HELLCARD Review

Today we're reviewing "HELLCARD" (alternatively 'Book of Demons: Hellcard") a rogue lite deck builder with an emphasis on large enemy hordes and target prioritization.

Thank you to the publisher for providing a review copy.

[VictoriaWiggins]

Just wanted to note that you’re not forced to use the two cards presented to you. You can press J to expand your companions’ decks and pick from their entire hand.

[tristanwegner]

I like your analytical review. I am surprised that they implemented such long runs, when Book of Demon had the outstanding feature of giving choice of runs length at the start.

[browsergameshub]

Perfect review! And you even called the game rogue-lite correctly, which is such a rare thing nowadays. Insta-sub, thank you for being awesome and caring about the genre enough to know your stuff.

[Binzob]

I love this game, played 60 hours on it total mostly about a year ago (about 80% of my games are from April 2023). However it really needs to be played with friends.

The single player does seem to be well executed and balanced for what it is, but having to worry about 3 decks at the same time is annoying. And you could just not add companions to speed it up and simplify it but then why not just play Slay the Spire y'know?

Multiplayer is definitely it's strength. Finding ways to go infinite / broken combos to reach the block cap which I believe is 16k, and then having the Warrior one shot every enemy with Sticks and Stones or Breakthrough. I know you called out there isn't many options to do that, and in single player I agree. But multiplayer it's definitely possible. The block stacking to 1 shot enemies is best in my experience. But Rogue can just hoard their gems and deal tons of damage with Stonks or Trickle Down (my least favourite class personally). Mages I find best to play more support cards for your team and finish off enemies with bolts for extra mana and draws. With the acorn artifact every 3 bolts played provides 10 block, allowing you to turn a losing situation into one you might not even lose HP.

The new class Tinkerer I think perfectly covers what you said was missing in terms of power scaling over the course of a battle. Allowing you to make contraptions that take effect at the end of every turn. Some of which can deal a lot of damage, and they stack. There are some other influence cards that stack. But generally higher rarity and reliant on a certain strategy for your deck. Something like Whetstone doesn't stack, but if you upgrade it into Insult or Thrill they can stack, despite exhausting after being played. Subzero gives bolts +2 damage and double damage to frozen enemies. The +2 per bolt can stack. So if you want to you could play that card 3 or 4 times in a battle to get bolts doing 10+ damage each.

High Torment levels add difficulty throughout the fight making it not always feel like it's over within 1 or 2 turns. Having enemies potentially deal 50% more damage among other hindrances like cards costing more and getting curses on killing enemies. Power cards like Weave Laylines and Battle Juice are one use, Equilibrium gets more expensive every use until you can no longer play it and it becomes a dead. These things add up to weaker enemies sometimes being able to finish you off as you and your teammates ran out of gas just killing off the seemingly stronger enemies. Though for the most part this still holds true as killing off the boss on floor 12 generally ends in a win.

On the note of individual battles taking way too long, I agree and multiplayer again semi-fixes this as you can all just spam cards at the same time to kill the last enemies much quicker once the problem enemies are gone. While in single player cleanup takes a lot longer.

In terms of overall game time multiplayer is also way quicker once you and your friends have learnt the game. Took less than 10 games for us to be regularly getting under 1 hour. While even at that same point the handful of single player wins I had took up to 2 hours each. Most multiplayer runs take 40-60 minutes in my experience. And we've had a few under 40, winning the game in as fast as 34 minutes, with a couple torments thrown in for good measure.

I agree with pretty much every point in your review, as it was made for the singleplayer gamemode. But I have to say where this game sets itself apart from its competition is the multiplayer. So much so that as much as I love it I don't think it's worth buying if you're only going to try singleplayer.

Also shout out my boy Shuffle, all my homies love going infinite with multiple copies of Shuffle and Toy Compass.

[ben]

You said all my feelings lol it was nuts. I would say too though: it doesn't feel good to kill. STS makes playing a card feel violent somehow, maybe because it takes up so much screen space. Hellcard i feel like I'm just clicking little guys. Still cool but literally made me play more STS right after

[ビッグ-ボス]

Played it by taking advantage of the "Play Free for the weekend" on Steam, as I would not have bought it myself.
I played 2 runs, and I already don't really feel like engaging with it any more.. the amount of variables introduced (all companion cards at the same time, demanding CO-OP?), bad companions (la bruja and others), a lackluster final boss with an annoying skill that doesn't let me "play the game" as I have been doing, etc.
The visuals and system IS impressively well designed. But there's no more juice in this lemon to squeeze.. Probably the fault of how much you can get / upgrade in a single run.

[StefanSochinsky]

I think someone else mentioned it here, but I also wasn't aware of the Companion button on my very first play of it and when I learned about that, it was (no pun intended) game changing. I agree with your point that sometimes after you've dealt with the main threats, the 'clean up' can be a little bit of a slog, particularly on the boss fights and especially on the final boss. I feel like if I killed the final boss, then why am I sitting here fighting through the minions? Otherwise, my buds and I have been having a lot of fun going through it and I'm excited to see what they'll bring to the table with future updates and whatnot.

[jeffrey]

01:17:04 is 77 Minutes not 117 Minutes

[insanetrickster]

Well articulated interview that didn't overstay its welcome. This game is what I feared, competently executed but doing constant time consuming "Clean up". Its my least favorite part of these kind of games. I need my semi frequent by the skin of my teeth, nail biters.

Subscribed. You will reach 5k in no time!

[BasegFarmer]

this is what i was worried about with so many enemies, , they should have maybe had some sort of auto resolve once your win % reaches a certain point.

Im sure spending a few minutes clearing the stragglers also eats into that long run time, sometimes less is more, but i understand what they were going for.

it seems alright but ill probably just stick to StS, thank you for the review.

[mikkosorsa]

Thanks for the review, I thought it was really well made and informational. Now the only question that remains in my mind, coming from StS just like you: Is it worth spending my ~13€ on it 🙂

[zSanityz]

Good review but I wish there was either some time spent on how it feels to play as a multiplayer game OR mention that this is a review from a single player experience only.