Nowhere Prophet

 PC
User Score
6.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 36 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 19 out of 36
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 36
  3. Negative: 11 out of 36

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  1. The_Unrest_Cure
    Sep 23, 2020
    4
    Nowhere Prophet sounds like a great game on paper: roguelike card-battling strategy game in an interesting setting filled with tough choices ... but it falls so flat for so much promise. It attempts to channel some parts of games like Slay the Spire but badly misfires: like Slay the Spire you are saddled with cards that cost an increasing amount to remove from your deck. But unlike SlayNowhere Prophet sounds like a great game on paper: roguelike card-battling strategy game in an interesting setting filled with tough choices ... but it falls so flat for so much promise. It attempts to channel some parts of games like Slay the Spire but badly misfires: like Slay the Spire you are saddled with cards that cost an increasing amount to remove from your deck. But unlike Slay the Spire, the amount of cards that you start your deck with is too large to be wieldy and you find the use of some cards so counter-productive that using them is suicide. Why? Because your actual combat cards - your followers - can only die twice in combat before their card is REMOVED from your deck. So you find that the AI opponent specializes in attacking your cards rather than your character ... which is a hideously bad mechanic as the only way to acquire new followers is to spend the SAME CURRENCY you need to hoard to remove leader cards. Want to buy that Legendary card with great stats and wonderful combat buffs? Well, don't play him unless you are certain he won't die. Yes, you can heal your cards, but that mechanic is so rarely encountered in rest camps compared to the number of battles you fight (we did say this was a roguelike, right? So pretty much there are battles and bad things happening everywhere ... even after you beat the boss at the end of each chapter) that you pretty much have an endless churn of combat followers, which dilutes any strategic deck-building you may want to do. The price of combat is so high, so affecting, that it overwhelms the permadeath mechanic and instead just leaves you frustrated at how whimsical and brittle the system is. And that is on the easy difficulty. I'll freely admit I didn't even bother on harder difficulties. I couldn't glean much fun on the easy one, and that after several "lives" and new game starts after dying.
    The gist here is to "level" up and unlock new perks that increase your character's chance of survival, while simultaneously opening up new starting decks ("convoys") and higher powered buffs/de-buffs. And that I can appreciate. But unlike Slay the Spire, where you can learn to beat the bosses with minor modifications to your deck and even starting cards have some use, you will find enemies (particularly bosses) have a depth of cards that you would drool over. Buffs which you cannot acquire are played by your enemies 3 or 4 times ... sometimes in 1 turn. After many hours playing I realized the reason the enemies go after your followers rather than generally attacking you is that there decks are so much better they would wipe the floor with you if they actually played like a human. That level of gimping is simply ridiculous. You aren't meant to win. You are meant to grind. Slay the Spire allows you to craft a deck that is focused. Nowhere Prophet throws random cards at you and then kills a good portion of what you choose under the guise of being a roguelike. In a roguelike you are meant to learn the way to win by struggle. In Nowhere Prophet you only learn to delete the game.    … Expand
  2. protopostokolo
    Aug 17, 2019
    9
    Reviweing the game after finishing it first time on the normal difficulty, that took approx.24 hrs., and i get a lot of fun along the ride.

    TLDR - it is really good game, fresh take on deck-building genre with addition of positioning and plenty of other interesting mechanics. If you like Slay the Spire -HS -MtG there is a good chance you are going to like Nowhere Prophet too. Art is    Reviweing the game after finishing it first time on the normal difficulty, that took approx.24 hrs., and i get a lot of fun along the ride.

    TLDR - it is really good game, fresh take on deck-building genre with addition of positioning and plenty of other interesting mechanics. If you like Slay the Spire -HS -MtG there is a good chance you are going to like Nowhere Prophet too. Art is really good, music and writing are nice, figuring out how stuff works and synergize is a real catch. Also developers are very responsive.

    Regarding the difficulty stuff that is bothering some people - to a certain extent this is true. In the current state (v.1.0024) the most viable tactic is rush-control indeed, at least at the first stages. However further down the path when enemies grow stronger and thicker and you obtain more cards and abilities it seizes to be the "one-answer-for-all". Since by this point you probably got enough equipment and abilities to build some nice combos around: just for the reference, with good hand I was able to mow down first fase of the final boss in 3 turns, of which 80% of damage was done in the last due to some sweet synergies.    … Expand
  3. wilderplain
    Aug 11, 2020
    5
    This one has OK gameplay and style. Games are pretty long though, 1.5-3 hours per run. But there's where the trouble comes in. The game can be punishing the way roguelikes are, but each run is too long to learn things the hard way. And the losses can be extremely unfair. In a good hard game you will lose and lose but want to keep playing, a bad hard game will only make you feel cheated.This one has OK gameplay and style. Games are pretty long though, 1.5-3 hours per run. But there's where the trouble comes in. The game can be punishing the way roguelikes are, but each run is too long to learn things the hard way. And the losses can be extremely unfair. In a good hard game you will lose and lose but want to keep playing, a bad hard game will only make you feel cheated. This one is the latter.… Expand
  4. serialmind
    Aug 9, 2019
    10
    Other reviewer has an issue with ONE ability in a complicated strategy game, that's the only reason he's leaving a bad review. It's not game breaking in any ways, you get robust units too. There are lots of ways of dealing with them.

