Book of Demons

I like the concept but unfortunately the game just isn't very fun. It is extremely repetitive, which is fine if the gameplay is fun. But it's not, movement is very slow and clunky and most of the mechanics are more annoying than anything else. Most mechanics aren't challenging or fun, they just slow the game down in various annoying ways.

So today I finished my run to the Archdemon with the third class. Got the game around release date, did a run to the Archdemon with the first class. Year later I did a run to the Archdemon with the second class. And again around a year later (this year) I did my third run. As if it's becoming tradition.

I quite like this game, it's a nice spin on Diablo. The mechanics are simple, you discover cards you can use as abilities and you select some to which you have direct access. You can use them quickly by pressing the numbered key, it becomes quite intuitive. Should you come across a situation where a card not in your hand, but in your bag, you can quickly switch them out. Certainly nice when you want to switch between ice and fire attacks, for example.
Cards fit in three categories: Active abilities/spells, consumables and passive abilities. The first costs mana to use each time, the latter always occupies part of your manapool. So if you have 10 mana and a passive ability that uses 4 mana, then you have 6 mana available for active stuff. That is something to take into account when you select your hand. The consumables can be recharged in the town, or additional charges can be found in the dungeons.

There is no free roam, you walk along paths. While it may seem you can't really dodge things, once you learn how the enemies attack, you certainly can walk between projectiles if you pay attention.

The three classes do have a different feel. The warrior is strictly melee, the rogue is a range character and the mage is technically ranged, but has a sidekick that is melee. Each class has its own cards. As said, the beauty is that you can change your hand at any time and that through the various abilities you can create your own playstyle and even simply test things.

The story is nicely told, the graphics are lovely, cards can be upgraded and the overall feel of the game is a good one. However, the major pro for this game for me is the Flexiscope. When you do a playsession, you can choose yourself how long you want that to be with an estimate of the time needed to play. The longer it is, obviously you will get more rewards. This lets you tailor your experience to the time you have, without the need to save in the middle of a dungeon. A run to the Archdemon with one class is about 10 hours.

As said, the game is a nice spin on Diablo. It has its own unique mechanics, but it certainly does get "the feel". So if you want to try a hack 'n slash dungeon crawler with a twist through cards, do it. I can certainly recommend it.

This game is great fun and fair content for its price point as it is now, especially on sale. Note - this game is a homage to Diablo and is an on-rails ARPG (more on that later). The "cards" are really just another way to have inventory/skill management. I wouldn't really consider this game a deckbuilder but it's fun and while a homage to diablo is definitely its own thing. The three characters available to play as all have enough variety of cards that you can take multiple players' warriors and they all may play differently with different builds.

For example, I built my warrior to be more tanky and utilize passive cards so I can just stand there and wail away. A bit boring compared to one that is more heavy on utilizing skills like Bash. Wizard is more into using spells and very mana heavy. He's a lot of fun and different from my playstyle with warrior for sure. Rogue seems to be more mobility based and takes advantage of her range and using that mobility to keep her enemies away from her. Definitely a stark contrast from how I played Warrior.

A playthrough is not likely to unlock all the cards either. After you beat the act 3 boss, you unlock an endless mode where can strive for higher difficulties and unlock more cards. There are also loads of achievements if that is your thing. Many come with natural gameplay but there are quite a few requiring specific plays or easter eggs.

I'm at around 22 hours (with some of that being idle) and have completed the game on two characters and 1/3rd on the last. Have not took a stab at the endless mode yet or higher difficulties so there is plenty of hours and content if you want some more.

As for many players' concern about the "on rails" style movement. I totally get it. I have a friend who dropped a game for that reason. However, I actually quite like it and it helps differ the game from Diablo and make it more of a homage rather than a clone. It adds a layer of strategy where you have to watch out for your enemies blocking your path or pinning you in. It can be extremely dangerous to have your path blocked. Dodging projectiles can be frustrating, but there is a passive shield which helps block ranged attacks and makes it less of an issue. Hell there are movement cards to shove enemies out of the way or jump/teleport over them. Really, if there is a situation, there is a card somewhere in the game that addresses it to make your life easier. The game seems pretty well designed and balanced.

I recommend it for at least one playthrough, and if you like it can continue on for hours more content through endless mode and other characters and difficulties.

