is a 2022 role-playing video game developed by Alim and published by Square Enix for PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Windows. It was released for Android and iOS in 2023. It is the third game in the Voice of Cards series, which uses the aesthetic of a tabletop role-playing game for its story and gameplay. The player controls a woman out for revenge against the monsters that destroyed her home. Gameplay involves travelling between towns, completing story quests and fighting in turn-based battles, with the party able to use captured monsters as powerful abilities.
Several staff members from earlier Voice of Cards titles returned including creative director Yoko Taro, executive producer Yosuke Saito, lead director Maasa Mimura, artist Kimihiko Fujisaka, and composers Oliver Good and Shotaro Seo. Yoko also contributed to the scenario due to time pressure. Alongside gameplay additions, the overall tone was made darker in both its story and art design.
Gameplay
Voice of Cards: The Beasts of Burden is a role-playing video game which presents its world, characters and battles in the style of a tabletop role-playing game; everything is represented using cards, with the player navigating environments as a game piece, with environments being obscured until the player approaches and adjascent cards are flipped over. The player explores both a segmented overworld environment, and self-contained dungeon and town areas through a linear story campaign. In towns, players can rest at a local inn, and buy and sell items and equipment from merchants. Players can also engage in a card-based minigame, with the aim being to match card types and scores while working with or around random card effects, with the winner having the highest score. The card minigame supports four-person local multiplayer.
Battles play out through both scripted and random encounters with a party of four controlled by the player. During combat, the player can perform standard attacks, use items, and perform skills using gems generated once per turn and added to a pool. Some skill effects are dictated by rolling a dice. During some battles, happenstance cards are triggered, granting an effect to both the player and the enemy party. Damage from attacks is calculated using the attack and defense values on each card, while each character can only have one positive and one negative status effect at a time. Upon winning, the party is awarded with gold and experience points, with leveling up raising a character's health and attributes. After a certain point in the story, the player can also capture some defeated monsters and convert them into ability cards, which include powerful attacks and healing the party. Gaining a higher rank version of an existing card will cause the old card to be discarded, and all cards are single-use.
Synopsis
The Beasts of Burden is set in a world without stars where humans live underground and have waged hate-filled war against monsters for a millennium. When Al'e's underground village destroyed by a large monster, she is rescued by L'gol, an emotionally-distant young man serving the council of the surface city of Steelborough. Rescued due to a legendary ability of underground dwellers to control monsters, Al'e is sent to capture a powerful entity dubbed the Steel Primal, which has gone on a rampage and stirred violence in the local monsters. When Steelborough's elders attempt to take the Primal, as they sought its power to declare war on a neighbouring power and caused its rampage, L'gol betrays and kills the council to avenge their abuse of him and flees with Al'e into the surrounding desert lands. They are joined by Pulche, a scholar studying monsters after his parents apparently died in a monster attack; and Tralis, a half-monster beast tamer who Al'e initially mistrusts due to her hatred of monsters.