    Moving along, this is a fantastic game, on par with Slay the Spire. It's wasteland style rogue like. You get a colony of 50-70 cards together over the    Other reviewer has an issue with ONE ability in a complicated strategy game, that's the only reason he's leaving a bad review. It's not game breaking in any ways, you get robust units too. There are lots of ways of dealing with them.

    Moving along, this is a fantastic game, on par with Slay the Spire. It's wasteland style rogue like. You get a colony of 50-70 cards together over the course of a few hours. There are lots of variable card stats to keep it interesting, for example cards become wounded when killed. This reduces their cost and HP by 1, so you avoid the problem of knowing exactly the stats for every card. The abilities are varied and fun. There are tons of rare/exotic/ultra exotic cards everywhere.. I love the game system, it's extremely fun to play.

    Perfect game to play this summer if you like strategy deck building rogue like card games.    … Expand
  5. Mercent
    Jul 22, 2019
    5
    There are units with a Robust tag: everytime you kill them, they move backwards 1 space instead of being killed; and then there is a skill called Taunt: you have no choice but to attack units with Taunt. Now imagine this: an emey with Robust units & Taunt skill. What do you think will happen? You deal a killing blow at this Robut+Taunt unit, killing your own unit (enemy units retaliates),There are units with a Robust tag: everytime you kill them, they move backwards 1 space instead of being killed; and then there is a skill called Taunt: you have no choice but to attack units with Taunt. Now imagine this: an emey with Robust units & Taunt skill. What do you think will happen? You deal a killing blow at this Robut+Taunt unit, killing your own unit (enemy units retaliates), and what do you achieve? Nothing, because that enemy unit is only pushed back; and next turn, it promptly moves itself back to the front. To make matters worse, enemy leaders will always Bolster this unit to give more attack power, so you have to sacrifice your own units to push it back by killing it (remember, since it has taunt, you can ONLY attack this unit!) and achieve nothing.

    Ok, so do you see the issue now? But no matter, i should be able to cheese the AI by using the same tactics right? Possibly, but you need to get lucky, REAL lucky to come across Robust units and to learn the Taunt-applying skills, and even so, you have to be lucky to draw this Robust units during your turn. You need luck luck luck but the enemy only need to get lucky once and you are in trouble.

    The dev needs to implement a new mechanism (how about ability to select 1 unit that will always be drawn) to reduce the element of luck: what use of careful construction deck but at the end of the day, luck is what wins out?

