In 9 Kings, you start with a small village and build it into a powerful kingdom by playing cards to summon units like knights, warlocks, or imps. The game shines with its chaotic deck-building, letting you create wild combos, such as explosive wizards or necromantic sheep, to defeat enemy kings. Each of the nine kings has a unique deck, and looting enemies unlocks their cards, offering endless strategies.

Sad Socket was founded by childhood friends Andre Young and Rafael da Silva Melo. Young, a YouTube star with around 800k subscribers and creator of Latin America’s largest Game Jam, brought experience from games like Seraph’s Last Stand. Melo, a creative director with a background in film and advertising, shaped the project’s vision. They also shared on Steam: “We’re just two guys chasing a dream”, crediting the community’s 170,000 wishlists for their success.

The post Brazilian Rougelike Game 9 Kings Hits 13,800 Concurrent Players first appeared on IndieGames.

Get ready to jump into a whimsical, yet totally chaotic universe in DOG WITCH. You’ll be battling some truly odd enemies here, like grumpy Cat Ladies, Russian Dolls armed with guns, and even suspicious milk vending machines. The game takes inspiration from favorites like Slay the Spire and Dicey Dungeons, blending deckbuilding with dice rolls.

Every time you roll those dice, it helps you cast spells, kick off cool combos, and activate more than 150 different magical artifacts. The runs are pretty quick, usually lasting about 30 minutes, which keeps the gameplay feeling fresh and encourages you to try out wild new strategies and combos to outsmart your enchanted foes.

Customization is a big deal here, letting you truly make your Dog Witch your own. You can pick its fur, hat, how it barks, and even its “chonk” level. The game’s hand-drawn art style is inspired by the playful absurdity of shows like “Adventure Time”. If you’re curious, there’s a demo planned for Steam Next Fest in June 2025, which will give you about an hour’s taste of the first area.

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In Shroom and Gloom, you play as a fungal forager diving into creepy, hand-drawn dungeons, armed with two card decks to outwit and outfight your foes. Your combat deck drives fast-paced battles, letting you hack, slash, or fry enemies with powerful card-based attacks. The explore deck shapes your path through the dungeon, helping you transform cards, unlock weapons, and pick up new skills.

Each trip through the dungeons throws up new challenges. The demo’s 26 unique tunnels show off the game’s slick combat, humor, and striking art style, echoing vibes from Inscryption and Slay the Spire. Early Access is expected to last about a year, with the hopes of getting the community feedback to add new cards, dungeons, and mechanics, with hints of multiplayer features teased on their Discord.

The post Devolver Digital Announced Shroom and Gloom, Roguelike Deckbuilder Set to Release on Steam Early Access in 2025 first appeared on IndieGames.

In a dark fantasy world, 9 Kings challenges you to build a thriving kingdom to outlast rival kings. From a nine-tile grid around your castle, you draw cards to construct buildings, summon troops, or cast spells. The trailer highlights battles with knights, warlocks, and sentient mushrooms, where you can drop rocks from your castle to smash foes. Each of the nine kings brings a unique starting deck, and looting rivals’ cards lets you craft wild, game-breaking builds.

Crafted by a small São Paulo and New York team, 9 Kings builds on Sad Socket’s success with Seraph’s Last Stand, which sold over 500,000 copies. Backed by Hooded Horse, known for polishing indie gems, 9 Kings will evolve through Early Access toward a full Q3 2025 release.

The post 9 Kings Trailer Reveals Roguelike Deckbuilder’s Early Access Launch Date first appeared on IndieGames.

Deck of Haunts is a solid game, flawed but surprisingly polished for a full release. Blending deck-building with roguelike progression and strategic depth, it shines in a 1970s American setting. You play as a sentient, malevolent 1920s art deco mansion, in other words, a haunted house with a pulsating stone Heart. Over 28 nights, you will have to lure humans, exploit their fears, and drain their essence to grow your power. During the day you construct new buildings for the mansion, and get news cards, while at night you haunt.

