fall asleep and lose a heart. They are freed from cages when five unique keys have been found during the journey. By finding the same creature multiple times a stronger version is created with up to five hearts.

All characters have two main statistics: magic (attack) and protection (defense/health). Each card also has a cost represented through stars important for the deck strength limit. The player needs to determine the battle formation of the 3x5 card field prior to a battle. All cards are present in a battle right away and cannot be changed by the player once a battle has begun. With the three rows of cards, range is also important. Each card has a range (short, medium or long) that affects which kinds of rows of attackers can be targeted. Creatures also have three different formation sizes for the deck: wide, tall or both.

The Journey section consists of different levels with a constellation of smaller battles played in succession. Battles are turn-based, but largely non-interactive. Each card has a meter that depletes and when empty an attack is activated automatically. The player only taps the screen to complete a turn and everything else happens automatically. That means that most of the strategy is in composing the deck and the arrangement of the carnies, souls and creatures before starting a battle. When a card is defeated, it is removed from the board and another card will move forward to fill the space, influencing the strategy.

The game is free-to-play. Next to candy as a basic currency, fish heads are the premium one. Both can be bought using in-app purchases, but are also earned in-game. There is a double energy/stamina system, one for the battles in the Journey mode (blue) and another for the Protect mode (yellow). Energy recharges slowly over time and the blue one is filled entirely after completing a constellation. In Protect a powerful army is fought for a chance to earn tickets in daily and weekly events. These tickets can be redeemed for card packs or candy.