The Fox in the Forest

FitF is a great trick-taking card game which we play on the tabletop a lot and I was excited to have an app to play against too. Unfortunately, the visuals just make it unpleasant and unfun to play. Every single trick has So! Many! Bright! Explosions! Of! Dazzling! Light! It’s slow and once you’ve seen it once it’s just annoying to see it every single time. It’s so distracting it’s hard to remember what was played by the end of the trick. Give it a ‘fast play’ mode that turns off the animations and lets you concetrate on the game play. Then it’s a 4/5 game or better. Other small tweaks: improve the AI, and show the original card art whenever a card is played… that’s what everyone expects to see.

This game is wonderful, a great twist on the trick-taking genre. I usually don’t play landscape-oriented games, but this plays so well I made an exception. It’s easy to learn, the tutorial is great, and the written rules are clear. It’s good on battery considering the animations, and the UI is smooth as can be and intuitive. I do wish that when you hold on a card to make it bigger, it would be even a little bigger, the text is still pretty small. Even better would be if you didn’t have to hold it, you could just click once, then again to dismiss it after reading. Although the text is small, because you learn the rules and card types very quickly, you don’t even need to refer to the text any longer, so at that point the small text is no problem. I see the last update made the AI better, so as long as that’s indeed the fact as I continue playing solo, this wonderful game will be staying on my phone. You did a great job developers for a very fair price with no ads or IAP. Thank you so much! This will be one of my go-to games when I want to relax now.

I love the original game, but this is somewhat lacking. First, as reported by other users, when you tap and hold a small card, it shows a full-size card image. Unfortunately, the programmers dropped the ball, and the big card often vanishes with the slightest finger wobble. Programming hint: do NOT dismiss the big card at the start of the drag event. Note the position of the small card before the drag, and dismiss the big card only after the small card has moved some minimum X left or right or some minimum Y up or down. Please don’t make those of us without the hands of brain surgeons wonder what the full-size cards look like. Next, please consider an option to reduce the animations. They are more blinky than beautiful. I have some visual impairment, so the fact that so many thing whirl, blink, and flash is not fun for me. I am saddened that the brilliant art of the physical game has been relegated to small icons and brief pop ups. The current look of the game has moved away from refinement and toward the bombastic. As a minor change, the coloration of the trick wheel is puzzling. The yellows are the highest scores, the green is mediocre. In stoplight fashion, I would think green is good, yellow is warning, and red is full stop (do not enter). This will be an acceptable implementation for most people, but I feel that I will find the game tedious until some of these UI features are fixed. I have faith that the developers will continue to polish this. They seem like they are trying and polite to fans. I am happy to support developers like that.

I enjoy the game. However when I was playing a game the score was 21-21 and the game freaked out and shut down. It should have run another round.

Absolutely wonderful. Really enjoy how interesting the game makes playing the cards. It’s definitely a great substitution for playing cards. Game is absolutely brilliant in design. Having player want to win or lose a specific range of tricks is a wonderful shake up to normal trick taking games like Spades and Hearts. Love it. I love the card art and ability’s. Lots of fun.

Face-to-face, The Fox in the Forest is the tensest game I’ve ever played, a trick taking knife fight with a disarming the fairytale theme. Until you’ve looked into the chilly eyes of a loved one as they force you to take a trick that pushes you from six points down to zero, you have not known fear. With its sylvan theme and ambient nature sounds, Dire Wolf’s transfer captures the fairytale feel, but replaces the knives with Ambien. Even the basic mechanic of dragging a card into the play space has been replaced by slotting little numbered tablets onto a sort of altar. It’s an unsatisfying and, as far as I can tell, entirely unnecessary cosmetic change. My heart goes out to anybody who has to adapt a trick-taking game— they tend to be as visually static as they are intellectually dynamic. Still, dire wolf did no favors for the original Fox in the Forest— execute the rules, but fails to capture the magic of its lightfooted and wicked source. Update—the reason it makes you sleepy is that elements of the display gently bob, like a ship at sea. Bizarre—especially when it takes place in a forest.

Not super familiar with the card game (only played it once), but love trick-taking games (though we rarely have more than 2of us)! The tutorial was done very well (clear, simple, understandable, and short). Easy to pick up but cards have multiple options, so the game never feels old. Nice UI, too. Devs: When pressing-and-holding on a card to read the flavor text - it is very squirrely and sometimes disappears really quickly. Are there any other reports on that? Also, can you make an option to disable animations or the ‘flashy’ bits? No worries if not! Thank you for making this wonderful port!

If it’s going to be all-2D, use SwiftUI. It feels and looks shabby and non-native.

As a fan of trick-taking card games, I was really looking forward to this port. But as much as I enjoy the game itself, and as beautiful as the presentation is, the AI opponent just doesn’t seem to know how to play well. After playing 12 normal-length games against a Hard opponent, I haven’t lost once, remarkable considering that that I’d never played Fox in the Forest before yesterday. In several games, it didn’t seem to realize that you shouldn't take 10 tricks, so it was too easy to trick it into being “Greedy.” And so far it doesn’t seem to play any better in the campaign games either. Unless the AI can be improved, I can’t recommend this port.