Kaya's Prophecy

When I first opened the news announcing Kaya's Prophecy, I knew it was the type of game I'd love to play. As an avid tabletop gamer, deck building is already appealing. Add the video gaming aspect to it, and it's a simple win for me. Throw in some cute graphics and theming? And I'm hooked. 

From a bird's eye view, this is exactly what Kaya's Prophecy is. I could tell you it's a simple deck building game, where you're using typical resource management skills to build and maintain your tribe, and to ward off enemies, and it definitely sounds like your textbook deck builder. But truly, that's just scratching the surface, because even now, I'm wanting to sign off on writing this and try my hand at winning just one more time. I'd love to tell you why, but first....

What is the game? 

You begin your game small — one tribe member with few resources. You can trade in your resources for new booster packs, which include multiple types of basic resources such as coconuts, clay, stone, etc., along with food items. As you grow and evolve your village of one, you'll discover visions that provide you with the resource plans to create new, stronger resources. The stronger resources, again, can be stacked to create even stronger resources, thus building your village into a strong and sufficient land for, hopefully, new tribe members to join.

The problem (specifically my problem) lies with the need to appease a god. At the start of each day, the god demands a certain amount of food, and it's a part of your day to uncover, or create, the amount of food needed to meet the growing demands of your god. If you come up short four days in a row, you lose a tribe member to a sacrifice. If you're early on in the game? Game over. There's a countdown clock that shows the progress throughout the day, so you know when to start sweating as you open booster packs in a manic search for maggots.

Oh, also, randomly throughout the game, the god will discover a hankerin' for a specific food item, and if you provide it, you're rewarded. But if you can't? You'll have a minor punishment. A slight juggle, managing resource growth and appeasing the gods, but it's all in a day's work. 

But the evil god isn't your only foe. Throughout the game, you'll also uncover different islands to explore, requiring classic deck battles to see if you can hang on to your HP long enough to survive and reap the rewards. This creates a fun little break in the game that allows me to pause and mentally stretch. The further you venture through the exploration piece, you'll also have to use your resources to access certain islands as well, like building a bridge to reach the jungle boss. 

So what did I love?

I think mostly, my favorite aspect of the game was exactly what I expected — the theming. The music isn't overpowering, and supports the tribal concepts. The resources are well thought out, supporting the simple story and the mechanics needed to run a village. There's no depth to the story or villagers, but that's not expected for a deck building game, so I don't feel as though it's lacking in any way. The color scheme is simple, cartoony, and fun, which pairs well with the light humor you find in your enemies and side games.

I also very much appreciated the slow roll out of teaching game mechanics at the start and, early on, providing a mini checklist to help navigate how to successfully play. I always prefer the in-game tutorial option because, personally, I learn best by doing (pleading side eyes to game developers everywhere). 

I also loved the island explorations quite a bit. Not only did it give my brain a short rest from resource management and the hungry god, but it was fun to do the battles and develop a small side strategy for the fights. Also, who doesn't want to fight a swarm of killer bees? Life goal accomplished. 

Another aspect that I appreciated is that, while dying does lose your village progress, forcing you to restart, you at least keep your resource plans from game to game. What a relief! So as I started my second, third, fourth game, I still had access to the plans I previously had. Therefore, my death wasn't in vain after all.

And finally, like a true deck building game, the cards are randomized, so even when the staples are the same in every game, you'll always have a different experience for how you got to the end.

Now what didn't I love?

This is really silly, but I'm a Type A organizational nut. In real tabletop life, I keep my cards straight and my dice in a clean line. This game does not allow for that. Not only do the cards shift and move as other cards come close, but I was constantly pausing to clean up my lines and organize my resources. There are options in the game to keep your mobile cards stagnant (the bees tend to fly away unless you turn it off, which gave me a couple of giggles), but I couldn't find a way to keep my cards where I place them until I choose to move them again. As a Type A player, this truly is my biggest con of the game.

The days are short. Just as I was developing a strategy, it was the end of the day and I didn't feed the god. I felt like I only had time to focus on either feeding the god or building my village, but never both. I'm sure as I continue to play this game, which I will, I may figure out the tricks to allow myself more space for strategy, but in the moment, I felt constrained and frustrated that I couldn't put more thought into the game since there's a severe ticker keeping me on pace.

At the beginning, there's not much space for failure. Like so many factors in this game, I wish this also scaled with time in-game. I'm certain that as I continue to play, I'll catch my stride and find more success, but I do wish there were some starting out safety nets that you as a player can discover to support your growth until you're able to remove the training wheels. I get it though, part of the fun is that you may not make it to the end, but I enjoyed the game enough that I wanted to keep diving deeper.

And finally, it's short. We want more, and I'm hopeful that we'll get more. This game is too cute, quick, and simple to lay on a metaphorical shelf and forget. Here's to hoping there's more patches or versions that will continue the story and adventures.

So, overall, this game isn't for the seriously competitive. This is an ice cream sundae game (I made that up), sweet and fluffy. It's the kind you pick up and play when you're bored and don't want to invest in 30 hours of gameplay. It's lightly stressful, but also silly and fun — which I think is exactly the developer's intention. You can genuinely put as much or as little into it as you want, and you won't sacrifice much — aside from the lives of your villagers.