Lazare’s Sacrifice is a narrative deckbuilder made with Gwent’s creator about avoiding the guillotine during the French Revolution

The sort of beautiful thing about triple-A games is that sometimes they have the resources to make an entirely new game within them. That was how Gwent was born, an in-world card game you can force Geralt into play that was eventually spun off into its own, fully-fledged thing. I imagine we’ll be seeing a revamped version of it whenever The Witcher 4 arrives, but considering that’s 2028 at the earliest, may I suggest making your bed with Lazare’s Sacrifice, a narrative deckbuilder set during the French Revolution that’s being made in collaboration with Gwent’s lead designer Damien Monnier.

Set for release sometime in Spring 2027, the card game is about real French person Lazare Hoche, who Curve Games have made look much more handsome than the historical figure actually was for some reason. It’s a game about sacrifice, if you couldn’t tell by the name, one where you have to be willing to give up your own resources. This includes the cards you play with, but it extends to the likes of board slots or your health. In doing so, your plays can get stronger, getting more powerful the more you give up.

Then there’s the narrative too! As opposed to going for anything like visual novel style cutscenes, you actually got to walk, or I suppose sluggishly stroll, around Carmes Prison in your attempt to escape from it. The card game you play is apparently the one way to guarantee your head not falling on the literal chopping block, a narrative framework that makes no real world sense, but who cares, this is video games! And it’s quite a lush-looking one too; despite being grounded in reality the card art is nice and vivid, almost comic booky in style, with some lovely, lightly abstract, painterly backgrounds to wander around.

Outside of the card game, while exploring it looks like you’ll be able to engage in cutscenes with multiple dialogue options, and pick locks, which can seemingly net you new cards. Presumably there’ll be a range of ways to get new cards, I just don’t know what those will be. In any case, the game looks good! And as mentioned will be out Spring, 2027.