Starts strong, but falls flat as it progresses

My biggest problem with Deck of Haunts is that while it starts strong and hooks you, it grows frustrating and repetitive the longer you play. By day 15, it feels like you’ve seen 70% of the game. Every playthrough begins with the same house layout, cards, and fixed calendar of events. You can unlock or upgrade cards and rooms during a run, but these are too sparse to feel impactful or counter the steep difficulty spikes. When a run ends, you lose all progress, no upgrades, no new modes, just back to the same cards, layout, and calendar. Worse, every run forces you to replay the same stage-setting tutorial cards, which gets old fast.

In Deck of Haunts, the tile-based building system lets you create maze-like layouts with 10 room types: basic (guest, living, kitchen), special (Phobia, Mechanical, Sacrifice), and one unique. You can expand rooms by matching cards, like merging guest rooms, or use special ones like the Phobia Room to drain sanity or the Bell Tower to summon a Witch spirit.

The interface is user-friendly, with mouse-scroll rotation and a “show layout” button, but it lacks an undo option or merge warnings. Building does feel fun, but the small starting grid and fixed Heart room limit creativity. Upgrading rooms for bonuses, like a Mechanical Room boosting action points, adds strategy, but it’s underused, and larger rooms don’t always pay off. The biggest letdown is the lack of randomization and this basic system feels too simplistic.

Each night 2-5 humans (sometimes more) invade your mansion, with health, sanity, and traits like Pathfinder (faster movement) or Bleeder (more damage taken). You play 34 sinister cards to attack, drain sanity, or add Tension (enhancing insanity effects), using 3 action points (AP) per turn, which can grow through combos or rooms. Some cards hit lone humans, others affect rooms, and can also teleporting victims. Your mission is to block humans from reaching your heart.

“Tile-based building system lets you create maze-like layouts.”

Deck of Haunts struggles with weak mid and late-game progression

Humans include civilians, door-smashing police, priests (untouchable unless alone), and occult investigators wielding items like Pistols or Holy Books that shift their actions. Killing a human in front of others causes panic, making them flee but draining your essence. On paper, everything sounds great, but it lacks meta-progression beyond minor card unlocks. You can only swap cards at fixed points, and most upgrades are underwhelming, like a slight damage boost or a single cost reduction. Humans start with low health and sanity (8-9) but scale to the twenties, while your damage barely grows, making it feel underpowered.

The balance is all over the place too. The damage types are seriously unequal, the sanity damage is extremely fiddly and relies on you building ‘Tension’, but building tension fades after a single use except in rare circumstances, so you’re really better off just throwing lots of cards at the problem. On the flipside, physical damage offers a lot of control due to synergies with unique mansion rooms, making more strategic, easier to use, and outright better.

Beyond the issues mentioned, Deck of Haunts also struggles with weak mid and late-game progression. Building special rooms adds fun and combos, but there’s little room to experiment. When enemies grow stronger, the real challenge kicks in, forcing you to construct more rooms under tight action point limits, which can feel harsh. The game doesn’t hold your hand, but it also restricts your freedom too much.

The most frustrating part is the Pathfinder trait some humans have, letting them start in a random room instead of the entrance hall. Sometimes, that room is right next to your Heart Room, the one you’re desperately trying to protect by building a maze. If you get a few humans spawning nearby and lack cards to redirect them, you take damage through no fault of your own, making your choices feel pointless.

“The game doesn’t hold your hand, but it also restricts your freedom too much.”

The full game feels stagnant

Deck of Haunts has almost no narrative. no deep lore, campaign, hidden letters, or story elements to uncover. You just survive and move on. While you meet new humans from time to time, the experience feels bare-bones. The spooky atmosphere is decent, with passable graphics and generic horror vibes. The game leans on psychological horror through card effects, but without thematic depth, like possession or monster summons, it feels overly simplistic.

In the end, it’s a creative roguelike deckbuilder with a unique premise, but it doesn’t fully grab you. The demo impressed, but the full game feels stagnant. Its intuitive mansion-building and strategic card combos create a fun loop for deckbuilding fans, yet repetitive gameplay and generic horror vibes hold it back. Without a gripping narrative or chilling scares, it feels more like a passing title than a standout horror hit.