    Edit: I editted my rage review to be more fair, also btw, the art is gorgeous, simply amazing.
    Edit2: Nope. Nope. This game is still BS. Save yourself some frustration until the dev fix this pile of garbage.    … Expand
  6. auditbadger
    Jun 25, 2020
    7
    I think that this is truly a unique game and I would recommend that if you are a fan of this type of genre then I think you should give this game a try.
  7. Sdric
    Apr 20, 2021
    0
    Nowhere Prophet is a roguelike with nice visuals and solid effort put into dialogue choices, in the process the devs however forgot to think about replay-ability. The game lacks varied starting options, enemy types are few - and due to more or less RNG card acquisition, building dedicated archetype decks doesn't work. Yet, the game is easy enough to play it through in my first everNowhere Prophet is a roguelike with nice visuals and solid effort put into dialogue choices, in the process the devs however forgot to think about replay-ability. The game lacks varied starting options, enemy types are few - and due to more or less RNG card acquisition, building dedicated archetype decks doesn't work. Yet, the game is easy enough to play it through in my first ever attempt. It wasn't a bad experience, but I have no incentive to ever play it again - which makes me feel like this isn't a roguelike, but rather a relatively short adventure game.… Expand
  8. Blackbone
    Oct 29, 2019
    9
    Very interesting setting with nice twist and challenging mechanics. The art style is compelling, i had a lot of fun with this fresh take on this genre.
  9. juba08
    Feb 8, 2020
    9
    NOWHERE PROPHET is a nice game that mixes deck builders with turn-based combat.
  10. Odogg2210
    Apr 14, 2021
    0
    I desperately wanted to like this game, I saw it was on game pass and since game pass had other good card games like Monster Train and Slay the Spire I was excited. However I was met with a soul-crushingly hard game. And not fair like other difficult games but to the degree that it made the game unfun. For example after every area you complete you are met with a city, these cities are theI desperately wanted to like this game, I saw it was on game pass and since game pass had other good card games like Monster Train and Slay the Spire I was excited. However I was met with a soul-crushingly hard game. And not fair like other difficult games but to the degree that it made the game unfun. For example after every area you complete you are met with a city, these cities are the only places that you can heal and they have a 5 charge healing, and they cost food which you need to travel, and it heals your leader and cards separately. The thought of including a mechanic that deliberately makes you use your legendary cards less is dumb. Also the enemy attacks your followers even when it is smarter not to because they want to do this.… Expand
  11. vaderboi
    Feb 17, 2020
    10
    What I love about Nowhere Prophet is that it combines the turn-based deck-building genre with the rogue-lite survival genre. Every game of combat you have access to two decks- one has your convoy (creature) cards and the other has your leader (spells) cards. There is a stunning amount of variety of cards and strategies at your disposal. In combat, you don't just have to manage your lifeWhat I love about Nowhere Prophet is that it combines the turn-based deck-building genre with the rogue-lite survival genre. Every game of combat you have access to two decks- one has your convoy (creature) cards and the other has your leader (spells) cards. There is a stunning amount of variety of cards and strategies at your disposal. In combat, you don't just have to manage your life points but you have to make sure your units don't die. If your unit is killed in two games of combat without healing, it is lost forever. This unit management system makes every game of combat incredibly tense as you can't sacrifice units willy-nily. On top of this, you have to consistently manage how much food and hope that your convoy has. Especially in the hardest difficulty, Doomed, you have to carefully consider ever tile you choose to move to and every single game of combat. The game also includes a highly original Indian-inspired approach to the post-apocalyptic genre, bold art, and great replayability (I have put at least 200 hours in to this game).

    Please play this game. I have no idea why the user and critic scores are so low. (On Opencritic the game gets an 84; this is very different from the 73 that it gets on Metacritic)    … Expand
  12. Vesh--
    Mar 29, 2020
    0
    By far one of the worst games I've ever played. Completely unbalanced and overly hard even on the easiest mode.
  13. jsvangeffen
    Aug 2, 2020
    10
    This game is highly underrated IMO. The game is beautiful, the combat is extremely deep, and story is really compelling. In addition, the developer is extremely active on Discord and Reddit. If you enjoy the deck building rogue-like genre or wanna give it a try, definitely pick this up.
  14. MortalisUmbra
    Mar 8, 2022
    10
    Let me be clear: the game is HARD! Even in easy mode.
    Is the best deckbuilder I ever played (besides Slay the Spire) the art is outstanding, the world is well build, and had a lot of lore, the card mechanics are of the best in a deckbuilder like EVER! it's seen unforgiven at first, but when you take the grasp of in, things start to work, addictive as hell! Prepare yourself to die a lot!

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
73

Mixed or average reviews - based on 8 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 8
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 8
  3. Negative: 0 out of 8
  1. Edge Magazine
    Aug 15, 2019
    50
    Defeat in Nowhere Prophet can be creeping, as your resources drain away, or sudden, as you fall victim to an unexpected combination of cards. Either way, it feels like playing against an opponent who overturns the table when they win, leaving you to gather up the spilled cards. It'll be another couple of hours before you have a deck that feels unique, before you escape the mire of enemies and text events you've seen a dozen times. It's enough to make you a sore loser. [Issue#336, p.118]
  2. Meristation
    Aug 9, 2019
    78
    Nowhere Prophet combines two very different genres: TCG and roguelike, to create a hybrid experience that surprises in how organic it feels. The card-based combat has depth and weight, and adds to the game a sense or permanent loss that feels great.
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  3. Strategy Gamer
    Aug 6, 2019
    80
    I love the music, the electro-Indian soundtrack is so wonderfully unique and gives the journey such a magnificent texturing. The various factions with their distinctive styles, like the Blue Devils that voluntarily allow themselves to become infected and die young in order to become more powerful. Sharkbomb Studios have done fantastically to create a gameworld that feels unique to the point that I, even more than usual, want more games based on cultures outside the usual UK, US, Japan influence. And while I have harked on the gameplay, I actually really enjoy it up until the inevitable unfair fight that brings me to my old friend, the Game Over screen. It’s much like FTL. Yay, yay, yay, ooh close one, yay, no, what, stop it, bugger off, f*** this game, repeat.
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