I never liked card battle games. They always cost too much to make up for my lack of brain power that makes playing other game genres difficult. If you are like me, I am happy to let you know that our prayer for a game we can play while not getting bankrupt has been answered by Code of Arms
In this unique card battle game players discover cards by scanning barcodes of household items or internet generated barcodes. When a barcode is scanned, a player will ‘discover’ an item, which has cards that can either heal, attack, buff, debuff, and more! With luck, one can find a rare item meaning that item links to cards with more sophisticated functions or have more than one cards attached to it. By equipping their avatar with found items the player decides what cards they want to play.
This way players can just ‘find’ cards they like and stop paying tens and hundreds of dollars to find that one card to play the game the way they want it. In fact, going through your pantry and medicine cabinet in search of rarities can be an enjoyable and fun thing to do. Truly, Code of Arms is a breakthrough in this genre.
I won’t deny that Code of Arms is crudely drawn. In fact, it looks worse than any game I have seen since 2000. The game looks like an unholy cross between 80’s Nintendo and Atari games. But I am sure the developer can hire a real artist to make the game look better with all the money this game will bring even if it’s free to download. Otherwise, this game is perfect.
Well, there is another thing: the battles, which are the primary activity of the game are kind of pointless. When a player encounters an enemy, he/she can either fight or go around and check another tile. Sadly, it is best to avoid fights as much as possible, even though there aren’t really much to do in the game. The battles don’t benefit you in any way. It will feel great to annihilate a rat with the newly found magic bolt from a bottle of vitamin D, but since the goal of the game is to go as far as you can without dying, any damage to your health is a loss.
However, a player is forced to kill enemies because one of those enemies holds a key that opens the door to next stage, so every battle is a gamble for the key.
As you can imagine, this limits the player’s strategy of adopting a safe and passive playstyle. Furthermore, as mentioned before, playable cards are bound to the items that player found, which means set cards are stuck together. This makes nearly impossible for a player to customize a deck to their liking.
Regardless, Code of Arms is a fresh idea deserving a recognition. What’s great is that all the problems of this game are fixable and the game itself is fun and enjoyable to play casually. If you always wanted to play a game of this genre but didn’t have money because you had to buy food to survive it is definitely worth giving this game a go because you can make cards out of your groceries!