Maybe I played this game wrong, but I managed to complete the campaign with nothing other than a single hero power. I just hammered one spell over and over for 11 hours and that was it. I guess I'd have to play over and over and over to see what else the game might have to offer, but one play-through felt like enough.

Let me preface this, that I was pretty sceptical about this game, as it seemed like a Diablo I clone on the first glance, that just copied the core mechanics for it's success and aimed to get people hooked by simple nostalgia.

Boy, was I wrong about this.

Yes, it has very striking similarities to Diablo I, but not in a bad way. It utilizes the well rounded story / basic mechanics as a foundation and builds a great gameplay loop out of it. The devs enhanced the experience you'd get from playing the oldschool classic with very fitting and well elaborated features. The "upgradeable cards as items" mechanic feels and plays astonishingly well and is a lot of fun to experiment and in some way even "theorycraft" with.

It offers a lot of content now that it has been fully released and the freeplay mode is a sort of "endless" way to play and delve deeper and deeper into the dungeons of hell. Their so called "flexiscope" is a nice addition to the game, which lets you define how long you want to plan out your session. A longer session takes more time, but offers more rewards in return. Very simple, yet very effective aswell.

Overall, the game feels quite well polished, but I have to admit that there are some flaws in balancing, especially in the end game. Some classes are just very obviously stronger than others (e.g. Rogue >> Mage > Warrior) and some spells / items are essentially useless or simply outclassed by others. The game has a sort of "hardcore" mode, which is also very challenging if you want to have it that way. Other than that, it can be as easy or hard as you want it to be, with a lot of possiblities regarding difficulty-settings.

Regarding perfomance and technical stuff, there is nothing I have to complain about. Runs well and looks decent with it's unique papery-artstyle.

What really left a positive impression on me was the support from the developers, they are very active in the community discussion and the game's discord and are always looking for an open dialogue with the players.

To conclude, I recommend this game for ARPG fans and people who want a similar, but enhanced Diablo I experience with a twist.

This game is basically a remake of diablo 1... the mood is dark but a bit more jovial than the original. The dungeons themselves aren't as dark but the brighter look fits the papercraft theme. The main thing with this reinterpretation of a classic is that the gameplay loop of getting and improving your equipment is replaced by a card system that is all about finding the best combination of card abilities for your playstyle and character (which are based on the exact same archetypes as diablo 1, heck they even made the sorcerer guy black, just like in d1).

All in all if you are into hack and slash and diablolikes check this game out it's a pretty cool take on a tried and true genre and with Blizzard seemingly going astray in their pursuit of the mobile asian market... it's awesome to see an indy dev that gets what the genre is about even while changing things up to keep the game feeling fresh while still catering to the oldschool diablolike fans.

I've tried hard to like Book of Demons, but I found it difficult to look past the game's flaws.

Pros:
+ The game concept is unique!
+ The controls are simple and effective
+ Clever ideas for mechanics keep things interesting (such as adjustable dungeon sizes)

Cons:
- The whole "on-rails" mechanic where you move along a set path tends to be far more annoying than anything else. While it functions fine, it feels incredibly limiting and makes moving through the map very time consuming.
-- Avoiding projectiles works fine if you can move perpendicularly. If you can't move to the sides you're incredilby likely to be hit without any real chance at dodging.
- Despite the trailer implying the game has a "Darkest Dungeon" style grim and morbid atmosphere... this game has a lot of jokes for kids. For example, in the opening cutscene we see Satan holding a rubber ducky. There's a lot of potty humor that feels to me out of place, as if the team behind this game is trying to appeal to younger kids and adults at the same time, but failing miserably.
- The story writing is fine, but prepare yourself for really low quality dialogue. The voice acting tends to fall flat, and the lines that your character gets, the bosses get, and the cutscenes get all tend to be really poorly written. The characters in the village have much better voice acting than anyone else, for no apparent reason.
- The main characters have no real personality, and their blurbs are all over the place, from happy, to serious, to neutral, with no real personality established.
- While the game can be really fun in the beginning, later mechanics tend to feel artifical and boring IMO. Assuming you have average luck with drops, you'll easily outscale your enemies early and then just stagnate later as enemies get tougher and tougher without any real increase in attack power. The game turns into a slogfest against shielded enemies which become temporarily invincilbe and spawn minions when hit.

