One of the more unique and interesting deckbuilders to emerge in the last few years was Hellcard, a battler that put up to three characters against hordes of enemies coming from every direction—with nasty elites and bosses liberally sprinkled in for flavor. Developer Thing Trunk have now released the full game, with Hellcard exiting early access on February 1st.
Hellcard focuses on turn-based card combat of your party—up to three heroes in both singleplayer and co-op—against a horde of monsters. The two sides alternate between teams, with the heroes attempting to defeat enemies tactically based on their declared action for the next round. Every playthrough is procedurally generated, in roguelite fashion. I’ve played several of these cooperative deckbuilders, both on digital and tabletop, and this is one of the only ones that really feels like it was designed ground up to earn the co-op label.
The full release also brings in a fourth character class, the Tinkerer, with gameplay based around making sure you have enough orbs and screws and things in order to get your gadgets up and running. I am not really joking when I say that. The previous three classes were Warrior, Mage, and Rogue.
Developer Thing Trunk previously worked on the roguelike dungeon-crawling deckbuilder Book of Demons, which sold over a million copies. Having just done Hellcard, their next title is Book of Aliens, a tactical midcore game intended as a tribute to the Microprose classic UFO: Enemy Unknown, or as it’s known in the USA, X-COM.
You can find Hellcard on Steam, where you can also find its free prequel demo. It’s developed by Thing Trunk and published by Skystone Games and Surefire Games.