Dire Wolf Digital has announced that they’ll be partnering up with Renegade Game Studios and Foxtrot Games to bring their award-winning two-player card game The Fox in the Forest to iOS, Android, and PC devices next week. The Fox in the Forest was designed by Joshua Buergel and originally released several years back as a physical card game of the “trick-taking" variety. Two players are each dealt 13 cards with the remaining cards in the deck used as a draw pile. Flip the top card in the draw pile over to reveal what the trump suit of that round. Each player will play one card from their hand with the trump suit and cards played determining which player wins the “trick" of each round. Play goes on until both players’ hands are empty and then you’ll tally up the score based on the tricks that each player has won.

One of the coolest elements in The Fox in the Forest is that it’s not necessarily about who can win the most tricks. The scoring tiers are such that winning too many can actually result in earning no points, so there is actually a pretty interesting and unique strategy to how you go about playing your cards and winning tricks. Another defining feature in this game are the special character cards like the woodcutter, swan, fox, and monarch that each have unique attributes or rules that can change up the current situation and allow a player to do some special things. Because of these cards and the game’s scoring system, The Fox in the Forest is a simplistic game on its surface but one that has a surprisingly deep strategic element.

What I love about games like this going digital is that it makes for something that could be somewhat cumbersome to manage in physical form and automates all that stuff for you. I mean a 13 card hand is a pretty large hand of cards to manage, and with the various rules and the special characters and what they do… it can be a lot, so I appreciate digital versions that just sort of handle everything and let you concentrate on playing. The Fox in the Forest will launch this coming Monday October 18th for $4.99 on iOS and Android and $6.99 on Steam. You can pre-order the iOS version on the App Store right now or Wishlist the PC version on its Steam page.