Other:
~ I've only played this game on Roguelike, the hardest difficulty setting, as I find the game very casual and easy. What I don't like is that the real risk of losing in this game comes not from enemies being difficult, but rather just being screwed by enemy placement (at least, for the Ranger character, who I have played the most). If you walk into a new room, there's a chance you'll immediately have a horde of enemies fighting you and no room to avoid them. Rooms are seperate in this game so you can't try lure enemies away one at a time or attack from another angle. You simply have to deal with the fact that you have no space to dodge in. This is made way worse by the fact that enemies basically just stand in place whenever not aggro's on you, so you can't even wait for them to walk away from that door. Basically you have to pray you get a health potion and the potion that clears debuffs or you're simply screwed. Build a huge health pool and prepare to burn all your pot charges, or you're dead.

I personally enjoyed this game enough to justify the 6.66$ I spent on it when buying on sale, but I wouldn't call it a fair price for anything more. The quality was just held back for me by low quality writing and voice acting. Ultimately, I have to not recommend, because the price is too high for a game with these levels of problems (even considering it is this new studio's first game).

Book of Demons is a very interesting hybrid of hack and slash, deck building and dungeon crawler games. It has super addictive gameplay with tons of interesting mechanics that will grant you dozens of hours of fun.

Story

Gameplay

Graphics

Sound

Conclusion

UPDATE (2018-12-28):
I found a ring that lets fire damage break shields. Also found a skill that lets all arrows break shields for a few seconds, and even dispel casting enemies.
I also found a skill that converts ALL enemy hearts into normal ones for a few seconds, so this makes poison builds possible as well.

These items / skills were desperately needed and unfortunately I didn't find nor know about any of them at the point of my original review, 12 hours in (which was after I killed the end boss on normal btw).

However, with the newfound ability to make a semi-working build also came new annoyances. Namely, in difficulties above normal, some of your skill slots are filled with random items that you can't remove and bosses literally steal skills from your bar on top of that. I'm still trying to figure out if I'm enjoying this game or just want to beat it at all costs.

Original Review:
Want to kill enemies? Click on them, easy.
Want to kill multiple enemies? Use AoE stuff. You will need it, because facing 20+ enemies is the default later in the game.

Shielded enemy approaching you? You have to click the shield 5 times before you can damage the enemy. AoE does not work against these. 65% of your enemies will wear shields later on.

Want to circumvent shields? There is actually a way: use poison.
But beware, that poison based enemies heal themselves if you apply poison to them.
And incidentally, half the aforementioned 65% shieldwearers are poison based later on.

So basically, don't use poison damage. You know what's really strong? Fire.
Unless you are late in the game, where the poison-based shieldwearers are actually ALSO fire based and destroying one of their hp will take 4 hits with any fire skill. But remember, poison still heals them.

So just use ice. It's the weakest element, but also the only one that doesn't get hard countered.

We have another mechanic though, called GOLDEN shield. enemies with a golden shield go invincible for 5 seconds whenever you hit them. Unless you deal fire damage. However they are also usually resistant to fire damage.

Did we mention: 100% of the minibosses you encounter will have at least two 30-second lasting invincibility phases, but they also usually have either shield or golden shield and are resistant to everything except ice (just like normal mobs)?

If this isn't enough, we got you with some more mechanics fam. Whenever an enemy casts a spell, they get complete invincibility for the duration of the cast. But it's just for two seconds and they only cast once around every five seconds.

Did we mention MAGIC shields yet, which are just like shields but regenerate?

But there's more:
Enemies that heal themselves if you click them too fast.
Enemies that heal other enemies when they die.
Enemies that spawn three more enemies once they die.

We also got some interaction on the player-end, so things don't get boring:
Stun: Whenever an enemy stuns you, the game pauses until you clicked 5 randomly moving stars. After you have been stunned, you can directly be stunned again (just like in real life). But we added an item (that is otherwise useless), which gives you a 30% chance to not be stunned, just in case anyone doesn't like that great star-clicking minigame we added.

Also cool: When you get poisoned (happens roughly every 2.37 seconds), you can click on your healthglobe in the left bottom corner of your screen after exactly 3 seconds, to remove the poison state. That might get very annoying and ergonomically exhausting really quick you say? Then you are correct, however you need to see the greater picture. It's all about pride and accomplishment. And never asking yourself if you should, but instead if you could.

