I’ve been putting a bit of time into PoxNora, a fun collectible, turn-based, tactical fantasy game for the PC. Right now it’s in open beta (go sign up and play!) and the small team behind it have done a fantastic job.

The core idea behind it is the player buys booster packs of ‘runes’ (like cards in Magic: The Gathering) and then by selecting twenty of these builds a deck to play against other people with. The game is played out on a small battlefield where your creature runes are moved around and spell runes are cast, effecting play.

‘Nora’, the power to cast your runes, is gathered at the start of each turn from your home ‘shrine’ and also from wild ‘nora fonts’ the players can capture. The battles usually last around 30 minutes and end up a lot of fun. Once the battle is over (won by destroying the enemy’s shrine), your creature runes get experience points to spend to upgrade stats and abilities.

While the game is in beta you can sign up and play with the basic free deck as well as spend $50 worth of credit on game boosters. From my play it would seem that you would need to spend around $40 to $50 when the game goes live (August) in order to have a competitive deck. That being said, the game will also allow you to trade runes, so you could spend less and trade to the sort of deck you want.

I encourage everyone to go have a look. It’s web and Java-based and very straight forward. Have a look at their Getting Started information and take it from there. Lets support independent developers working on neat games.