Kongai is an online Collectible Card Game designed by Street Fighter uber-nerd David Sirlin (of Yomi and Fantasy Strike fame), with characters illustrated by Udon Entertainment, and is found exclusively on the Kongregate web site. The game is essentially a battle between two teams of three (or five, in some matches) different characters that can be mixed around at will. The amount of cards available started out as just four factions of five characters each (plus five similarly themed items), but has begun expanding to include four more factions of characters as well.
You can find the actual game here
, also has a wiki.
When you start an account on Kongai, you can pick any three character cards from any faction and another three item cards to pair up with those characters. From there, you can use this hand to win more games (and a chance at winning a random card) or you can complete challenges in games posted elsewhere on Kongregate to easily win more free cards to open up more options for customization.
Unlike many other CCGs, Kongai tries to avoid giving richer players too much power by offering everyone the opportunity to pick from all the possible cards at the start (though there is an option to spend real money to acquire these cards anyway). However, you can only select randomly unless you happen to "own" the cards and make a customized deck with them.
Basic gameplay
At the start of the game, both players start off with 100 energy and whatever the maximum HP value is for the character they have. During the first turn, the player has to choose the distance to put their character: Close-range, long-range or just sit tight. Doing either of the first two options costs 50 energy, but may be necessary to move your character into position or handicap the enemy. Choosing the third option costs no energy, but if the enemy decides to move you will be at their mercy.
Once the distance has been set, the characters must then choose one of the following:
- Use an attack or ability
- Intercept, which damages and traps an escaping opponent at no cost to you if they switch on the same turn
- Switch your current character for another in your deck
- Rest and gain an extra 20 energy for next round.
Once the attack phase has been resolved, the characters return to selecting the distance and the round begins anew. The gameplay continues until one side's characters are all dead and their opponent wins.
As far as metafiction is concerned, there isn't much of a story within the game, other than brief snippets attached to each faction suggesting that they all contain groups of powerful, ancient warriors who have decided to fight each other, just because.
Factions
- Martial Artists : A clan of Japanese Ninja and Samurai. When a student named Amaya turned his (or her, since we aren't sure on the gender) back on his master Higashi and fled, Higashi took a few other students to find Amaya before he killed anyone. However, the world outside their village has changed drastically since the last time they remember.
- Amazons : An ancient clan of Greek Warrior Women. The newest generation of Amazons got tired of merely accepting their status and decided to go on the offensive, conquering all in their path.
- Tiki Villagers : An ancient clan of warriors from a jungle on an unknown island who are resisting the downfall of their old ways, violently.
- Vampires : Old-fashioned bloodsuckers who rule the night, suck the blood of their victims and usually pass their bloodlust to the next generation at the loss of their own immortality. With the appearance of the Daywalker called Vanessa Voss, the vampires have set aside their differences to combat this new threat.
- Pirates : A band of old-fashioned pirates who accidentally stumbled upon the treasure chest of a Ghost Pirate named Ranec Vest. Their Captain defeated the ghost in a duel, and now the ghost has joined his crew.
- Brotherhood of Knights : An international brotherhood of knights who supposedly keep the world safe from evil, though one named Rathbone has gone off the reservation, slaughtering enemy and ally alike.
- Robots : One day humanity found a portal to the future that had opened in the present. They were disappointed when it turned out that the future humans just used the portal to dump all of their futuristic trash. However, some scientists dug through the future-trash and were able to reassemble some sentient robots from the parts they found. Unfortunately, the AIs freaked out, killed the scientists, and escaped into a different world. Now they view all humans with hostility.
- Witches : A circle of girls located somewhere in France who stumbled onto the secrets of magic and put it to use in everything from love potions to demon summoning. Their motives are currently unknown.
Tropes found within gameplay
- Ambiguous Gender: Popo, to the point where The High Priestess (a Witch equip that works depending on the enemy's gender) outright fails against him/her. Another case, largely due to full body armor, seems to be Amaya.
- Barrage of Bats: One of the resident Vampire jock Cain Solomon's attacks, Rush of Bats.
- Brats with Slingshots: Popo's signature weapon, which has a high chance of missing but also has a high chance of dealing triple damage if it lands (see the YMMV page). On the other side...
- BFG: Balthazar brings a ship's cannon to the fight. It's powerful enough to kill One-Hit Kill some characters, but is handicapped by the fact that you have to spend a turn loading it, and hope your opponent doesn't switch his character out when you fire.
- Cherry Tapping:
- Due to the nature of this game, there are items and attacks that can play this straight when they otherwise do incredibly minuscule damage (usually with some special effects, but they will deal full damage regardless of resistance).
- Using an attack that deals little damage to defeat them due to their resistance (but unable to be absorbed) or damaging debuffs counts as that too.