Here is a video demo: (go to 04:11:00)
https://youtu.be/DL0zlYE_WsM?t=15073

This game is a gem. I'd like to highly recommend it to any player who enjoys a mix of action, planning, and collecting.

What could make you love this game?

First of all, the art style. It catches the whole idea of it being a "book". Well designed pop-up book graphics, both in the world, the character sheet and inventory (your card deck), as well as in the menus. And if you are a fan of Diablo I & II, you will notice that Thing Trunk got one important part – that made those titles stand out – just right: the lighting. Be it torches illuminating that tiny space just outside your radius of view, be it the ominous glow of a not-so-distant boss... it does a great deal to help you "feel" the dungeon. And of course: it pretty.

The sounds and voice acting feel good. If you are 6 hours in and start pounding your first demons, all of a sudden there is a certain "oomph" to hitting those big fellas, that feels statisfiying, after the chaotic bleating of those darn goat people a few dungeon levels up.
The voice acting fits the characters, adds real character, and helps deliver the humorous remarks your heroes drop at certain milestones. (The rogue is quite sure to meet her ex boyfriend's mother in hell; I personally feel that this could have quickly turned into an eye-rolling moment, but the humour and snark in the delivery just turn it into a nod and a smirk.)

The inputs are solid. Heavy on the clicking, as you'd expect from the genre, but there is an auto-walk feature that counters that slighty. (You will continue on your path, unless there is a junction, or you fight / loot). And as a veteran player you'll appreciate that you can use your keyboard to fire skills and use the [shift]-key to hold your position.


That's the appearance covered. Sure, important to fall in love, but what's the game, the mechanics, the loops? It is a classic ARPG. An action roleplaying game, that sends you out to kill stuff, collect stuff, and improve some of your stuff. To kill bigger stuff, and collect shinier stuff, that's oh-so-much more expensive to improve!

And I'd like to make the point, that it is an extremly well done ARPG. For my taste, it's items, monsters, balancing, and scope, that come together to make this game an instant classic.

All the items you can collect are "cards". Either artifacts (you equip them), actual items (you drink/shoot/throw them) or spells (do I have to spell it out?). While this system might not do much in making Book of Demons a "deck building game", it does give you a library of all the stuff you can collect, and in what quality (1-3) and rarity (normal, magic, legendary) you've already got it. Nice to pacify that inner completionist, who's still mad at you for not collecing stamps, or coins, or anything!

Those cards help you to delve deeper and deeper into the dungeon. It feels rewarding to unlock something new, or finally find that legendary version of one of your core cards. Even if you don't care for your collection, seeing a new card drop on your screen, waiting for you to collect it, is exciting!
Especially if you play the "rogue like" version, where those drops are fully randomized, and quite important for the success of your character. Will I finally get some healing potion? Or is it that weird elemental trap, that I - for the life of my rogue - do not use?

The monsters you face will slowly change over time, as you progess. Suddenly there will be monsters with bows, with shields, with spells, with elemental attacks, swarm-tactics, spells that can totally get out of control, magical shields, they charge you, burn you, poison you – they will kill you, if you do not adapt.

Which leads us to balancing. I do enjoy it. A lot. I've only played the "hard core" mode, said "rogue like" version, where cards drop all random (not helping you build your char by following a predetermined sequence), money is tight (read: scarce. Money, of course, is always tight!), and death might not be final, but pretty fatal.
In those sessions of mine there were moments where I've been frustrated. "Why did I die, just 2 levels ahead of the 3rd boss? Could it be that I need to use that weird elemental trap to succeed? And why did I never find that cool multi-shot bow?"
And yet it always was this enticing kind of frustration; this "Damn! I want to improve!", never that "DAMN! EFF THIS!"

While you can kill the 3rd and seemlingy final boss over the span of a weekend, there is an endless mode after you've beaten him. And it comes with a quite enjoyable mechanic: part of your gear will be randomly pre-determined. You will have to adjust your playstyle. As a warrior you might literally have "to learn to stop worrying and love the bomb", as a mage there could be a slew of of spells you haven't slung yet...
To me, this makes up for the fact that there are "only" 3 classes, and some cookie-cutter builds. Sure, you won't be able to live this game, like you could "live" a Diablo II, - III, Path of Exile or Grim Dawn, ... but I don't see myself getting bored of it, either.

