If you’re a fan of The Witcher games, right now may feel a bit like a content drought, what with no major titles in the works and The Witcher show on Netflix currently on break after its inaugural season. However, there is one game that might have flown under your radar: Thronebreaker, the Gwent inspired single player adventure released alongside Gwent’s own release last year.

While the gameplay of Thronebreaker doesn’t quite match the RPG elements of the Witcher games, it still has a lot of what makes these games so incredible. Here, then, are 10 reason why you should play Thronebreaker if you enjoyed The Witcher 3.

10 Gwent Based Combat

Let’s be honest - we all spent half our time playing The Witcher 3 hunting down barkeeps and merchants to play Gwent with, all while ignoring the quest to find Ciri. In that vein, Thronebreaker’s combat simulates conflict by having you play cards to represent units, trying to attain more points than your opponent.

This style actually fits nicely with the protagonist, Queen Meve of Lyria and Rivia. While she’s certainly formidable in combat on her own, Thronebreaker mostly sees her acting as commander of her forces, forming strategies and plans as she sends her soldiers into the field.

9 Tough Choices

Arguably the hallmark of a Witcher game is the presence of difficult moral choices. These are decisions that don’t have any clearly right answer, and often have drawbacks no matter what you choose.

Meve faces many of the same tough choices as Geralt does in the main games, especially given that she’s also the ruler of two entire kingdoms. Her actions don’t just have localized effects - she has to consider the impact of her decisions on her people, as well as the example she’s setting for them.

8 Special Gwent Rewards

This next reason may not be the most convincing if you’re just a Witcher 3 fan, but it’s a nice treat if you also play the Gwent standalone card game that spun off from the main Witcher games. Playing Thronebreaker rewards you with free cards in Gwent, some of which are quite powerful.

On top of that, finding golden chests in the world of Thronebreaker can lead to Gwent rewards as well. Opening these will grant players the premium animated versions of the cards they obtained, which is a great incentive to seek out all the secrets in the game.

7 Shifting Story

Going hand in hand with the difficult choices you need to make on your journey throughout Thronebreaker is the story that shifts and changes depending on what you decide. Things won’t become too dramatically different - Meve canonically wins her land back from Nilfgaard, after all - but you can still change certain events in unexpected ways.

This feature is heavily reminiscent of the Witcher games, where your choices shape the story. Thronebreaker follows this tradition with gusto, allowing players to make monumental decisions that change the course of your game.

6 Nilfgaard’s Grim Reputation

If The Witcher 3 is your only window into the world of The Witcher, you could be forgiven for wondering just why everyone hates Nilfgaard so much. They seem to be at least no worse than the Northern Realms, and they’re one of the few major powers to treat elves and dwarves as equal to humans.

Thronebreaker shows a clearer picture of the brutality that lurks beneath Nilfgaard’s sheen of civility. Meve sees firsthand the atrocities they perpetrate, such as enslaving her citizens, slaughtering innocents, and the absolute, dehumanizing hatred they bear for Nordlings.

5 Clever Puzzles

Though not a huge part of The Witcher 3, puzzles did crop up in a few of the game’s dungeons, and worked to give Geralt just much of a mental workout as a physical one. Puzzles are much more prominent - and more fleshed out - in Thronebreaker.

Thronebreaker puzzles often give players a unique deck alongside a unique goal, such as killing a specific enemy or setting two foes to the same power. This can turn the battlefield into a math problem, a maze, or in one amusing instance, a Hearthstone parody.

4 Amazing Characters

At the beating heart of any Witcher game are the characters that populate the world. The main series focuses on Geralt, Ciri, Yennefer, and their allies, but Thronebreaker shifts the focus to Queen Meve and her confidants.

Whether it’s the overzealous Eyck of Denesle, the soft spoken Isbel of Hagge, or the ever-loyal Reynard Odo, Thronebreaker features a cast of incredible complexity for a card game. These characters will also react to your decisions throughout the story, and may even leave your party if they decide that they dislike your actions.

3 Multiple Endings

The Witcher 3 had two different endings depending on how the relationship between Geralt and Ciri developed, along with various small developments for other minor characters. Thronebreaker follows the same mold, giving players a wide variety of possible conclusions to Meve’s journey.

Much of the game’s ending depends on the way Meve handles her son’s betrayal. There are still a lot of smaller details that shift depending on your choices, especially concerning the fates of the other characters in the tale, giving Thronebreaker a number of endings to rival any Witcher game.

2 Expanding The Witcher World

Thronebreaker covers ground that none of the main Witcher games really touch on, mostly because it’s set before any of them take place. Because of this, the content it explores expands the world in interesting new directions.

We get to explore fascinating new places that aren’t seen in the other games, such as the great dwarven city of Mahakam and the putrid swamps of Angren. These are just two locations that are masterfully captured in Thronebreaker, which has an excellent sense of setting that it uses to draw you into its world.

1 The Battle For The Bridge

Perhaps you didn’t play The Witcher 3 for the story or the choices or the different endings - maybe you just really like the character Geralt of Rivia, and wanted to follow him along on his adventure. In which case, Thronebreaker has you covered as Geralt makes a cameo appearance in the fourth chapter.

It’s a brief appearance, but a significant one. It’s here that Geralt’s company, completely on accident, helps Queen Meve in the Battle for the Bridge on the Yaruga, a victory which eventually leads to her winning the war. This is also the moment that Meve dubs Geralt a knight, granting him the title Sir Geralt of Rivia - a must see for any Witcher fan.

NEXT: Gwent: The 5 Best (& 5 Worst) Things About The Mobile Version