“Creative roguelike deckbuilder, but gets boring quite quickly.”

Review copy provided by the publisher

3.2

The post Deck of Haunts – Razočaravajući deckbuilder first appeared on IndieGames.

I love the roguelite genre, with its permadeath, randomized levels, and brutal difficulty, but so many games stick to the same old formula. Drop Duchy, though, feels like a breath of fresh air. It’s not just another die-and-retry loop, it mixes strategy, puzzles, and kingdom-building in a way that’s so clever and addictive, I can’t put it down.

You play as a medieval lord, building your kingdom by dropping terrain tiles such as plains, forests, and rivers onto a grid to collect resources like food, wood, and gold. The deckbuilding comes alive with special cards, like farms or bridges, that you add to your hand to shape your strategy. Want more food? Place a farm on a plain. Need gold? Link river tiles with a bridge. Every move feels like solving a fun puzzle, and the roguelite randomness makes each run new and unpredictable.

Drop Duchy really shines by blending easy-to-pick-up gameplay with surprising depth. The tile-dropping mechanic is super intuitive, and while it takes a bit to fully master the progression, it’s crafted well enough to keep you playing. Still, there’s plenty of complexity to dig into, picking which buildings to add to your deck or weighing the risk of hitting a combat node for bigger rewards brings layers of strategy that feel satisfying without being overwhelming.

Unlike roguelites that hammer you with constant combat, this game gives you room to breathe. Peaceful nodes let you focus on building your kingdom, gathering resources at your own pace, while combat nodes push you to outsmart CPU opponents using your terrain and troops. The preview build’s combat felt a bit rough, leaning too hard in the CPU’s favor, but the full release has ironed that out somewhat.

In a genre that can feel stale, Drop Duchy is a total game-changer. It boldly mixes Tetris-style puzzles with roguelite deckbuilding, and it nails the execution with flair. Whether I’m a roguelite veteran chasing the perfect run or a casual player craving something fresh, you won’t regret playing this game. It’s the kind of title that makes hours vanish as I plan my next move, watching my kingdom grow tile by tile.

The post Drop Duchy Brings New Life to the Roguelite Scene first appeared on IndieGames.

You play as the savior of a city, tasked with assembling teams of loyal Montabi creatures. Each creature possesses a unique set of abilities, and the key to victory lies in discovering the perfect synergy between them. As the game progresses, Montabi evolve into more powerful forms, unlocking new ability cards that expand your tactical options.

The game also features a variety of trainers, each with their own distinctive combat style. Every defeat comes at a cost, if your trainer falls in battle, they’re lost as well, adding extra weight to your resource management decisions. The final version of the game is expected to include over 60 different Montabi creatures.

The post Akupara Games Announced Montabi, a Roguelike Deckbuilder with Monster Collecting Features first appeared on IndieGames.

ANTHEM#9 is set in a world of global conspiracies and secret societies, focusing on an organization that operates from the shadows to maintain balance and harmony. The protagonist, Rubit, is an agent with a mysterious past and mind-altering superpowers. The story follows her missions to eliminate threats to world order, including dangerous masterminds, mad scientists, and devious spies.

Combat in ANTHEM#9 revolves around combining three-colored gems (red, green, blue) to activate unique abilities. Each turn generates random gems, and you must strategically match your numbers to fulfill skill recipes and attack enemies. Up to four skills can be assigned to a deck, and experimenting with different builds is key to maximizing combat potential.

The post Roguelite Deckbuilder with an Intriguing Story ANTHEM#9 Launches This Winter on Steam first appeared on IndieGames.

In Crush the Industry, you take on the role of a new hire at a massive game studio. Your goal is to climb the corporate ladder by battling workplace challenges, managing your sanity, and building a deck of skills to overcome obstacles. The game features multiple playable characters, over 200 skills and talents, and an ever-changing schedule, ensuring that no two career runs are the same.