There is something to the 100hours-ish scope of the game, that makes it quite appealing. It's not one of those games that will take you a year to grind out everything. But it's just complex enough, for you to be able to come back and back and back to it, slowly completing your understanding of it – as well as the collection of items you've amassed.


What could prevent you from loving this game?

The visuals. Of course. If you aren't incliend to look at a computer game's graphics in terms of "art style" – or you just don't like this particular art style: this might not be for you.

The music. While it's arguably quite good, it is kind of scarce. Mostly wind sounds, some chimes. If you need a string orchestra to get in the mood for bloody murder: this might not be for you.

The grind. It is a single player game build on a fairly basic premise. Kill stuff, loot stuff, kill more stuff. It's an ARPG: this might not be for you.

Warning: do not trust the demo. The actual game is much worse.

Just finished the campaign, and I deeply regret that I wasted my time on this game.
The core gimmick is nice, but the game clearly was never touched by an experienced (or at least sane) game designer, and as a result it gets progressively more boring the deeper you go. Every single game design decision that distinguishes it from any other diablo clone aims to make the game worse and kill all the fun.

You know what would be fun?

* Being able to run forward and kill things. So to make the game worse, devs implemented every single mistake from other games, including: some enemies that are invulnerable for like 5 seconds after each hit, all elites are invulnerable between phases (for no reason), enemies are invulnerable while they use skills (all of them, even trash mobs), there are tons of mobs that can't be killed while other mobs are alive, etc. Basically you are supposed to stare at the screen and ask yourself "is there ANYTHING that I can kill without waiting for 5 more seconds?" Dumbest part in the entire game? Phases where you just have to stand near the elite for like a minute and do nothing (there is just a timer, and you must stay close). Most of the time the elite also does nothing (stunnend, or just too dumb to do anything). So you just stand and wait for the timer to roll over into the next phase. Who thought it's a good, fun idea? How can anyone implement this nonsense without a malicious intent to transform the game into garbage?

* Being able to use your character's skills freely. So to make the game worse, half of your skills are consumables that you must buy in town.

* Being in control of your character through a nice and seamless UI. So to make the game worse, every elite just starts a cutscene right in the middle of the fight (no, the game doesn't care that you saw it 9000 times already), every stun starts a minigame where you have to catch stars flying across the screen, and THEN sometimes your skills get unequipped. Because this is literally the dumbest way to break the immersion, so of course it was implemented.

* Being able to relax and farm when necessary. So to make the game worse, mobs and loot are limited here, until you beat the game. Nothing respawns before that. Oh, you want that skill card? Spend 5 minutes backtracking a dungeon without any monsters, otherwise it's lost until you beat the game.

* Being able to develop your own character. Yes, D3 failed here as well compared to better games (all characters of the same class are essentially the same in the end), but this game managed to fail even worse. While you can't make your character unique (everyone will have the same skills and stats eventually), you CAN make your account somewhat worse by using the cauldron more often (the cost increases permanently after each use).

* Being able to find cool loot. Guess what? To make it worse, there is a very small pre-defined set of items.

* Being able to see some progression as your character gets stronger. Guess what, there are no stats. Your basic hit does 1 damage and sometimes misses. Nope, you'll never feel like your character became stronger (you'll upgrade your skills 3 times, and your hp/mana will increase, and that's it, it will still take 20 seconds to kill some frozen mobs that don't really do anything besides wasting your time).

* Being able to at least enjoy the core mechanic you bought this game for. But no, it gets worse with every floor. Monsers are more and more spongy (even when they can't even reach you, you are just supposed to stand still for a few minutes and knock them back over and over until their health pool is depleted), most of your skills become unusable due to some invulnerability mechanics, so the gameplay becomes more and more tedious. By the end of the game, about 90% (population-wise) of enemies explode after they die, so even if you killed something, you are supposed to run away, because it kills the fun, so of course it's here. The final boss is an hour-long chore, boring and absolutely meaningless (you are supposed to run around in a big circle for the entire hour). And the ending is... I have no words for this disgrace.

Avoid this game, it's not worth trying.

It is a masterpiece. Of the thousands of hours I have spent playing aRPG, Book of Demons offer a fresh and fun experience. Its core offerings to me are three.

