Hillforts is one more card autobattler, but its medieval siege could give it a real identity

The card autobattler has become a crowded genre, to the point that you hesitate before trying a new one. Super Auto Pets launched the trend, Backpack Battles, Storybook Brawl, The Bazaar and a swarm of others dug the furrow, and every week brings its batch of prototypes recombining the same ingredients. Hillforts arrives in that scrum, and you ask the ritual question: one more card autobattler, or a real idea behind it? Caution, because for now it's only a prototype, but its medieval stance is worth dwelling on.

The context

Hillforts is a medieval card autobattler developed by FiveHeadGames, available for now as a playable prototype on browser and Windows via itch.io. The principle takes up the genre's fundamentals, dressing them in a siege-warfare imagery: you build an army, research technologies, upgrade your units and siege the enemy castle. It's a pixel-art game, turn-based, with short matches of about half an hour, that lays the foundations of a familiar formula while seeking to stand out through its setting. You have to take it for what it is today: a promising sketch rather than a finished game.

What it brings: the siege and the research

What sets Hillforts apart from the mass of autobattlers is its double strategic graft. On one side, the siege idea gives a clear objective and a particular tension: you don't just line up units to see who wins, you build a force meant to bring down a stronghold, which orients all the strategy toward a concrete goal. On the other, the technology research system adds a layer of progression and choice that many of its competitors lack. You don't just buy and place cards, you develop a tree of possibilities, you upgrade your units, you plan your ramp-up. That combination of army building, research and siege could give the genre a welcome depth and identity.

The medieval setting isn't a mere cosmetic dressing, it gives the whole a thematic coherence. Where many autobattlers stack disparate creatures in a blurry imagery, Hillforts anchors its mechanics in a siege-warfare logic that makes each decision more legible and more meaningful. Upgrading your units, researching the right technology, composing the army capable of breaching the enemy defenses, all of it takes part in the same medieval-strategist fantasy, and that coherence is precisely what could make the game stand out. On paper, the skeleton is intelligent and the potential is real.

What worries us

You should stay lucid, because Hillforts is still only a prototype, with all the uncertainty that implies. What exists today is only a sketch, and the vast majority of the work remains to be done: balancing, variety of cards and units, richness of the technology tree, depth of the possible strategies. An autobattler lives or dies on the generosity of its content and the finesse of its balancing, and none of that can be judged on a half-hour prototype. The concept is promising, but the distance between a good idea and a good game, in this genre, is immense.

The other worry is the fierce competition. The genre is already occupied by solidly established titles, rich in content and honed by months of updates, and a small prototype will have to prove it brings enough to justify preferring it to the established references. Its siege setting and its technology research are identity assets, but they'll have to translate into real depth and solid replayability to hope to exist. Hillforts has an idea that sets it apart; it's still missing the development that would turn it into a real proposition.

We're waiting, with curiosity

Hard to settle on a prototype, but the sketch is clever enough to keep an eye on. By grafting a siege objective and a research tree onto the proven card-autobattler formula, Hillforts offers a variation that could, if carried to completion, provide real strategic depth and a welcome medieval identity in a saturated genre. The potential is there, the guiding idea is coherent, and for the genre fan in search of novelty, it's a lead to watch.

But hope doesn't make a game, and everything remains to be proven. Today it's only a playable promise, a prototype that lays interesting foundations without yet demonstrating the richness and balancing that would make it a credible competitor. We're waiting to see whether FiveHeadGames can develop this sketch into a real game, with the generosity of content the genre demands. As it stands, Hillforts is a good idea to follow, no more, no less, and that's already reason enough not to lose sight of it.

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Preview based on the itch.io prototype.