The game’s progression is challenging, with nine difficulty levels and the infamous “9 Circles of Corporate Hell” to conquer. As you achieve milestones, you unlock new content, including skills, talents, and characters. The latest update introduces 15 new character-exclusive skills, shop rerolls, discounted items, and four new talents. MacOS support has also been added, along with improvements to animations, enemy behaviors, and bug fixes.

We asked Travis and Kara to share their thoughts on the Early Access aspect of the game, whether it’s worth it, how it helps, what benefits it brings, and what developers can typically expect to gain from it.

Do you consider Early Access on Steam to have been useful, given that your game has been in it for two years?

Early Access increased our confidence for the full release clearing player expectations. It’s been helpful to have that feedback and extra time to refine.

Are you satisfied with how the game has been received so far?

We’re satisfied with it. The constructive negative reviews helped us make improvements, and we didn’t expect the game to land for everyone (particularly the satire of office work culture and crude humor). We’re happy to be north of 90% on Steam with the majority of players sharing positive experiences.

Looking back at the game two years ago compared to today, what’s the one game mechanic you’re still most proud of?

Expanding the “rolling health” mechanic popularized by Earthbound and fusing it with card battler gameplay. I think it makes our game stand out and play differently than anything else in the roguelike deckbuilder genre. We had some concerns early in development that it might feel too gimmicky, but it worked out way better than expected.

How valuable has player feedback been during development?

The players who took the time to offer detailed feedback were invaluable. There’s a lot of things they thought of that we wouldn’t have on our own.

An enemy most indie devs can probably relate to: the Game Designer Mole that tunnels too deep on new ideas. 🐿️#screenshotsaturday #gamedeveloper #indiedev pic.twitter.com/kqqZHlBjmP

— Travis | Crush the Industry dev (@CognogginGames) February 23, 2025

How frequently did you update the game, and did you ever feel it became repetitive or boring to continue working on the same project?

We’ve had 10 major updates and around 20 unannounced/small updates. It did become repetitive at points and the burnout was real. Grinding through the work required for localization was especially rough.

What were some of the key lessons or experiences you gained while developing this game?

The importance of early marketing comes to mind as a lesson. We learned to appreciate trimming down excess scope to focus solely on whatever makes the game fun to play. There were some overly ambitious features that had to be cut, like a minigame and casino node. Learning to avoid those scope creep pitfalls was just as important as speeding up our code/art turnaround times.

We would market earlier and wait on releasing our first demo until it was more polished. We’d also reconsider some of the full-screen visual effects and loosen up on staying faithful to retro console pixel resolutions.

How important has marketing been for the game’s success? Are there any statistics you’d be willing to share, such as wishlist numbers before and after launch? Have sales remained steady, or have they fluctuated over time?

Marketing was and is everything for us finding success. Steam’s Next Fest and some early youtube coverage gave us a nice initial boost. Right now our sales jump for discounted events and seasonal sales. I think a lot of players are waiting for it to exit Early Access at this point, and we’re almost there. We have ~20k wishlists right now and want to drive that number up in the coming months as we market for full release.

The post [Q&A] Kako je Early Access oblikovao deck-building igru Crush the Industry first appeared on IndieGames.

Novus Orbis is a roguelike deckbuilder that stands out in a crowded genre with its unique combo system and strategic depth. Developed with a clear love for card games, it offers a fresh take on deckbuilding by introducing mechanics that encourage careful planning and synergy. While the game is challenging and rewarding, it also has some flaws that might not appeal to everyone.

You are tasked with exploring the last remnants of a broken world, battling enemies, and uncovering secrets to restore order. The narrative serves as a backdrop for the gameplay, providing just enough context to keep you engaged without overshadowing the card battles. The game’s focus is on its mechanics and replayability, and it delivers on that front with a wealth of content to discover.

