Tamarak Trail Analysis – May the dice be with you

Tamarak Trail review for Xbox Series

In recent years, the construction of terraces They have gained popularity among gamers since their release in 2019. Kill the arrow. The charm of these titles lies in the create decks of cards. Starting with a base set, we build a new one as we obtain more cards over the course of the game. But the most interesting thing and what makes these games so interesting is that in each game we will have a different deck, so the experience is never the same. A characteristic that makes this type of game belong to the roguelike genre.

As usual when a game becomes famous, clones or similar titles immediately appear to try to take advantage of the original. This usually ends in gender fatigue. However, developers like Yarrow games They manage to give a twist to their proposals to give them a certain originality. This is the case of Tamarack TrailAnd “dice building“rather interesting.

Corruption falling from the sky

Tamarack Trail There is no very deep story. Rather, its plot serves as a pretext to put us in the situation. One night, a mysterious meteorite fell on the trail of The tamarack. Upon impact, this strange celestial body released a mist of corruption that transformed all the animals in the forest into monstrous creatures.

As members of the Sturgeon Lodgea secret society created to protect Tamarack Trail and its inhabitants, we must confront this malevolent presence to restore peace.

Choose your path wisely

Each race of Tamarack Trail we will start it in one cabin. In this place, We can unlock new rooms that will bring us benefits for our expeditions. We will have available three different character classes: Detective, Wizard and Tracker. At the beginning we can only play with the first class, but little by little we will unlock the others.

Once we have chosen our protagonist, we will set off on the path. As is usual in this type of game, we will be presented with a card full of forks. It’s up to us to choose the path that best suits us depending on the occasion. Along the way we will find battles against normal enemies, bosses, treasure chests, camps or random events where we will have to choose what to do.

The power of dice and chance

But what is really interesting and new in the title of Yarrow games We find it in its mechanics. Tamarak Trail replaces cards in deck building games with six-sided die. Each face will have a different ability represented by a drawing. In combat we can roll each die once as long as we have enough power points. There are two ways to do this: manual and automatic.

With the first we can choose which die we want to roll first, strength and direction. It’s good to do bounces (another important mechanic that I will talk about later) or, with the second die, return the first if we do not like the result obtained. Automatic mode works well when you have more than three dice or when you want to go faster.

Before attacking, we will see above each enemy the action they will perform in turn. In card games, this allows you to react accordingly. In Tamarak Trail, it feels like we rely more on chance than strategyat least during the first levels.

Build your luck

To survive as long as possible during the journey, we will have to create our own luck. This is where one of the aspects I liked the most about the title comes into play: the Dice Forge. As I mentioned a few paragraphs before, when we finish a battle we will have the choice of three additional abilities for our dice. Before moving on to the next encounter, you can enter the forging menu to configure our dice as we prefer with the skills or amplifiers we have available.

We can choose which abilities to put on each side of the die, repeating them if we want to increase the probability of them appearing in rolls. We can also add nuclei, items that have different passive effects and are obtained in chests and events. Abilities range from the most basic, such as attack and defense, to the most powerful, such as those that cause altered states or allow the die to be flipped to perform double, triple, and “infinite” attacks. The bounce mechanic will allow certain abilities to gain buffs. If we add to this that we will obtain a new die when we defeat a boss, we will be able to achieve very powerful combos with a single roll.

If, despite all this, luck still does not smile on us, we can take advantage of the special abilities of our character. These powers can only be used once per battle. We must therefore use them wisely.

like a board game

At the graphic level, Tamarak Trail has a hand-drawn art style. Simple but beautiful, it gives the feeling of enjoying a board game, with its board and everything. The design of the enemies is quite varied and the heroes are very different from each other. The symbols on the faces of the dice are also very original and recognizable. In a few gaming sessions, we will know by heart what each skill does just by seeing its drawing. Concerning the sound part, the title does not have a very notable theme. Medieval-style music simply accompanies the fights.

Finally, it should be noted that the game There is no dubbing, but there are texts in Spanish. However, I found translation errors in certain words in certain lines of text and descriptions of abilities or items.

Eventually

Generally speaking, Tamarak Trail offers nothing new in other roguelikes of the style: a journey with forking paths, procedural races, turn-based combat, etc. However, changing cards for dice brings a certain freshness to the proposal of Yarrow Games. This mechanic, as well as the customization of the cubes, gives more weight to the strategic factor, well, we’ll have to think carefully about how we compose each die. Unfortunately, this only begins to be noticed when we advance a little in the game and we die countless times because luck has not been with us in the reels.