Book of Demons

Usual context: Old crusty gamer that is picky and played a lot of ARPGs. Now lets sweep some of the basics out of the way. Story, almost none existent and some copied from Diablo 1. Music, generic and should be turned off for something better of your choice. Sounds effects, generic and some straight up copied from Diablo 1. Now where does the one star come from? Well the two things I think this game did well that warrants the one star is as follows. 1. The flexiscope system where you can decide the size of the dungeon generated is a neat idea. 2. Surprisingly, I liked the card system and how it could be upgraded. This card system was easy to understand and actually made sense regarding the gameplay. Everything else about this game, especially if it is considered an ARPG is terrible. This game felt like it had even more than normal clicking required of a typical hack'n'slash game. Poisoned? Click on health globe. Stunned? Click on swirling stars. Staggered? Click on your cards that have been dislodged. Don't have a spell that breaks enemy shields? Click the hell out of the shield icon first before doing physical damage. Enemy casting a spell? You click and hold on a bubble above them to interrupt the spell. All this extra clicking wore me down and made this game feel like one of those idle clicker games. On top of that, near the end levels the screen would get so confusing and cluttered with multiple spellcasters raining down all sorts of effects on you that it became difficult to make out what was on the screen. Add to that, scenarios where you had to kill certain enemies first before you damaged the main monster but the kicker is that you cannot make out which minion monsters you had to knock off first because you could not make out the dotted lines that highlighted them. Want to run or jump? No dice! this game doesn't allow it. This game felt so limited in terms of how you could play or build your character. Avoid this game if you want an ARPG.

The game is OK, somewhere between fun and meh, alright concept with unintuitive and clunky control. What is unacceptable is that the game lags severely when multiple enemies and spells in one screen. I have 6700k + GTX 1080 +16G + SSD, which runs most of the games on the market at highest settings at 60p @ 1080p, which includes Witcher 3 and the latest Total War Three Kingdoms, but not this one. Combined with the bad control, the little fun it offers sunk quick.

The Book of Demons is clearly making fun of the classic game Diablo and is deceptively simple by presentation and design. The papercraft art style is strange at first but it grew on me and after a while it felt surreal to play, especially during heated battles. The sound effects and spell animations add to this strange aesthetic. I was a bit let down by the card art however, and considering the cards are a main part of the game mechanics I think they could of done better in my opinion at least. The game has some helpful features that I'd like to see in other similar games, such as being able to decide on game session length which saves game progression on completion, ranging from about ten minutes up to over an hour. Also when getting close to clearing a dungeon level, there is an indicator bar at the top of the screen which tells you what your left to do, such as enemies or barrels, and the game provides small light prompts that give a general direction to look. When a section is cleared, the game allows you to simply click on an stair exit icon instead of having to walk (or hop I suppose) to the stairs down. As far as the design choice to have the character stay on the path or rails, I found it very interesting. The game uses the limitation to create various combat situations, such as blocking the path or surrounding the character. It's easy enough to move around these paths and you hold down the shift key to stop walking, pass the cursor over gold and click on chests and items to collect them. Combat seems simple but it can get quite hectic at times. Enemies have a range of tactics and defenses that must be managed along with your own cards spells, abilities or items and it all works quite well and is a lot of fun. While it is essentially a dungeon crawl, the game presents different situations as it progresses and it managed to retain my interest consistantly. Overall I'd say it's a casual type of game that gets more in-depth the more it's played. Try it out.

Positive: - really nice paper-like graphics - game presentation with snappy ui and good sounds is really great Negative - no items (more or less replaced by finding cards) - no free movement: hero is limited to a fixed path, but still has to dodge incoming missles - no re-creation of procedural generated levels - no (direct) way to replay former levels - very clunky movement: either mouse click (hero runs w/o stopping) or un-intuitive keyboard movement Overall - personally a bit disappointed, especially with the clunky and limiting movement solution they implemented

Well, to begin with, here is your disclaimer. THIS GAME IS FALSELY ADVERTISED AS HAVING DECK-BUILDING ELEMENTS. It does not. It has deck-building elements as muc has Path of Exile, or the original Diablo. The cards that you find simply represent active and passive skills. There is no actual deck-building, no card-game mechanics such as drawing, playing cards, or even getting random cards from a deck with skills. These are skills that you place in one of 10 available slots. If the game had a typical progression system it would not be any different. The game itself is a Diablo clone. I do not mean it as "The game is a hack'n'slash" I meant it literally. you are in a small town besieged by demons. There is Deckard Cain, there is the Butcher, there is the mad priest guy or whatever. In the end you fight a big demon in hell. All of this takes place in the besement of a church. And even the end of the game is one-to-one ripoff of the ending of the original Diablo. Even though it is hiding under a thin blanket of homorous irony, it barely manages to hide the fact that it is an uninspired ripoff of a 30-year-old game. The enemies you fight are more or less copies of enemies from Diablo1 and 2. There is almost no original thought put into it. By the game's description, I was expecting some impressive type of a hybrid game, but is is just more of the same. As far as teh game is considered, it is more-or-less mediocre. If you are expecting some invetive meta-breaking game - stay away from this. If you are expecting some inspired, filled with imagination project - stay away from it. If you are expecting a bland rehash of Diablo I, you can do worse than this game. I had some fun times with it, but it should not be advertised as having deck-building elemnts, since it does not. The cards are just a theme, not an actual gameplay mechanic.