Games within games are not really a new concept. There is a whole genre of titles like WarioWare that feature collections of mini-games within an overarching framing device. There is the ridiculous list of side activities that can be done in titles such as in the Grand Theft Auto and Yakuza franchises, though those things are usually based on real-world time killers like golf and Mahjong. Then there are those one-shot moments like playing Crash Bandicoot in an Uncharted game. However, despite this idea existing in games for ages, we rarely see a game within a game become a self-contained thing of its own. The aforementioned examples that exist on their own were already established activities and games. I would be foolish not to mention street racing title Project Gotham Racing, that did have a secret multi-directional shooter mini-game that later became the Geometry Wars franchise, but today’s title goes even beyond that. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is a single-player adventure deck-building title that is a game using the rules of a game within another game, to tell a new and exciting story in the universe of The Witcher franchise.
For those unfamiliar, The Witcher is a mature dark fantasy franchise that features a Netflix series and a video game series, based on a Polish short story and novel series by Andrzej Sapkowski. Its a series of series, you could say. The franchise shares a very brutalist and severe world, filled with warring nations and home to horrific beasts. The monsters and apparitions are based on Celtic, Polish, and other European folkloric creatures, with some of the storylines even paralleling popular fairy and folk tales. Despite all of that, the franchise also features an interesting mix of humor with its darkness, complex and morally grey characters, and killer lute jams. In the middle of all the madness stand the titular Witchers, a group of mutated individuals, trained in ancient arts of combat, alchemy, and haggling, who hold the delightful career of “monster mashers.”
Typically, the stories within The Witcher follow one such professional by the name of Geralt of Rivia -a charming though stoic ashen haired badass- as he mashes monsters and romances magical ladies. The third game in the series, Wild Hunt, introduced players to a deep and rewarding card game called Gwent that can be played at one’s leisure between missions. It even had its own dedicated side missions involving beating Gwent masters and collecting their top-level cards. The game is very similar to Magic the Gathering in style, with beautiful artwork depicting monsters, soldiers, and locations throughout the world of The Witcher franchise. It is based around overpowering your opponent’s army within three rounds, with trading cards representing individual units on a battlefield. Each card has a number representing different strength levels, as well as different skills specific to each unit’s type, which can lower your opponent’s numerical values or raise your squad’s. A player wins by having their total battlefield value surpass that of their opponent's, in two out of three rounds. It’s a bit more complicated than can or even should be explained in a review, but the fun is in mastering the rules and collecting the cards anyway.
So much fun in fact, that The Witcher developers CD Projekt Red decided to make Gwent its own separate game (free to play now!). This separate title allowed players to finally use those hundreds of hours of playing against the AI serfs of The Witcher 3 to compete against each other. The game within the game had a life of its own. Now, this entire history digression may seem a bit superfluous, but a foundation needed to be laid to make sense of the game we came here to talk about in the first place: Thronebreaker.
Okay, so of course you all have heard of the phenomenon known as Gwent, best card game in the Valley of Plenty (Flowers). Well, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is a singleplayer story-driven Gwent experience, and it does a wonderful job with the absurd concept it shows up with. The story’s framing device is set up as a tale being told by a mysterious captive man. The mercenaries that have taken him into their custody have decided to stop at an inn for a few pints and respite. To kill the time, the men play a few hands of Gwent, and as they do their mysterious mark uses the actions of their game to tell of the adventures of Meve, Queen of Lyria and Rivia. It’s a neat way to set the story up and is told with full narration and spoken dialogue, and through beautiful comic book style artwork that has a similar hand-drawn but three-dimensional look of the comic based titles from Telltale Games, such as The Walking Dead series.
This gorgeous looking art style is prevalent throughout, with the bulk of the game taking place on isometric style maps in locations not visited in prior Witcher games. It’s both a new look at parts of a potentially familiar world, but a unique visual style that fits the grim and brutal tone of the franchise while bringing bright, detailed, and colorful sights unseen previously. The story being focused on just the human side of things is very cool too, seeing the world through the eyes of a ruler and warrior, but also folks not nearly as prepared to fight ghoulish abominations as a silver sword-swinging superhuman. You control the Queen around the map, collecting materials needed to build up your camp for bonuses, gain troops to help with side tasks, and gold to pay for it all. You will find yourself running into citizens in need of aid or caves that can be explored, and these play out as a series of choices, where giving supplies to help someone will gain your soldiers some morale, and sending your men into a cave could lose morale or lives while gaining a gold reward. You will also find yourself needing to make serious decisions about whether or not to execute criminals where they stand or whether you and your men attend a wedding you pass by. Just as you would find in the main games of the franchise, these choices are rarely clear cut, just as often end badly for at least one poor soul, and feel just as conflicting as anything found in the hundreds of hours of the main titles.
Of course, these moral quandaries are not the core of the gameplay, as that is of course based around a modified form of Gwent. Each battle, bandit ambush, and rock slide is played out through a hand of Gwent, often having interesting rule tweaks or stipulations for success. There are even optional puzzle battles with one round limits and very strict stipulations that truly test your knowledge of the game. They are really fun ways to mix up the standard play, and are often satisfying challenges. If you do get stuck, you can easily forfeit and retry with very little time to wait. Specific story missions move the plot forward, but there are often plenty of discoverable side hands to play, and they often give lots of goodies including new cards for your deck. The deck-building is simplified and you have to spend resources to make more of each type of card you collect. Since the army is streamlined, it is a bit easier to build a deck as you go and doesn’t feel as overwhelming as having a hundred cards slapped down and being told to just pick twenty-five to forty of them. It’s actually a great way to introduce someone to the basics of Gwent. And for those that are itching to test their skills past that level, there is an online multiplayer mode that is just good old Gwent classic.
If you are a fan of collectible card games like Magic the Gathering, if you’re a newcomer to that genre but enjoy learning tabletop games, if you’re a fan of the world of The Witcher whether you spent hours on Gwent or not, Thronebreaker might be a game worth checking out. Six hours in didn’t get me as far as I would have thought for a game as seemingly simple as this one, and it is easy to drop in and out of. It just dropped on the Xbox Game Pass this week, so it’s definitely worth a try for subscribers. Otherwise, it is only $19.99 on Xbox One, PS4, and PC, which is still a steal for something as unique and fun as this title. Toss a coin, and play a hand.