The combination system is the core of Novus Orbis

The combo system is the heart of Novus Orbis. Each card has a cost and a combo value, and playing cards in the right order unlocks their full potential. This adds a layer of strategy, as you must carefully plan your moves to maximize your deck’s effectiveness. Breaking a combo can also be beneficial in certain situations, giving you flexibility in how you approach each battle. In general, mastering the combo system is highly rewarding and never feels overly punishing or difficult to control. However, success can sometimes depend on RNG and a bit of luck. That said, the game’s emphasis on strategy makes planning crucial, choosing the right cards is always the key.

Enemies in Novus Orbis operate on a countdown system. Every time you play a card or end your turn, the countdown decreases, bringing enemies closer to attacking. This mechanic forces you to think ahead and decide whether to play more cards or end your turn early to avoid triggering enemy attacks. Despite the game’s decently crafted systems, I can’t stress enough how punishing it can be. Some enemies feel outright frustrating, like the ones that reflect damage back at you, which is just plain annoying.

Bosses, too, become overly repetitive because you’ll die frequently and have to face them repeatedly. While trial and error is a core part of the experience, in my 10-hour playthrough, I never managed to beat the game. I always got stuck at the third boss, unable to defeat him. This highlights how powerful bosses and mini-bosses are, each with their own combos and mechanics. Without the right cards and a strong start, these encounters can feel unnecessarily punishing.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, challenging games are often the most rewarding because they push you to refine your strategies, optimize your deck, and think creatively. No matter how tough the situation, there’s always a way to overcome it. The game offers over 100 cards per two classes, divided into six types: Attack, Skill, Equipment, Item, Special, and Affliction. This variety allows for endless experimentation and deck customization. However, the game’s focus on scaling builds means that individual card choices become less impactful as you progress, which can make later stages feel less dynamic.

Unique system of blessings and relics

One of my favorite aspects of the game is the blessings or relic system. Blessings and relics are powerful upgrades that can significantly enhance your character, earned from bosses, special rooms, and secret interactions. Pets, on the other hand, provide additional support by attacking, healing, or buffing you every turn. Once you understand how blessings work, it becomes clear that prioritizing them is often the best strategy. For example, choosing a blessing that grants +2 evasion can make defeating the second and third bosses much easier.

Novus Orbis also heavily relies on status effects. The more strength or defense buffs you accumulate, the better your chances of winning. The game is filled with hidden card interactions and events, which add depth and flavor but can also be frustrating. Some interactions are unclear, and the consequences of your choices can feel arbitrary. I’m not a big fan of rooms that randomly heal you or deal damage. While the game sometimes indicates whether enemies are weaker or stronger, you never truly know what to expect when entering a new area.

The most effective strategy, at least for me, is to aim for as many mini-boss and boss victories as possible. I particularly enjoyed defeating a Mimic, and as mentioned earlier, the stronger your status effects, the easier it becomes to win. This made me question the importance of cards, as they don’t seem to drastically impact gameplay, likely because they’re so well-balanced.

What definitely bothers me is the progression system, specifically the way you unlock new cards. To unlock new cards, you need to complete achievements, or specific challenges. While this system is interesting, unlocking new content seems overly difficult. After 10 hours of play, I’ve only completed 30% of what’s required, which shows that the game doesn’t reward your effort quickly. It might be a good idea to make this process a bit easier or faster, as not everyone has the time to complete every achievement.

Ending thoughts

Visually, Novus Orbis is clean and functional, with a minimalist art style that keeps the focus on the gameplay. The card designs are clear and easy to read, and the animations are smooth. The game’s environments are simple but effective, with a dark, atmospheric aesthetic that fits the broken world theme. The music is pleasant and complements the gameplay, though it can become repetitive over long play sessions. The sound effects are satisfying, especially during combat, and help to enhance the overall experience.

For fans of deckbuilding games who enjoy a challenge, Novus Orbis is an easy recommendation. Its unique mechanics and high replayability make it a standout title in the genre. However, if you prefer more straightforward gameplay or are put off by trial-and-error mechanics, you might find it less appealing. Overall, Novus Orbis is a well-crafted game that pushes the boundaries of what a deckbuilder can be, and it’s worth checking out for anyone looking for a fresh and challenging experience.

Review copy provided by the publisher

3.8

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