Book of Demons has attracted lots of praise for its mix of deck building and hack-and-slashing during two years in Early Access. A whopping 93% of its 2,400 user reviews are positive—and this week developer Thing Trunk released the full 1.0 version, complete with a new set of magic cards to play with.
It takes place in a pop-up book called the Paperverse, a world which is inspired by the first Diablo game. You battle more than 70 different types of monsters in procedurally-generated dungeons, and all your weapons, spells and skills are represented by cards.
You're still clicking on baddies to attack but your deck, and how you adapt it to different situations, determines how successful you'll be. Movement is restricted to specific lanes so that you can concentrate on playing your cards right, and you can upgrade cards as you progress.
The thing that interests me most is Flexiscope, a system that Thing Trunk says will "let you decide the length of quests". Basically, when you start a new game you can adjust a slider to tell Book of Demons how long you want individual play sessions to last, and it'll adjust its world and enemies accordingly. It'll learn as you play, too, fine-tuning itself for your next session. It's a cool idea, and players seem to love the way it's implemented.
On average, it takes 10 hours to finish the campaign with one class, but there are plenty of extra quests to delve into and character stats to max out, as well as a roguelike mode that adds permadeath and restricts healing.
The update that brings it out of Early Access adds 16 cards, all of which are detailed in this Steam post, and a full post-launch roadmap is coming soon.
It's $20/£16 on Steam and GOG or slightly more expensive on the Humble Store. You can try a free demo by clicking here.