(1) Replayability. Dungeons are randomly generated. Boss stages are random. The cards or builds that you bring to the higher difficulty or against each boss could also have a random element to it that either work for or against you.

(2) Flexibility on time. I can determine the dungeon size based on the time I have to play this game. Be it as a 10 mins run. Or a 40 mins run. I have total control over it. I will still get the reward in the end. For someone who has a certain real life obligation, this is wonderful.

(3) Catered for "mid-core" players. I.e. appealing for both casual and hard core players. There aren't any complicated mathematic formula behind the scene that I would need to research upon. Everything is intuitive. When I spend time playing and learning the game, I can be a good players. It is less reliance on the hours long gear grinding in the traditional ARPG sense but the ability to counter each mob type around me given the constraints I have. And that would include the positioning of my character that some may find it strange while I find it an absolutely necessity (and genius design really). This design makes the concept of enemy strong tanks in front and powerful but fragile casters behind works. This design also makes enemy summoners really scary at times. You have to think on each encounter.

Other than the above three core strengths of the game, I like the artwork of Book of Demons. The voice acting is fantastic.

All the best to Thing Trunk for the remaining books to be published. You have a fan here :)

This is a game that comes from the mind of a mobile developer. One of its selling points is the option to have a short play session—an issue that often is crucial for mobile, but hardly relevant for a PC gamer. The control scheme also feels like it was made for a touch screen. There are many mini-games that boil down to grabbing things floating on the screen. To heal poison, you have to click the bottom left with your cursor, even though normally you keep it to the center of the screen—an idea that would be handy of the game was controlled with your fingers via a mobile device, but doesn't translate well to PC.

A lot of its other elements feel clunky as well. While you can instantly teleport to the end of a dungeon when it's 100% clear, looking for that one pesky pile of gold you've missed means backtracking—excruciatngly slow backtracking. And pray that your final enemy isn't a gargoyle or a ghost: both can hide and must attack first... or ignore you, making you run past them a dozen times, groaning.

As for the presentation, I'm pretty sure that Deckard Cain voice is borderline copyright infringement. Book of Demons also borrows heavily from Darkest Dungeon with its combination of stylized visuals and gritty narration.

Does it all mean that the game is bad? No. It's all right. The treadmill does its job, injecting you with satisfaction via a steady stream of achievements and other small rewards. The idea of a small-budget simple Diablo-like is laudable, and you get enough fun for the price.

I do, however, feel that the 'Overwhelmingly positive' rating gives the wrong impression of Book of Demons being some sort of a hidden gem.

It's not. It's just all right.

The support for this game is fantastic. I found a minor issue that prevented me from finding all objects in a level (nothing major), so I posted in the community about the problem.

Within hours I received a reply that the developer was on the way to fixing the issue. I've sent my save file and received a fixed version of the file on the same evening. The issue in the game's code has been resolved.

This is how every game should be developed.

A great little ARPG.

Best feature? You can scale the dungeons to how much time you have (Let's be honest, who hasn't sunken way too many hours into Diablo/Path Of Exile/Sacred/Click-Click Ad Infinitum.

Got 5 minutes until your girlfriend gets home? Have a short dungeon.
Kids are entertained with a new toy for approx. 19.5 minutes? Have a medium one.
Pissed off everyone in the family because you love videogames too much? Crank that dungeon scale up and enjoy your soon to be ARPG-induced-loneliness!

Surprisingly nice, charming and quite easy to play hack and slay with good controller support and a rewarding and motivating card system. The graphic is unique, might be not everyones cup of tea but i like it a lot and it let me come back again and again. You can choose your own gameplay time, 8 min or 16 min or you want 46 min? A great feature. Overall a relaxing experience with just the right difficulty to keep you going!

High five Thing Trunk for this awesome experience!

Follow our AWG Curator

After literally thousands of hours spent in Action isometric RPG's (and others) like Diablo (mostly - like 3k+ h easily :P) , Path of Exile, Titan Quest, Champions of Norath (and Return to arms) - and so on - been there, love it, seen'em - kill'em all.

This one however didn't attract me with graphic at all, yet I thought - let's give it a chance - sometimes those smaller productions have great climate - mood going along with us on adventures.

