“Alpine Alpaca” by Johan Peitz & Chris Donnelly.
“Hit the slopes and score as many gates as you can. Use your cards to steer and build your deck as you go!”
“Alpine Alpaca” is a perfect game to get you in the right mood for the chilly Winter season, as it was made for the PICO-8 Advent Calendar 2018, but still is a lot of fun. You control an skiing alpaca and have to make sure that it does not hit any big obstacles like oversized rocks or trees. There is a twist, though, as you cannot control the winter sports crazy animal directly, but by building and playing a deck of movement as well as power-up cards.
It is a turn-based game, and whenever you have to make a new move, you can choose one of the four cards of your hand. After you played this card, the alpaca will follow the action. Most cards are movement cards like “Ski two tiles to the left in a diagonal way!” or “Ski three tiles straight downwards!” However, when you drive through two poles, you will score three points. When you passed three gates, you can choose one out of three rewards, which are all special types of card sets. With those, you can often precise your movement style; for instance, there is a “Schussing” set, which will add more downhill movement cards to your deck, while the “Ripping” set allows you to move sidewards whenever you are lucky enough to pick one of those.
You can also collect some power-up cards. These will make the game more difficult, but grant you special abilities. With the “Kicker” card you can overjump obstacles, which would otherwise cause a crash, while the “Bombing” does exactly what you think it does. So if you always wanted a cute looking strategy sports card game with some sweet background tunes, you should give “Alpine Alpaca” definitely a try! [PLAY]
