Special guest Nate Heagy, founder and developer of Amuses Me Games and die-hard Hearthstone player joins us to discuss the hugely successful digital-native collectible card game from Blizzard.

Hearthstone is a bit different from the games we typically cover but it’s a fascinating re-thinking of an existing genre made clearly with fitting-into-your-life in mind. It’s an open-ended experience played almost exclusively online against real people, and it’s a free-to-play game funded by microtransactions and purchases of digital collectibles. All these are things that, in most instances, we kind of hate, yet Hearthstone is a fascinating and instructive example of smart design and general polish that rises above these labels.

We discuss the smart design of the game and why it works where other digital card games have failed, and Nate offers us some advice for new players on picking a class, crafting cards, and winning matches.

Hearthstone is free-to-play for iOS, Android, PC, and Mac. Expect to spend perhaps an hour learning the rules and completing the tutorial. Each match/game to can be completed in around 10 minutes.

Thanks to Nate Heagy for joining us on this episode!

You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame

Like the show? Support us by writing a review on iTunes!

Your hosts this week were: