Hand Of Fate 2 gets gobby

I've not waddled back over to solid CCG/rougelite combo Hand Of Fate 2 since reviewing it last year, but the sound of goblin trumpets drew me back today. HOF2's Arkham-lite fighting was always a lot less interesting than its deck-building and choose-your-own-adventure progression, but that had a lot to do with seeing the same few types of Bad Man time and again.

The free Goblins update, out now, shuffles new threats into the deck, those being pint-sized, pea green murder-bastards with far too many teeth. Equally homicidal gnomes, with a few straight outta Lilliput combat tricks, seem to have been lumped in under the gobbo umbrella too, confusingly.

Everything in HOF2 is built around the concept of adding cards to a hand or deck, which means you've got pretty decent odds of running into one of the new goblin cards soon after starting a new run. I've just been nosing around, and it happened twice within about twenty minutes. These are smaller but numerous enemies than the mostly-human HOF2 norm - individually fairly week, but as a horde they can tie you up something chronic. The grey-purple-skinned, leering and pot-bellied gnomes are surprisingly creepy, binding me up with their bolos and then leaping onto my back to dole out damage at a alarming speed, but the upside is you can insta-kill 'em with a quick Finisher stomp.

There are new gobbo-specific quest cards too, which open up new narrative/item unlock paths if you can find them and then complete the challenges therein. Alternatively, there are goblin challenges in the Endless mode.

All told, the green gits do seem to add some effective variety to HOF2's otherwise quite repetitive combat, as well as making its low-key fantasy world feel a little wilder.

The update's free and live now, and arrives alongside a patch which adds some new equipment and improves performance and loadtimes - full details of that are here. I note in comments below those notes that the devs claim "We've got big plans for the rest of the year, too. Anything particular you'd like to see Hand of Fate 2 do next?