And It happened!
Great - just great at it's soothing and deeply relaxing yet perfectly paced at it's difficult march through the hell spawns :D

Now some feedback for developers;
- I played on standard difficulty for good couple of hours without dying once on rather fast route through the enemies (all 100% clear) - quite satisfying with the loot - especially how rarely better items drops - great! yet to this rather calming game I would either put some dis-balanced combat more often forcing us to retreat or push forward instead of clearing the rooms one by one. (at least in the first few hours)
- Second and last issue - in my personal opinion is the graphic - great idea for the paper figures and setting - yet after the great success I hope You will achieve quite soon - I hope for "real" 3D included with some stunning and eye catching visuals to back up this already great game's core.

This is a truly brilliant game, despite being in early access, it feels very polished and complete, only there's even more stuff coming to the game; which is awesome. I'm going to try and make an actual helpful review rather than just saying that the game is good. The game is good. Really good. But also:

Combat: If you've watched videos, don't be fooled, it's a lot more interactive and satisfying that videos make it look like. It works like most hack n slash games, like Diablo. You point the cursor on an enemy and click to use basic attacks, then you have your abilities. The three classes all have their own distinct abilities. They are nothing like one another - they play very differently. Currently there is the warrior and the mage and soon the rogue is coming.

I do find that the game does not provide many different build opportunities as there may be just 2-3 builds per class. The warrior has one true AoE ability and I think any warrior would always slot this ability in their actionbar because AoE is 100% necessary in mid and late game. But that's all really, you don't choose between different types of abilities, there's an ability for single target, an ability for AoE, plenty of different utlity abilities and passive abilities too.

Every ability does definitely become useful at one point or another as there's enough monster + elite monster variety to force you to plan fights and react according to what you're fighting.

Environments, atmosphere & the world: The dungeons are indeed randomly generated and it works really well. It's also a pretty cool feature that you can choose how long your dungeon should be - The game gives you a slider that allows you to choose how long it should be, depending on how much time you have. It's useful for the busy family guys and workaholics.

There's only 3 different tilesets at the moment and I'm not sure if they're adding more. They're called Maze, Catacombs and Hell. They all look like places you'll find in Diablo 1. When you complete the game you can generate more dungeons and choose which tileset to play on. After 25 hours of gameplay I'm not bored of them yet, the atmosphere is kind of dark and you even have a light radius around your character. You can't expand this light radius as far as I know but it's a reasonable distance.

Something that's a bit strange about this game is that you can only walk along the path and you cannot leave the path. The warrior also hits from a range rather than fight right there face-on melee. I thought it seemed off putting and quite strange at first but it's actually not bad because it allows completely new and unique game mechanics to work; things you haven't seen in a game before. I can't explain why or how, you'll have to try it yourself (remember there's a free demo).

Character Progression: Pretty satisfying. You level up, you choose if you want to get 1 more health or 1 more mana. You need both, but you don't have worry about choosing the wrong thing because you also find more permanent health and mana bonuses in chests and treasures. Also - when you level up and choose health or mana, the opposite stat will be stored in something you have called 'The Cauldron' which is located in Town. You can claim the contents of the Cauldron any time you want, but if you die, the content in the cauldron is lost.

As you level up, monsters you've fought before become easier; something you'd normally see in games like this. As you progress throughout the game, you meet new monsters all the time.

You don't get equipment in this game, the game has no gear walls, but the difficulty remains reasonable with challenging elite monsters or combinations of smaller monsters that counter you well here and there. On my warrior who is level 33 (I think) I have died twice, but I built him relatively tanky, but I'm not sure how easy it is to die really but I played relatively well I'm guessing.

Card Game (Items and Abilities): There's not much to it really. You have items and abilities like any hack n slash game. Items and abilities are represented as the cards you're seeing in the pictures for this game. Items and abilities can be placed in your actionbars like you usually can in hack n slash games - there is no card minigame or anything in the game, they are only in a card form to match the paper theme the game is going with. It's cool, it's a nice art style.

Story: I'm not going to say much - it's a spoof of Diablo 1's storyline. The first major boss is 'The Cook'. What boss from Diablo 1 is it making fun of? Pffft I don't know it's so hard to guess. Lol. The voice actor for The Sage sounds like Deckard Cain and the character looks like him. The dungeon you enter is the local cathedral in a small darkened town that looks like Tristram. It's pretty funny at times.