- Classical Elements Ensemble: All of the four good members of the Brotherhood of Knights represent each of the four Elements:
- Bestor uses Fire.
- Wei-Shan uses Wind, and can also remove debuffs with it.
- Oxbox uses earth in the form of Sand.
- Gunbjorn uses water in the form of Ice.
- The token Blood Knight Rathbone uses Shadow as his main element, making him Element No. 5 of the group.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: All the main cast and their factions, with a tiny bit of Anachronism Stew. You have the usual fantasy humans but on the other end, you have some relatively modern Vampires, the more normal Pirates, including a Pirate Ghost, and Robots.
- Fragile Speedster: Every faction has at least one of these. Rumiko has average HP, the lowest resistances in the game, and three out of her moves are fast, so she's probably the best example.
- Friendly Fireproof: In some cases where your character may attack other benched characters, if their resistance to the attack's element is high enough, they damage can be minimized or blunted altogether.
- Glass Cannon: Some Martial Artists have a strong "chi blast" attack, but cannot handle close range attacks very well.
- Much like the Fragile Speedster example above, every faction has at least a character or two who qualifies for this trope.
- I Know You Know I Know: The game. Especially when it comes to intercepting, a large portion of the strategy is determining whether or not your opponent will try to pull off a certain move, and that depends on whether or not they think you'll try to counter that move. Take interceptions for example: At low health, it's a smart idea to switch a character out. This causes the character to dodge the incoming attack and also be removed from the playing field, letting them heal. However, your opponent can choose to intercept you, which causes damage to the character and prevents swapping if they did try to swap that turn. If you're at low health, then typically you'll try to swap out, so typically an experienced opponent will try to intercept, so the smart move would be to simply attack instead, but an experienced opponent would know that is the smart move and would hit you first, so you should swap out instead...
- Lightning Bruiser: Helene isn't much worse than Onimaru (look below), having the same amount of HP, just 2 less physical resistance, still leaving her with 8, a very decent 5 Light resistance, and her Frenzied Strikes are a damaging and fast attack. The fact they can be enchanted to deal even more damage and change their element makes them even more terrifying.
- Mighty Glacier:
- Onimaru's attack are damaging, but fairly slow and very punishable.
- Downplayed, Gorbax has some of the most powerful attacks in the game, but he needs to spend a turn to "Lock on" in order to really have any chance of hitting. He can either one-hit-kill some targets and still hurt the others for a bit, throw a large amount of pain at his target quickly and efficiently, or just spew bullets everywhere and deal a chunk of damage to everyone, On certain decks with the right item, this can be a Total Party Kill, other times, he'll just burn up his HP (which he can also use as energy) and suicide himself.
- Our Vampires Are Different: An entire faction of them includes different versions: The Quarterback-turned-vampire, the suave hypnotist with a powerful punch, the red-haired blood worshipper, the ancient Marquis, and the Daywalker.
- Out-Gambitted + Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: In a game like this, it's bound to happen.
- Rock Beats Laser: It's entirely possible for cards like Gorbax Mark II to be defeated by poison darts and swords.
- Stripperiffic: (Almost) all of the female characters' clothing. Witches avert this, even though Eva is meant to be a seductress (Margo and Sophie are fine, Agathe is purposely ugly, but Sadie nearly borders onto jailbait if you're not careful).
- Shout-Out:
- Ranec Vest has attacks named "Psycho Crusher" and "LeChuck's Curse". Also, his name is an anagram of "Cervantes."
- "MR-V1N, The Synthetic Depressive." Both the character and its attacks are a homage to another famous depressed robot.
- They managed to stuff three references into one of the witches' names: "Sophie Merovingian, the Symbologist."
- Gorbax The war machine can just spaz out and spew bullets at everything. The name for this attack? Death Blossom. And of course, he's basically ED-209.
- Yoshiro of the Martial Artists can perform a Rising Dragon Fist. His Chi Blast isn't a Wave Motion Fist...
- Also, Anex the Warrior Princess, using a chakkra... chakram... something like that.
- Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Arrows and machine guns cannot be shot from close distance, yet poison darts can. Similarly, melee wielders like Onimaru and Helene usually cannot attack from afar.
- Status Effects: Some characters have attacks that can burn, poison, bleed or paralyze/stun the enemy.
- The Cameo: Not here but in Legends Of Kong. Higashi, Rumiko, Onimaru, Amaya, Helene, Andromeda, Popo and Angelan D all make appearances as minibosses in that game.
- Unfriendly Fire: Many of Rathbone's attacks steal life from both sides to inflict damage on the enemy.
- Victor Gains Loser's Powers: With some help of the Gem of Souls.
