Remember back in the day when computers weren't all that common; back when Windows 95 was cutting edge technology, and the internet was this big mysterious place you could only see by using keywords on AOL 3.0? Well, back then there were a couple award winning games for the PC: Solitaire, Minesweeper, and of course Hearts. If you were anything like me back in those days, you would go into the local computer store after school and just play hearts for hours on their store demos computers. If that is the case, then I assure you, you have already played and mastered
Parallel Worlds, a new “trump based” trading card game available by mail order over the internet. (Yes, I know I could have just asked whether or not you have played hearts before, but then I wouldn't have been able to tell you that tidbit of info about my grade school life and you would have all missed out, so ha).
I'm not being facetious here,
Parallel Worlds is basically Hearts, or Spades, or any other trump based card game you may or may not have played on a computer or with your grandma. I mean there are a couple differences. First of all the deck is only half as big, using a 25 card deck with only 6 cards per suit instead of a full deck of 52. Second of all, the suits are elemental based and the cards have either aliens or hot chicks printed on them so I suppose in that aspect it's a version of Hearts (actually closer to Spades but fewer people know Spades) that is vastly superior to the original.
Parallel Worlds (much like Hearts or Spades) is designed to be played with four players. There are rules for 1v1, 3 and 4 person free for all, and various types of team play but 2v2 team seems to be the order of the day. Players play together on teams but cannot communicate information to each other so there is still quite a bit of luck involved. Teams each start the game at 11 points, and the basic goal of the game is for a team to reduce their points to zero.
The basic way a round is played in
Parallel Worlds first consists of a dealer distributing five cards to everyone. There is a particular pattern described in the rulebook about how this is to be done, with 2 cards dealt to the opponents and 3 to yourself and your teammate during the first revolution and vice versa on the second. Don't fool yourself though, no one listens to these rules and you always end up dealing just like you would in any other card game. After that, a random card from the pile of cards left over is turned face up. Players then get to decide whether that card's suit is the “Portal Suit” (the trump). A person-by-person voting process of “accept or decline” (with specific rules being adhered to depending on who accepts or declines) is then followed to see if the Portal Suit sticks or not. Once a suit has finally be chosen the round can start.
Rounds in
Parallel worlds are very simple. Each player in sequence plays one card, starting with the dealer, or whoever won the last hand. Once everyone has played, the player who put down the highest ranked card of the portal suit wins the hand (also called a temporal in this instance). This goes on until all cards in all player's hands have been used. The team that won the most temporals loses one point (if they were the team that chose the portal suit) or two (if they weren't or if they won all 5 temporals). In addition, players can choose to play a round alone without their teammate's help. If they win all 5 temporals in this case they subtract 4 points from their score.
There are 4 suits in
Parallel Worlds, Earth, Air, Water, and Fire, and one card of a fifth suit the “Portal Stone”. The Portal Stone is a catch all trump card that beats any other card played and there is only one in the deck. Each other suit has 6 cards in it, ranked from lowest to highest: Gatekeeper, Archangel, Paladin, Priestess, Spellmaster, and Emperor. Unfortunately, though there is nothing on the cards themselves that allows you to easily tell what rank beats what rank so until you can memorize it you will be looking at the rank list in the rulebook quite often. All I'm saying is a number or a symbol of some sort would have helped quite a bit.
Something else that is a little interesting about
Parallel Worlds is that the lowest ranked cards, the gatekeepers, are actually all dual-suited. This works out so that at any time there is a Portal Suit chosen, there will be in fact two gatekeepers of that suit. Factoring this in along with the Portal Stone means that the ranking system will always include 8 cards in the trump suit.
That's really it. I'm not trying to set the world's record for shortest game description here, that's all there is to it. It's just like any other trump based game. There are no card stats, no rarities, no nothing, just a deck and people ready to play it, so you can even play
Parallel Worlds right out of the box if you want to. So how is this a trading card game you ask? Well I'm glad you asked that question because I might not have gotten to it otherwise.
Players are able to buy expansions to the
Parallel Worlds game and swap the cards from those expansions in and out of their
Parallel Worlds deck. They can swap fire cards for fire cards and emperors for emperors and really any card of the same element and rank for another card of the same element and rank (but different picture or house). However, this change is really just cosmetic. The game never actually changes very much, and since you need one deck to split between 4 people anyway it's not as if deck building is a major factor in competitive play. The only reason you would trade
Parallel Worlds cards is for sheer art and collector's value. This makes
Parallel Worlds a lot less of a Trading Card Game and a lot more of a card game you just so happen to trade.
So through all the muck of
Parallel Worlds basically being a glorified version of Hearts, what on earth (or in the case off of earth) could be the appeal to TCGplayers like ourselves? Well the answer is simple, FLAVOR. This game is absolutely dripping with flavor. The art on each individual card is absolutely beautiful and high quality. The strange alien races depicted are beyond normal imagination and the artists are very highly skilled. Considering the only reason to collect
Parallel Worlds cards is for the different types of art, I would say they very much have that aspect covered. I actually have some
Parallel Worlds cards hung on my wall in a collage simply because of how gorgeous they all are.
In addition, the story is really enthralling, so enthralling I can't even accurately describe it while doing it justice. There is time travel, sci-fi action, and a war to essentially control god. Holy crap! Each single card has a back-story and a character history that which you can look up on the official
Parallel Worlds website. I really wish that the creators of this game would come out with a novel or something. I want to see what happens next, but I don't want to have to buy another set of cards to do so.
I'm going to wrap it up here, because while I would normally talk about support and community, there is really none of either when it comes to
Parallel Worlds so I don't have much more to say. The game is a glorified version of Hearts or Spades or whatever trump based card game you like the most. If you are into that sort of thing, you will find that
Parallel Worlds is masterfully crafted with wonderful art and a great back-story, thus making it superior to playing with a normal 52 card playing card deck. However, if you aren't into that sort of thing, I'm not going to lie
Parallel Worlds probably isn't the game for you.
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Presentation Rating = 8.5
The art is beautiful and the story is wonderful. If you are going to purchase Parallel Worlds for ANY reason purchase it for the presentation.
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Gameplay Rating = 6.0
I repeat, it's still just a trump based card game.
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Support Rating = 5.0
There have been rumors about tournaments (along with announcements on the website) and about expansions but we haven't seen either yet. In addition, the rules are a little vaguely written, but common sense prevents that from being too much of a hang up.
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Innovation Rating = 6.0
Having a customizable trump based card game is kind of cool, but in the end that's all it is. It was a cool idea and I do want to see more TCGs toy around with communal deck construction, but otherwise it's still just a trump based card game.
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