SolForge Fusion is a curious mix between trading card games and deck builders. While the physical card game has been available for some time now, the game has had a critical component missing. By design, SolForge Fusion has a 1:1 digital component for players who buy cards. At PAX East 2024, creator Justin Gary of Stone Blade Entertainment showed off a demo of the digital client. While it’s in an Early Access state, the game offers something distinct in the card game space.
SolForge Fusion fuses the physical and digital realms
Figuring out how to bridge the divide between a physical card game and its digital client is quite a challenge. Many companies try all kinds of solutions, but most just double dip on players. SolForge Fusion instead is what Stone Blade calls a “hybrid” deck game. What that means in practice is when you buy cards, you receive a code to get those exact same cards in the incoming client. Outside of any other detail, this method is a surprisingly good faith investment in players.
How Stone Blade achieves this comes down to how SolForge Fusion’s design works. Justin Gary explains that the entire game is made up of algorithmically generated half decks that can be combined together to create countless options. Gary boasted that the game already has more combinations than atoms in the universe, which I’m taking at his word. By splitting into half decks, players can mix and match parts and capture the customization of a TCG while not necessarily creating a metagame.
On the shoulders of giants
This might sound familiar to TCG players as they have wartime flashbacks to Keyforge, which also used algorithmic generation. Keyforge was done in pretty quickly. This was thanks to some mismanagement at the publisher level, but it was also pretty locked into whatever players got in their boxes, and had quite a bit of accessories. SolForge Fusion, by comparison, only really has one thing in common with Keyforge: the presence of Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering.
Garfield co-created SolForge Fusion with Justin Gary and Stone Blade Entertainment, and the knowledge between them is clear. SolForge Fusion doesn’t use any additional game pieces and has a backbone from the previous iteration of the game to build its mechanics. Playing the demo, the basics of the game were easy enough to grasp even without touching any cardboard. In fact, the digital client is likely a net benefit to learning.
Digital aids in learning SolForge Fusion
Like other contemporaries, SolForge Fusion’s digital client helps keep track of its various mechanics and executions. It’s very helpful as the game uses an initiative system to indicate action order, similar to the recent Star Wars Unlimited. The game board is a five lane system, cards play in any lane but where and when they can take action in those lanes varies on initiative. Playing cards also pull higher level versions of them out of the deck that can be played in later rotations of the match. It’s simple enough once the flow understood, but I definitely would have had a bit more issues getting that flow on the tabletop.
The client still has a way to go — Early Access definitely applies here. Digging further into the demo’s solo mode got me into some tough fights. I also see several effects that are not as clear and art assets missing. Clearly there’s still plenty of work to do, but that shouldn’t be a knock against the game. I can only imagine what kind of development work is like to make all the potential of SolForge Fusion’s cards work. It is a promising start as all the fundamentals do work as intended.
A very different TCG experience
Algorithmic generation of cards might bring balance issues. In playing with the demo, I did not find any particular issue of balance in the gameplay itself. My losses were more due to having to learn on the fly than any card being too powerful. Between the input of the good Dr. Garfield and the design sense of Justin Gary, himself a longtime Magic pro player, things seem to be in good hands. In fact, Gary has a deep dive into the game’s development and his own personal design experience published publicly. Given how much of game design is a secret, this is another great act of good faith.
SolForge Fusion’s demo is available now on Steam. While definitely a work in progress, for TCG and deck building game fans alike it’s worth a look. There’s enough difference in Fusion versus other games in this space. It’s also really hard to argue with the deal of getting those digital equivalents. No other TCG is willing to put that much into your pocket.
SolForge Fusion has an Early Access demo available now on Steam.
Featured images Stone Blade Entertainment
Travis Hymas is a freelance writer and self appointed Pokémon historian out of Salt Lake City, Utah. Known to be regularly obessive over pop culture topics, gaming discourse, and trading card games, he is a published critic featured on sites such as Uppercut and The Young Folks.
