Book Of Demons
PC, Xbox One
They do say you should never judge a book by its cover. On first inspection, Book Of Demons is the latest in an ever-lengthening line of indie-scene genre mashups, in this instance a splicing together of dungeon-crawler and collectible card game in a cheery papercraft casing. Leaf through its pages, however, and you unearth something far more surprising. This sort of Venn-diagram approach to game design can often feel cynical, a grab for two audiences at once. Yet at Book Of Demons’ core lies something rare, and wonderful: a deep, constant respect for the player and their time.
The most explicit example of that attitude is what developer Thing Trunk calls the Flexiscope. Your descent into Hell to take on Satan – papercraft Satan, mind, who’s shown enjoying a flame-licked bath with origami rubber ducky in hand – will involve a fixed number of dungeon floors. Before setting out, however, you’re asked how long you want to play for, from an eight-minute sortie over two floors to a 40-minute marathon. The longest sessions are the most rewarding, but payouts are scaled to ensure you still feel fairly compensated if you’ve only got a few minutes to spare.
It’s smart stuff, and it doesn’t end there. Your movement is on rails, and your character leaves footprints to minimise needless backtracking (and if the tracks are gold, you know you’ve picked a pathway clean). At the top of the screen, icons show the current floor’s loot stashes, with those you’ve already collected coloured green. And when a level has been cleared out – all enemies killed and pickups harvested – an icon appears to show the direction of the exit stairway. Click on it, and you’ll move on to the next floor immediately.
It’s a tremendously friendly game, which is all the more surprising given the mix of genres at its core, neither of which is thought of as being particularly welcoming. That’s not to say it’s easy – a Roguelike mode is as punishing as it sounds and then some, and even Normal mode can get hard enough for the developers to allow you to switch to Casual difficulty at any time. But it’s a cheery old time, the light-hearted tone, and constant sense of your investment being appreciated and valued, pulling you forward. Even when the odds are stacked against you, you’ll have all the tools you need to cope. Your initial starting hand of just three cards quickly expands, loot drops and treasure caches expanding your inventory and earned gold increasing your equip load. Cards come in three flavours, coded by colour. Reds are consumable items, restocked through treasure pick-ups, corpse drops or by buying top-ups at the town hub. Blues and greens share a mana pool: the former are spells with a mana cost per use, while greens grant passive buffs and abilities and require a fixed amount to equip. This gives deckbuilding a fine tension: there’s an allure to the green side of the fence, since most buffs focus on survivability and death chafes in a game as outwardly friendly as this. But doing so means giving up damage and speed, since each green equipped reduces your available mana. You’ll need to consider your consumables, too: a health potion feels essential even when you’ve specced your buffs towards restoratives, though you’ll often want to give over a slot to a status remedy or elemental bomb. A screen before each floor shows the enemy types that await, letting you spec your loadout accordingly.
On first inspection the moves, spells and items don’t stray far from type – no surprise from a game that cites the original Diablo as a key influence. But the base cards are only the start. Each has multiple variants that drop in dungeons, strengthening the core effect and often adding others. They can be powered up, too, using runic cards that can themselves be combined to form stronger versions required for the more powerful upgrades. This costs money, as does replenishing stocks, unlocking extra card slots and just about everything else. That means that, no matter the length of session you opt for through the Flexiscope, you’re always making progress towards something – an extra slot, a rune fusion, a more powerful version of a go-to card.
The card game is the better half of Book Of Demons, however, elevating a humdrum dungeon-crawler. The papercraft aesthetic gives thematic justification for a minimal animation budget, as characters and enemies hop around levels and stand stock-still during damage phases. Limiting your traversal to fixed pathways means it’s often a battle to keep enemies, which have free movement, in range; when deliberately designed – fighting a flighty enemy in an arena with tracks running around its perimeter, for instance – it works well. But at other times it’s simply annoying, particularly given that the same mouse button governs movement and attacking. An attempt to pin down an opponent might instead see you skipping off down an unwanted path; you might try to select a new target and find yourself marching into a poison cloud. And the fact that all combat takes place from range – even the notionally melee-focused Barbarian does most of its DPS from ten yards away, since you’re stuck on your railtrack – reduces the distinction between the three classes.
You’ll likely give them a whirl anyway, since this is a difficult game to walk away from. A smartly assembled postgame pulls you back in even when Satan’s been dispatched to, well, wherever the king of Hell goes when he dies, the promise of just one more new drop or card upgrade compelling you to climb the difficulty tiers of the remixed dungeon layouts. And the whole thing is presented with such a light touch that it’s hard to look upon it with disdain – particularly when you remember how fondly it looks upon you. This is one hybrid genre piece that’s ever so difficult to put down.
The whole thing is presented with such a light touch that it’s hard to look upon it with disdain