HELLCARD

by Aethyna Feb 3, 2024 | 1 Votes | 79 Played | 0 Reviews

9 rate

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Card

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Demons , Monsters , Co-op , Roguelike/roguelite , Collectible Cards

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Surefire.Games Set in the bowels of a demon-infested cathedral, HELLCARD is a truly intriguing and highly strategic deckbuilding roguelike where you, along with your companions of choice, will have to make your way through throngs of demons in an attempt to defeat each of the Archdemon’s lieutenants to complete a run in a bid to slay the Archdemon himself. Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Community Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Set in the bowels of a demon-infested cathedral, HELLCARD is a truly intriguing and highly strategic deckbuilding roguelike where you, along with your companions of choice, will have to make your way through throngs of enemies, some more powerful than others, in an attempt to defeat each of the Archdemon’s lieutenants to complete a run in an eventual bid to defeat the Archdemon himself. Every run adds to your experience points, unlocking new cards, artifacts, cosmetics, and even companions, allowing you to build a stronger team and deck. Will you be able to slay the Archdemon and save the world?

Plotline

The story is very simple here: A hero – or more like a team of three heroes - ventured deep below the cathedral to kill the Archdemon. Similar to the premise of Diablo, you’ll need to clear floor after floor of demons just to reach the big bad baddie at the end. Defeat enough of these big bad baddies, and you’ll finally get to face the biggest and baddest baddie of them all – the Archdemon himself!

Gameplay

HELLCARD comes in two modes: single-player and co-op multiplayer, which will be covered in the Community section of the review. The single-player mode is also split into two categories, namely Standard and Endless, with the Endless mode locked until you’ve completed a full run.

Before you start, you’ll also need to choose your character. There are three that you can choose from – the warrior, the rogue, and the mage. There’s actually a fourth class, but it’s locked. Each class comes with its own starting deck. You can also choose the outfit you want for your character along with any starter artifacts, provided you’ve unlocked them. You can unlock more of these by completing runs and leveling up.

Eventually, you’ll unlock Torments, which further adds difficulty to your runs in exchange for more experience gained, faster level-ups, and quicker unlocks. Note that every run will earn you some experience points. The further you go, the more points you’ll earn.

Although you’ll start the game all on your lonesome, eventually, you’ll be able to recruit companions, up to two max excluding yourself, that match your envisioned team build and your playstyle. The classes available are much more varied than the ones you have prior to starting the game, with unique classes like the Tinkerer, the Sharpshooter, and the Berserker, with each of them having unique decks.

In fact, out of the many classes I’ve encountered so far, I daresay the Tinkerer is the most intriguing and definitely the most challenging to master of them all. The character doesn’t only have mana-based cards like the others, but he also gets to tap into special “currencies” like screws, which seem to augment some of his cards or even make it possible to play certain cards.

Now, on to combat! The combat system in HELLCARD feels both familiar and yet pleasantly distinctive. The battlefield in this game, for instance, is truly exceptional. You see, the battlefield is cut into three slices, much like what you do with a cake, with each slice dedicated to each character in your team of three. Enemies can only attack the character within the same slice (i.e. you can only take damage from the enemies within your slice), but this rule doesn’t apply to the player characters. Players and companions can attack enemies from any slice.

Each slice is also split into two segments, Near and Far. Most character classes are more proficient in taking on enemies in either the Near or Far segments, and usually not both. Due to this, it’s wise to have a good mix of classes so you can cover enemies both near and far. The same goes for the enemies you fight in HELLCARD. They usually attack from either one of the segments, but sometimes, you may encounter a boss that can do both.

Cards in this game come in three main types: attack, skill, and influence. Attack and skill are pretty self-explanatory, but for influence, it feels more like a different kind of Skill card that apparently can bypass certain restrictions (such as adding Block to a character despite having a debuff that prevents Block from being added) and enemy defenses (though not block). Each of the characters in your team of three also has three mana points per turn to play cards with. There are ways you can get more mana, including playing cards that grant more mana, for instance, but three is the standard amount you get.

The game also has incredible UI design, offering clear Intent icons that are supplemented with detailed tooltips, along with plenty of helpful indicators such as health, strength (attack power), stun, and block. This helps you when you need to single out the most dangerous enemies and slay them all first, lest they cause any more trouble further down the road.

To win a floor is to defeat every enemy on the battlefield. Once you’re done, you’ll then be given some gemstones, a new card to add to your deck, and, sometimes, a new companion that you can swap in by kicking the existing one out. Aside from the gemstone, all of the rewards are optional, so you can skip them if you want… that is, unless you have an artifact that prevents you from doing so. Artifacts are basically boosts that persist throughout a run, and they come in different grades or qualities, though they sometimes come with a downside.

