Gather ’round children, and let me regale you with a story about the olden times. Specifically, January of 2010. This is when developer Gaia first released Sword & Poker to the App Store. Back in those earlier days of mobile gaming you’d frequently get some unassuming game released with zero fanfare that would turn out to be one of the most clever concepts you’ve ever seen, and that was indeed the case with Sword & Poker. It blended the mechanics of Poker with elements of role-playing games, and back then that was still a somewhat new and novel concept. Sword & Poker and its sequel were considered legendary amongst the mobile gaming crowd, alongside other hidden gem favorites like Game Dev Story, Dungeon Raid, and Tiny Wings.
Then in 2014 it all came crashing down. Konami bought the Sword & Poker IP and released a new entry titled Sword & Poker Adventures. In many ways it brought some welcome modern flourishes to the original 2010 formula, but it also opted for a pretty unappealing free-to-play pay model as opposed to the buy-once games that came before it, and it really never reached the level of acclaim that its older siblings did. Nowadays, more than a decade later, and none of the Sword & Poker games appear to be available anymore. And in cases like these sometimes you have to rely on an indie developer to dust off a long-gone idea like Sword & Poker and take their own stab at recreating it. Enter developer Bigfoot Gaming with their own “stab" called The Golden Caravan.
The core gameplay is straight out of Sword & Poker. A 5×5 grid with the interior 9 squares filled in with random cards, and 4 cards dealt to each player. You take turns placing cards around the outside edge to create a Poker hand either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. The type of hand you make determines the amount of damage you’ll deal. There’s also special weapons you can collect and equip that will augment some aspects of your play, like how much damage a particular hand deals or giving you shielding against certain hands dealt by your opponent. If you’ve played any of the Sword & Poker games before then things will feel very similar in The Golden Caravan.
The biggest departure here is thematically. The Golden Caravan has a 1930s-era gangster vibe and Art Deco-inspired visuals. Your grandfather is kidnapped by a local mob boss and you set out to rescue him, Poker-battling all manner of street toughs as you work your way up floor by floor in the Golden Caravan casino, making your way towards the boss. It’s a theme that works, and you can see it in action for yourself with a new playable demo available on the game’s Itch.io page. The demo is not mobile-friendly, so you’ll need a desktop or laptop browser, but The Golden Caravan is planned for release on mobile devices in addition to PC and in the meantime you can talk about this one over in our forums.
