Intrepid doesn't really have a story, so let's take a peek at the visuals and sound. Intrepid tries to keep its visuals simple and forward, as it was designed for a handheld competition. This gives the game a sleek, refined look that fits perfectly in line with the science-fiction setting. The art on the cards are also very nice, although they weren't drawn by the developer of the game. If there is one thing to really complain about in the presentation, it's the extremely repetitive and irritating music that doesn't even loop correctly. We highly suggest that you turn it off and substitute your own music. The sound effects are nice, however, so it's not a total loss.

The basic gameplay of Intrepid is focused on capturing and holding planets. When you start a new game, you determine the amount of planets between you and the enemy. When we say between you and the enemy, we mean that you travel in a straight line from your home planet to the enemy home planet. No divergence whatsoever. In this way, Intrepid is completely linear, which is disappointing. You would expect that a strategy game would have more divergence in the path that you can take, but not Intrepid. Still, it's not that upsetting that the game is so linear, and it helps keep a good focus on the strategic aspects over anything else.

While you can capture, hold, and improve planets, it's the cards the game really focuses on. Outside of combat, you have a number of options to assist you in fighting back: adding to your research pool, buying new cards, and increasing your ammo and fuel stockpiles. Ammo and fuel are very important, with buying cards coming in second and research coming in last. To purchase any of these, you go into the shop, which is located in the main menu. Note that in order to repair damaged cards (damage stay between conflicts) you must go to the deck menu, not the shop.

All cards are visible in the deck menu, which also allows you to spend gold to repair them. Every card has four attributes: health, which determines how much damage the card can take before it is destroyed; Attack (or A), which determines how much damage the card deals when it is the first to hit; Defense (or D), which determines how much damage the card deals to attackers; and special, which is normally extra damage. The Attack and Defense stats are also represented by letters, so you can always look at that instead of the numeric values.

Combat is relatively straightforward. In order to attack, you move your deck onto a hostile planet. You may want to recon first, however, which involves sending a spy ship over the enemy planet to see what units are stationed there. If you do especially good in the recon, you can even damage enemy units! You must then choose five primary units (normally your best) and 5 reinforcement units. When you attack, you choose a unit and its target. The enemy then does the same. Each unit uses ammo and fuel each time it attacks. These costs are dictated at the bottom of each card, and are incredibly important. Why? Because if you run out of ammo or fuel, you have to retreat. You can't pass your turn and win through defensive damage attrition. This is the single most frustrating part of the game, as you can lose defending a planet because you didn't stock up on the massive amounts of ammo and fuel necessary.

Intrepid, despite its promising concept, is plagued by a number of serious problems that act as a barrier to some. The first is the abysmal interface. Highlighting which units or menu options are selected is almost non-existent, and the menus themselves are obtuse and confusing. If you want to do anything except improve planets, attack, or end your turn, you have to go to the "return" option, which is amazingly mislabeled. Using this takes you to a blank menu screen with nothing going on. There is no reason to take the player away from the map screen to a boring menu unless it's to save, load, adjust options, or exit the game. All the relevant gameplay options should be choices on the map screen. As is, the wording of different interface actions and the disconnect between management and map screens is extremely irritating.

Another is the cheating AI. The AI on Easy is relatively tough, and for one reason: it does not require fuel, money, or ammo in order to replenish itself. While it won't repair units and uses only tier-1 cards, the sheer fact that it can out-resource you into submission is extremely frustrating. You see this everywhere, and this resource handicap for the player makes the game incredibly difficult even on the easiest setting. The computer either needs to abide by the rules that the player is following, or the player should not have to use resources. Keeping a strategy game fair is most of the appeal, and Intrepid is anything but fair with the AI.

The units are all interesting (design wise) and have great art, but there's one big issue with them: they don't do anything particularly special. Only a few units have special attacks, and they are only "deals between X and Y extra damage." This is lost potential, as other special abilities would be excellent. Ones such as "this unit does not take defender damage" or "this unit can not be targeting by the enemy." You could even make a special related to the position of a unit on the board. The fact that specials are so underutilized is a big disappointment.

Intrepid is not the best strategy game thanks to these flaws. It's the interface and cheating AI that can sour the experience more than anything else. However, the strength of the card-based combat and management of the empire can not be understated. This is already a good game. It merely requires some polish before it can be considered a great one. You can download Intrepid and leave feedback in the TIGsource thread dedicated to the project.