Hey @kenken11, Yes, the game is being reviewed by Apple and the ETA is December 01. #UPDATED ETA is confirmed to next saturday: http://on.fb.me/Y6ODrP
I had the honor of getting a sneak peek of the game and it is a blast! At first it might be easy to think you're dealing with a blatant Runespell clone, I mean they both are based on attacking via poker hands while receiving damage from opponents striking back at fixed intervals, the actual gameplay of the two are pretty different. In Poker Knight, you're playing a mean game of Fantasy Texas Hold'em. You are dealt 2 cards into your hand and then have 8 cards up top to choose from to make your ideal hand. Create a valid poker hand and all of the cards actively involved in that Poker Ranking (like in a hand of "K, K, 9, 10, K, 4" only the 3 Ks will count against your opponent) will fire off like little card shurikens at your opponent. The damage these cards do is based on both the individual card rankings (an Ace does a lot more damage than a Two) and the Poker Ranking they were used in (sure both "2 Pair" and "4 of a Kind" use 4 cards, each card in a "4 of a Kind" is going to do a shoot load more damage). While the above is enough to make a cute take on High Fantasy Battle Poker, I love this game's deep card counting strategic layer! Once a hand is created the active cards are fired off at the baddy and then the remaining cards are burned from right to left to get the player back down to 2 cards (if you used more than 3 cards in your last hand, new cards are dealt to fill in for the initial 2 cards of your hand you can never choose yourself). So if you think you can just burn some useless cards with a "High Card" hand, only the highest card is fired off and the remaining 4 will remain left behind with the 2 furthest right cards get burned damaging you based on their value (again an Ace is much more nasty to leave behind than a Two). So unless you want to eat a bunch of cards you really need to figure out how to use all of your deck of cards effectively (paying as much attention as you can to which cards have already been played from this deck). On top of this sort of battle vs. yourself, there are these opponents that will chime in every couple of hands to damage and tweak your nose. Like a Goblin who will steal valuable cards or a Mage that loves to curse random cards in your hand (cursed cards don't actually damage your opponent when fired off and, as long as there are cursed cards in your hand, any damage you take is doubled). Each stage plays out a bit like Sword and Poker with a map of a trail through the land with a series of encounters leading up to the stage's big end boss encounter. Once you clear a stage your overall performance in that stage is rated 1-5 stars based on your combined score as well how quickly you complete the individual levels of the stage. 5/5 P.S. At the start and end of each stage you get a bit of a cheesy story to tie all of this together.
