A look at Outcast Odyssey and its future in the free-to-play gaming space

With only a shelf life of a few months, Outcast Odyssey has been spreading its deck building joy for free across iOS and Android devices. Fighting tooth and nail through the mobile free-to-play lot isn’t the simplest of tasks though.  It seems like this market is only attracted to the flashy or unique. Quite fortunately for Outcast Odyssey, it falls under both of these categories.

While at the Bandai Namco America Press Event Showcase, I had the opportunity to speak with Outcast Odyssey’s Producer Joe Riego about the game, the concept behind it, and the his future vision for the game. His passion for the deck building iOS and Android game was clear as day. If you’re going to make a card building battler, you’re going to need to come up with some new twists. Joe Riego and his team thought on the subject, “How else do we make the genre interesting?”

The theme of the world is what he calls Arcanotechy – a mix of magic and technology. In the story, man discovers magic and everything goes to hell. Three factions erupt from this discovery – magic, technology, and nature. This opens up type-themed decks as well as the ability to mix and match the three factions for other similarities.

Cards are broken down by rarity yet all cards can be upgraded to use until you find a more powerful replacement. There is no limit on how powerful your deck can be, if you have the cards, use them. Your deck is ultimately you, the agent is the player. Your decks consist of a hero, weapon, armor, and 2 support/pet cards. That’s it. You’re going to want to make an offensive and defensive deck. The offensive one is used when you’re actually playing and the defensive one is used when you’re not playing in PvP situations.

PvP, when you’re being attacked, is automated. The game will play your defensive deck and play it to the best of its abilities. These matches count as part of your wins/loses as well as the rewards those bring – so yeah, don’t neglect your defensive deck. Rewards are based off your total placement in the world, event, or guild status in Outcast Odyssey. You’re going to want to keep up with the happenstances to capitalize efficiency; this includes daily’s, mission boards, and events.

Similar to other mobile free-to-play games, there is in game and real cash currency. Real cash will get you rewards faster and make them more available. Since its mostly chance though, it doesn’t guarantee anything. Everything you can buy with cash you can also get through playing the campaign. Therefore someone who plays more casually isn’t completely shut down from those looking to play competitively. Due to the fact that when you attack a player their deck is automated, you can out strategize the AI and win fights when your cards are weaker.

The campaign adds an exploration / RPG element to the gameplay. This is more on the PvE side of the game. You tap the screen to explore the screen, discover caves, find treasure, and beat down monsters. Instead of the game focusing on a more traditional stamina system, there is only a quasi-stamina system. Instead, you can play as long as you have health. If you die, you have to wait. Health regenerates pretty rapidly and that is this game’s version of a stamina system.

The focus on this game is player agency. This means the devs want the game to be more interesting and fun to play – and for them not to forget that is the goal. So far there have been limited time events, limited time offers, guild activities, and even scavenger hunts. You can have buds on your friends list that aren’t in your guild, just to clarify. Part of making the game a player experience also comes with the mastery tree which adds customization to your gameplay.

Now let’s talk about the super interesting stuff; the future. Joe Riego is looking to expand decks to 20 cards instead of 5. This means more gear and more pet cards. Raid bosses are something that has been on the back of his mind that your guild will have to work on to take down – much like a MMORPGs. Speaking of guilds, he also has full intention to add guild on guild action. Similarly, the devs have been looking into mini bosses that friends, instead of guilds, will be able to cooperatively take down.

While some sort of trading system would be ideal, it is extremely difficult to balance. With that said, it’s not off the table either. With a trading system comes new and interesting problems to solve. Mostly, how will the economy handle this? Is it truly cost beneficial to implement? These are the main issues, all completely understandable.

Outcast Odyssey is still new in the world of mobile games. Right out of the gate it is attempting to be unique enough to stand out on its own – which so far it seems to be succeeding at. I absolutely love that they have used Deviant Art artists to create some of their card art. Whenever a company uses the community to their benefit, it resonates really well to me. The game is young and appears to have the initiative to continue going strong in the years to come. As with any free-to-play title, if you are on the fence about it – just download it, you’ve got nothing to lose, except maybe storage space.