You’ll also get three Locations, each with three options, to choose from. You can only choose one option out of the three at most and one option for each location. The options usually come in three forms – one is cost-free, but typically, either the reward isn’t that good or that you don’t have a say in which reward you get – it’s more like a “take it or leave it” situation. The other two options will cost you gemstones to choose from, with the (perceived) best option costing the greatest number of gems. Note that gems are earned from surviving fights. However, if you don’t see anything you like, you can opt to skip making any choices for any of the locations presented and move on to the next floor.

The rewards range widely, from heals to increasing max HP; from removing a card from the deck to upgrading or transforming one. You may also get a random artifact or choose to gamble with a gemstone in hopes of tripling it with a 50% chance. Note that transforming or upgrading a card is a lot more strategy-driven here since, unlike most games that provide linear upgrades, the card upgrade system in HELLCARD is tree-like. You’ll usually get to choose between two or more upgrades, each with different costs and effects, and you can choose the best fit depending on your playstyle and your strategic needs.

As a roguelike, you’ll get to choose the Destination or “room/dungeon” for each floor you head to. Each Destination offers different rewards, and although the rewards aren’t stated specifically, you do get a general idea of what kinds of rewards a.k.a. Locations that you’ll get if you survive the floor. There’s a bit of democracy here as well, where players will then get to vote on which Destination they want. This only applies to the game’s co-op multiplayer, though, since for single-player, only your choice matters.

As you progress, you’ll eventually encounter boss fights. Each run of 12 floors contains three boss fights, with the last being the most challenging of them all since you’ll be fighting one of the Archdemon’s many lieutenants. In fact, I daresay that some of these final bosses can be quite overpowered. For example, one of the final bosses, the Cook, can deal insane damage, even at base level, to the poor character who is unfortunate enough to have the boss in his/her slice, quickly turning a three-man team into two.

He also tends to keep boosting his strength, populate your and your companions’ decks with detrimental Meat cards, and, worse of all, has an ability that greatly restricts how much damage he can receive in a turn – it’s five if you’re wondering... out of 150 total health that is. However, this restriction seems not to apply to certain attacks, and I’m not very sure why. Unless you try to play a card, you won’t know if any of the extra damage will apply to the boss or if it’ll be capped at 5.

I’ve actually played the demo before back when the devs were stress-testing the multiplayer aspect of their game, and I can say that this final version is definitely more polished, offering an overall better experience. However, there still seem to be some bugs here and there. For instance, I noticed that some artifacts and influences – or, more specifically, abilities granted from influences - don’t work with one another when they should.

One example is the Dread influence card from the Berserker and the Silver Mirror artifact that I have on my rogue. As per the description from both ability and artifact, whenever the Dread ability grants my rogue any amount of block, the Silver Mirror should have gifted back half of what was received to the Berserker, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. My Berserker still got the same amount of block as my Rogue.

I also noticed that HELLCARD tends to overwhelm the player/s with sheer numbers. Although there are exceptions to the case, most of the time, the difficulty of the game stems mostly from having to make full use of the mana you have to tackle the most dangerous enemies first, like enemies that are about to attack your characters. Some players may find this to be a lazy way to ramp up a game’s difficulty. Instead, they may have preferred having more complex enemies, enemies with devilishly designed sets of special abilities that you’ll need to find a way to counter.

Community

Although the game is fully enjoyable solo, HELLCARD supports co-op multiplayer. In fact, I daresay playing co-op is part of the game’s unique gameplay design, where up to three players will work together to clear floor after floor of enemies. Aside from fighting together, players will have to vote on which destination/room to go to next after every victorious battle.

To give a run a higher chance of success, players will also have to consider the build of their comrades-in-arms before deciding on which card or artifact to take, or in the case of cards, to upgrade as well. It’s all about working together here and trying to keep each other alive since having a player down can be massively detrimental to the team’s survival.

Graphics/ Sound

HELLCARD features cardboard popup-styled figures, which reminded me of the figures in Paper Cut Mansion. This rather unique art style alone is able to draw the eyes of unsuspecting players to the game. The animations and other visual cues are all very well-done too, making it super fun to see your masterful strategic plays play out.

In terms of sound, the game offers a selection of what I like to call “dungeon music”, which frankly matches well with its dungeon-based arenas and its setting, slipping in that little bit of feeling of dread, especially when you see the overwhelming odds you’re facing.

Conclusion

All in all, HELLCARD is a refreshingly new take on the tried-and-true deckbuilding roguelike formula, which really gives what seems to be a stagnating genre a new breath of life. The mechanics here are very intriguing, and the co-op aspect, which also works in single-player mode for those of us who prefer playing solo, really makes for a fun time, similar to diving into a Diablo run with buddies even! So, if you’re a huge fan of deckbuilding roguelikes or deckbuilding games in general, especially if you enjoy Book of Demons, and want to try something new, HELLCARD is one game you simply have to play. You can thank me later!