Casual Gaming Hybrid: Sword & Poker

The Lord of Chaos has captured the Stone of Creation and secured it deep in the bowels of his dungeon. You play the hero who must retrieve the stone to save the world from peril.

Sword & Poker is an wonderful combo of video poker and dungeon crawler. It's easy to learn, but you'll find there is quite a bit of strategy involved as you battle beasties in poker duels.

Battles take place on a 5x5 grid. Each duel starts with nine cards dealt onto the center spots. You and your adversary battle to reduce their coins to zero, taking turns playing two cards to form poker hands. The better the hand created, the more coins that are depleted. Reduce a monster's coins to zero to win the battle.

Winning battles net you gold, sometimes gems (worth lots of gold) or charge coins (that replenish your coins during battle). You fight your way from the entrance of each basement level to the exit. There are typically less them 10 monsters per level. Clearing a level nets you even more gold.

Between levels, use gold to buy new bags, weapons and shields. Bags increase the maximum number of coins your take into battle. Weapons increase damage (coins that are depleted). Shields protect you from damage.

Magic offers another strategic element to the game. Cast spells to rearrange the cards on the board, exchange shields, regain coins, and affect other aspects of the game. Spells are gained from defeating boss monsters who guard the exits,  every five levels. Weapons and shields have magical abilities, too.

Sword & Poker is wonderfully addicting. What makes it a great game for casual gamers is that you can quit at any time and it saves the game at that point.  So, if you need to leave the game suddenly or you receive a phone call, you can return to the game exactly at the point you had left it.

As you can see from the screenshots, the visuals in this game are top-notch. The music and sound effects add to immerse you in this odd, yet entertaining, poker-battling world of evil unicorns, giant castle-beasts and clown-sorcerers.

And, the game doesn't end once you've defeated the Lord of Chaos. Many more maps are unlocked. (Which this WoowooMac writer is earnestly trying to defeat.)

Sword & Poker is a gem of a game and a must-have for casual gamers who enjoy easy-to-pickup gameplay coupled with a deviously strategic poker game, lightly flavored with RPG elements.

Sword & Poker is available for $3.99 from the App Store. A free Lite version is also available to try.