We recently got to try Dragon Front on Oculus Rift, and at its core, it’s a virtual card game that you can play against AI or other people. It has a ton of similarities to Hearthstone and you might think a card game in VR is kind of weird and pointless, and so did I, but when I actually started playing it, it was tons of fun.

The rules go are similar to Hearthstone. You have a certain number of charges each turn that you can spend on cards and spells, and when your turn is up, the charges don’t roll over. You can, however, purchase more charges using the points you’ve earned that game. There are smaller pawn-like soldiers at your disposal, as well as big goliath troopers, and everything in between. Each character has a certain set of skills that allows them to have an advantage over an enemy type, and they all have varying health.

Where Dragon Front differs from Hearthstone, though, is that each player also has a Champion. These Champions costs 15 charges, but will tear up the battlefield. They have a lot of health and hit ridiculously hard, so if you can spend your points that you’ve earned on more charges, you could turn the tide of the game. Another huge difference is that instead of having your cards rest in the same place and attack just by hitting the enemy, all of your cards move like chess pieces towards the enemy stronghold. They clash at the middle and try to hold the other off. If your team gets to the other stronghold first; you win. You can also build walls and barricades to protect your characters. The enemy will have to break the walls down before they can advance. And the characters are also fully animated in 3D, which is pretty cool.

The biggest difference, though, is that it is in VR. This means that you are completely immersed in the game’s universe, as you peer over your stronghold with an isometric view of the battlefield. When playing another human, you will look to them like a tiki mask floating above a castle, and they will look similar to you. The art style is cartoony but really interesting, and the setting is a mix between fantasy and Victorian. There are knights and shields and armor, but also guns and muskets. Again, it’s goofy but well done which makes it work.

In the end, Dragon Front is a ton of fun, and it takes a lot of strategy to win, so I can see it gaining a large audience of dedicated players. It will also appeal to the casual card player, though, who might be looking for something different yet familiar from VR. Dragon Front will be going into beta later this year, and will be launching exclusively on Oculus Rift sometime after that.