by Arithmetic has never been so strangely fun as in Calculords, a collectible card game from developer Ninja Crime and comedy writer Seanbaby that puts math calculations at its very core. It has a bit of a learning curve, and its NES-inspired retro art style may prove divisive, but there’s a lot to like once you get over that initial hump. Computer-controlled opponents give as good as — or even better than — they get, complete with snappy taunts and humorous sci-fi-referencing one-liners, and you can easily find yourself locked in battles for hours without noticing how much time has passed.
Cards can only be played through pairing with a number tile of the same value, but it’s rare that you’ll have these pairs ready and waiting for you at the start of a round. The catch is that you need to add, subtract, and multiply numbers to make the values that match the cards you’d like to play. There’s loads of strategic value in playing certain cards before or after others, based on combinations of health points, attack points, and special abilities, and this naturally filters through to how you might reach your ideal sums. Using a seven just because you have a card with a value of seven isn’t necessarily the wisest move; indeed, it may be better if you multiply it with nine and then subtract one to get a far more useful vehicle into play.
The actual play field consists of three lanes, with you and your opponent at opposite ends. If a unit reaches the end of the lane, it attacks the corresponding base. If your base runs out of health, you lose. There’s a huge variety of viable strategies that make use of a mix of tactical, offensive, and push cards, and it soon becomes apparent that certain maneuvers work better with one foe than the others. In-app purchases of card packs or the Calculords Fun Club — the latter of which removes ads and improves your victory loot for $1.99 — make progress easier, but they’re by no means essential. With or without them, Calculords requires a long road to mastery.
The bottom line. Calculords inventively combines math with collectible card gaming and old-school aesthetics to offer a deeply enjoyable experience that’s more than the sum of its parts.
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