Disney Lorcana‘s Whispers in the Well set might be the most well-themed and gorgeous yet, with plenty of pretty new cards to collect, and a cool, spooky vibe that permeates throughout booster packs and new, well-designed single-player decks.
Disney Lorcana: Whispers in the Well review – quick links
Disney Lorcana: Whispers in the Well – Set review
Storywise, this is the first set after Reign of Jafar to pick up the plot threads of Lorcana, and drive the game’s heroes forward. Here, they’re journeying to the mysterious Inkwell Caverns to find magical new artefacts, only to encounter new beings known as Whispers.
These manifest as a new Whisper card type, each of which is accompanied by a new ‘Boost’ mechanic that really shakes up strategy and gameplay. When you Boost, you may play additional ink to put a card facedown under the Whisper character. When this happens, you gain an additional ability which allows you to improve your various abilities – lore gain, challenge strength, card draw, and more.
Thematically, you can see the Boosting mechanics as these Whisper cards haunting another character, or otherwise taking form in the real world, which is a very neat visual. It also speaks to a real coherence in this set.
Pretty much every card you pull is wonderfully, spookily, creepily themed. New Whisper cards, which all get lush gold borders, are gorgeous and creepy, with characters drawn as haunting ghosts or spectres from the grave. The non-Whisper heroes of Disney all get fun, ghostly makeovers too, with some becoming ghost hunters, and others at the mercy of roaming spirits.
This is as close to horror as Disney Lorcana is likely to get, with all characters here fitting common tropes of the genre. There’s dark, chiaroscuro lighting to create a spooky atmosphere, glimmers of deep purple and blue magic, and even the arrival of skeletons and ghoulies with more cards inspired by The Black Cauldron included, alongside the debut of cards inspired by Gargoyles and Sleepy Hollow.
All of these touches add up to a brilliant new set that feels magical and spooky, in ways that mark it out as a new chapter for Disney Lorcana. While it might be scary for younger kids, the new, more gothic cards here are grand for older players, and add a real sense of danger to spice up rounds of gameplay.
Disney Lorcana: Whispers in the Well – Single-player decks review
Alongside new booster packs, Disney Lorcana: Whispers in the Well also arrives with two new single-player decks, both of which are very well-designed, while also managing to push the plot of the game forward.
First, we’ve got the Simba/Meg Amber/Emerald deck, which is where you’ll want to start if you’re keen to learn more about Whispers. This deck is absolutely packed with Whispers, all of which give you special abilities if you’re able to Boost them by placing a card underneath.
In the case of Simba, once he’s boosted, you can reveal the top card of your deck, and if it’s a character card, you can play them for free. He really helps you build up your defenders fast, circumventing the need to spend ink. Even better, if you get lucky, you can play more powerful cards for free.
Meg, meanwhile, forces opponents to discard cards when Boosted, and she also gets additional lore gain once you pull this off.
Elsewhere, the deck includes plenty of other Whispers with handy abilities to boost lore gain and strength, as well as a raft of other characters who can aid Whispers, and provide opportunity for faster Boosting.
There’s a delicious synergy in this deck, and it’s particularly novel that it’s based around Disney ghosts. (I do think Ravensburger missed a trick by not including representation for Haunted Mansion here, but I imagine that’s a whole other deal with rights.)
The other Whispers in the Well deck is a Judy Hopps/Nick Wilde Sapphire/Steel deck with a focus on Detectives. (You’ll note the crux of Disney Lorcana: Whispers in the Well is spooky ghosts, and the detectives trying to discover and use them.)
Like the ghostly deck, this one is neatly themed, with character cards mostly being Detectives, and all of them aiding each other with unique abilities. Judy Hopps lets you gather Detective cards quicker, as whenever she’s played, you get to look at the top three cards of your deck and pinch a Detective card for your hand. Nick Wilde, who goes hand-in-hand with Judy, lets you draw cards every time one of your Detectives successfully banishes another character.
To boil down this deck into its core essence, it’s a cop deck. You’re running a police station of Detectives, and using their special abilities to challenge suspects. Along your journey, you’ll find special Whispers, and eventually ‘put together the clues’ by finding the most lore, and putting away your opponents.
It’s really cool to pair this single-player deck with its ghostly Whispers in the Well counterpart, because you end up with challenges that feel gorgeous and very thematic. One player is a Detective investigating the mystery of the Whispers, and the other corrals ghosts which pop out to challenge them.
It really is a credit to the design of Whispers in the Well, which arrives as one of the strongest Disney Lorcana sets to date. Beyond personally being enamoured by all things ghostly, this set also appeals thanks to beautiful artwork and card treatments, and just how coherent the story across all cards is.
There are still some errant inclusions, and characters that feel out of place – which happens in all Lorcana sets – but for the most part, this set tells an ambitious story very well, supported by its excellent design work.
Disney Lorcana: Whispers in the Well booster packs and two single-player decks were provided for the purposes of this review.