Music: I'm sorry but I haven't listened, I intend to do that soon but for now I can't give you information on this. The sound design is not great as it contains a lot of sounds that you hear from all kinds of games and movies, most likely because they are free source samples they obtained from the internet. It's not bad, it all works, it's all timed correctly, it's the correct sound for the actions that occur etc. I must say that it'd be great if certain individual sounds could be switched off (not sure if this can be done by accessing the game files) because the abilities you use the most like pure damage abilities all use the same audio file at the moment and it's a pretty loud sound and it drives me a bit mad sometimes.

Art Style: I really like the style. It's really cartoony, really elegant and kinda hipster (but it's nice). I advise you to look at the pictures the devs have provided here on the Steam Store page (scroll up) and click on them to see them bigger so you can really see what you're gonna get. I don't know if there are people who would have a problem with this style, but it's hard to even notice when you're fighting a bunch of monsters and avoiding fire on the floor etc.

Miscellanous: The game is pretty polished in general, I haven't noticed anything gamebreaking. I've personally reported some grammar and tooltip errors, one single bug and a couple of small suggestions. The game has an in-game feedback tab so you can very easily and very quickly report anything to the developers. They even responded to me the day after. Incredible communication with the people that are interested in actually testing the game and want to help the devs out squishing bugs etc.

42/42 will play for many many more hours and I'm really looking forward to try the rogue class.

Overview

Dungeoneering

Worldbuilding

Conclusion

I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying Book of Demons, and I definitely recommend it. However, I do want to make sure that other buyers of the game understand what they're getting. I was looking for a new game with controller support in the dungeon crawling and hack and slash genres, and this game came up. That's not exactly accurate, though.

Book of Dungeons is understandably a dungeon crawler, because it takes place for the most part in dungeons that go deeper and deeper as the game progresses. However, it's also a CCG with turn-based combat. A variety of monsters are encountered and unlocked in the bestiary as you progress through the game, and cards of varying uses and rarity are obtained and utilized to build your deck. Players will be able to equip more cards as the game progresses and card slots are unlocked with gold and loot drops.

Combat is turn-based and automatic, so your only options as a player during combat are to move in a grid-like formation along a path to avoid and/or target enemies and projectiles, use consumable cards (like health and mana) click a button to disarm a shield or interrupt a spell to make an emeny vulnerable, or use an ability card, like a spell. No offensive combat happens while your character is in motion, so your choice is to be still and attack or maneuver around to avoid/engage enemies and obtain loot. That's not exactly, "Hack and slash" to me, and I have a hunch that this would be confusing to other players as well. Since I paid full price for my copy, and didn't get what I thought I was buying, I want to be very clear about what this game actually is.

In regard to controller support, the tag is accurate that this game currently provides partial controller support. You will still need a mouse and/or keyboard to access menus, such as those used to level up your character, switch out cards, and upgrade or identify cards. The controller support that is provided works very well. I didn't have any issues on that front, and I would bet that a Steam Controller or controller mapping program could be used for the remaining functions if a gamer was so inclined.

A positive aspect of the game is that it doesn't require a lengthy gaming session to enjoy. Games range from a few minutes to very long, and the player has the ability to set these parameters. Those with short attention spans and those who "bounce" between games will appreciate that the developers provided this feature. I know I certainly do.

Graphically, the game is beautiful. I love the angular features of the characters and scenery. It really does look like a world all its own, and it's fun to be a part of it. Overall, I'm having a lot of fun with it, and since I don't usually enjoy turn-based games of any kind, this is a testament to how very well this game has been developed.

It's a great combination of a lot of different elements, but it's really not categorized very well for browsing by tags. Of the dungeon crawling and hack and slash tags that have been attributed to this game, it's neither one nor the other. I'd classify it as a CCG with turn-based combat and dungeon crawling elements, with the dungeon environment and looting being fundamental to the game.

Most games have elements of other genres, like strategy, which is common and can be attributed to nearly any game, so I realize categorization isn't as simple as it once was. That's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, a lot of great gaming combinations are available now, like one of my favorites which is actually an RPG/Pinball mashup. So while I don't believe these genre fusions are a negative thing, I do think that more attention should be paid to categorization, tags, and descriptions. Games like this with a $20 price tag aren't so easy to dismiss when "unwrapping" a game that isn't quite what you thought you had at the checkout.