58 Macworld • February 2022MAC GAMING
side of teenage life, and our only
complaint is that the keyboard-and-
mouse controls felt a bit clumsy so
you’ll progress more smoothly if you
have a proper game controller to help
you out.CARD GAMES
6.Artifact
Price: Free from fave.co/3lRZYes
Artifact, a card game based on the
popular DOTA battler, got mixed
reviews when it was first launched
back in 2018. The developers at Valve
quickly started work on Artifact 2.0,
but for various reasons decided the
game was a bit of a dead end; they
renamed Artifact 2.0 as Artifact
Foundry, while the original Artifact
1.0 became Artifact Classic, and now- if you’ve managed to keep up with
that convoluted potted history – both
versions are free
on Steam.
We’ll focus
on Foundry,
as that’s the
‘new’ version,
and offers more
streamlined
gameplay than
the rather
complicated
Classic.
Artifact Foundry starts with a
tutorial that introduces the basic
concepts of the game. As with most
card games, you face your opponent
across a board that represents the
battle zone, and then play various
cards that represent ‘creeps’ – basic
melee fighters – as well as heroes with
special abilities, and various magical
spells that you can cast yourself
(including delights such as ‘viscous
nasal goo’ which chips away at an
enemy’s health points).
However, Artifact ramps up the
complexity by splitting the battle zone
into three lanes, each with a tower
you have to attack. The placement
of each card therefore becomes very
important, especially as you have
to place different types of card in a
specific order before getting down to
the nitty-gritty of combat.6.