Hearthstone

This is a turn-based free-to-play card game that involves two players competing against each other. It is extremely easy to pick up and enjoy, and it helps that the game and user interface is well-designed. What do I like?

Cards

By making virtual cards collectible and craft-able, players are encouraged to continue playing for gold, which allows purchase of missions and card packs.

Card packs contain random cards, but each card may only appear twice in a deck. So the designers made it easy to mass-disenchant (recycle) the cards into dusts, a currency for constructing cards later.

Back of the card can have different designs and they are great to look at. There are different designs that you receive as a promotion (buying another Blizzard game, for example), or completing objectives during a certain period.

Front of the card is illustrated by different artists from various other media. Similar to physical collectible cards, there are golden versions of normal cards with animated effects.

There are only 30-cards per deck, allowing matches to finish quickly.

Simple Math and UI Cues

The game often involves calculating potential damage a card must overcome, should it decide to attack another card. There are no complex, fractional math involved. An UI hint appears if executing a move will result in destroying the card.

Cards have decorations that self-identifies their properties. A lightning symbol to denote ability that triggers on an action. A skull for ability that takes place after a card is destroyed. Hovering over the cards to see more information. Cards that must be destroyed first are decorated like a shield.

Tavern Brawl

The more cards a player has, the more option for building decks and holding combination of cards that puts new players at a disadvantage.

However, there is a weekly Tavern Brawl where unique rules levels the playing field somewhat. The first victory of each week rewards a card pack, a great way to reward loyal players and help them feel that they are making progress in expanding their card collections.

Some weeks are memorable:

• At each turn, choose from 3 cards and build your desk as you play.
• A deck that contains a portal card that randomly provides a card with reduced activation requirement.
• At each turn, player with less health gets extra cards to help out.

Limited Communication Options

There are a few fixed messages you can send to your opponents. This allows some forms of interaction and communication between players without risking harassment.

The messages themselves change depending on the selected avatar, but otherwise they deliver simple messages such as: "thank you", "sorry", "hello", etc.