Draft of Darkness is a survival horror RPG with deck building and roguelike dungeon exploration. Recruit allies, synergize their decks to create powerful card combos. Manage your limited resources and explore procedurally generated maps to determine the story's outcome.
The game blends the deck building mechanics of titles like Slay the Spire with a survival horror setting that requires careful resource management. Each card in your deck corresponds to a specific type of weapon - guns, melee, or special abilities. Using these cards consumes limited resources like ammo, batteries, and chemicals, forcing you to strategically decide when and how to deploy your limited supplies. You can recruit allies to join your party, each with their own unique deck of abilities. This allows you to experiment with synergistic combos, building balanced teams and coordinating your card usage. The turn-based combat challenges you to choose the right cards to counter enemy attacks and abilities.
Each run tasks you with exploring a procedurally generated, post-apocalyptic city. As you progress through the levels, you'll encounter a variety of enemies, events, and narrative elements. The "darkness" mechanic increases with each battle, making the environment more dangerous but potentially offering greater rewards. The game's meta-progression system ties your in-run choices and actions to the overall narrative, unlocking new story elements and altering the outcome of the plot. You'll collect clues and lore through interactions with NPCs and environmental storytelling, creating a sense of mystery and discovery.
The diverse cast of playable characters, each with their own unique starting decks and abilities, provides a high degree of replayability. You can also unlock new starting cards and perks through a booster pack system, allowing you to further refine and customize your strategies. The procedural nature of the maps, encounters, and story events ensures that no two runs are exactly the same. You'll be encouraged to experiment with different deck compositions and party setups to find the approach that best suits your playstyle.
Players have overwhelmingly praised the game's unique blend of survival horror, deck building, and roguelike elements. Many highlight the strong atmosphere, challenging but fair difficulty, and the developer's responsiveness to player feedback. The community is excited to see how the game continues to evolve, with the promise of more content, balance changes, and narrative developments in future updates. The developer's commitment to improvement and the game's rich, cohesive vision have generated a dedicated player base eager to see the game reach its full potential.