Super Auto Pets is a fun little online game of strategically buying and placing pets then pitting them against another player's lineup in an auto-battler until someone runs out of pets. Between fights you can upgrade and swap pets to create a stronger batch of contenders and come out on top. Each pet has abilities that activate together creating combinations that affect your attack, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Can it be adapted onto the table? Plaid Hat Games took a shot at it with Super Auto Pets Card Battle, a tabletop version of the online game, with some adaptations to make it work. It features the same pet and item artwork as the original and the cards are stylized in the same way including graphics that are unique to the card game.
Two players try to win the most trophies over six rounds. Each round consists of a buy phase and a battle phase. In the buy phase players start wit three coins take turns buying cards from a common market for one coin or selling them to get an apple to add to a pet. In lieu of leveling up, one can discard three cards with the same hat to get a card from the next level.
After both players pass they then order their cards into a deck for battle. Players play cards from their deck until a pet appears in the battlefield, then both pets simultaneously attack each other and any damage settled. If any pets faint the next ones are drawn on the next turn, this continues until at least someone runs out of pets, whoever still has pets wins the round and gets a trophy, with the last round worth two trophies.
Pets start battle with equal health and power, indicated by the number on their card, they also have abilities that take effect at certain times, such as buffing the next pets, being able to throw rocks and deal damage before actually attacking.
Previous knowledge of the original Super Auto Pets isn't needed to appreciate this game but those who have played the online version might find some differences that need getting used to. Even with such changes gameplay is close to the computer experience especially the ensuing chaos of battle.
It's a short game, but you'll find yourself cycling through cards in those six rounds, making every round unpredictable. The first round may seem a bit slow, then the pace picks up by round two, where tripling really comes into play and improving your lineup becomes more urgent as leveling up pets doesn't exist in the card game and tripling isn't a perfect analog for it.
What an auto-battler needs to do is find a way to handle the sense of determinism that comes with the genre, and Card Battle does this by letting players adjust their lineup just like in the original, even more so with how items don't just stick to a pet like they do in the online game. Access to the next round's cards adds unpredictability and you'll never be too sure what you're up against.
Rocks as adapted in the card game still deal damage outside of an attack, but with no way to attack any other pet it takes on a different form: you roll dice and deal damage equal to the number of rocks that appear. This takes place once a pet enters battle before attacking, adding just that extra bit of unpredictability of whether your pet will survive to fight or not.
Some causes for confusion include in tallying power and health and timing. Because both power and health are defined by the same number while damage is marked separately, mistaking a pet's current health to its current strength is a common oversight. When the number gets big enough there is no further need to calculate. Attacks happen simultaneously but for card effects the first player during the buying phase gets priority, this doesn't affect the flow of gameplay that much as most two-way play can be settled at the same time.
A quick game that's strategic but always surprising, Super Auto Pets Card Battle might have its differences with the PC version but is just as fun and chaotic.
