Book of Demons Reviews

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: [b]Combat:[/b] 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. [b]Environments, atmosphere & the world:[/b] 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). [b]Character Progression:[/b] 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. [b]Card Game (Items and Abilities):[/b] 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. [b]Story:[/b] 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. [b]Music:[/b] 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. [b]Art Style:[/b] 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. [b]Miscellanous:[/b] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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! [h1][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/26335619-Adult-World-Gamers/] Follow our AWG Curator [/url][/h1]

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).

[h1] 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. [/h1] [b] Pros: [/b] + Procedurally generated dungeons + High level of replayability + Very fun and addictive gameplay + Hack and slash mechanics + Huge variety of monsters with different abilities and powers + Interesting deck building mechanics + Ability to set up your game session according to the amount of time you have + Satisfying upgrade system [b] Cons: [/b] - The story is pretty dull and shallow - Playing on Casual difficulty makes the game a bit repetitive and boring - Some of the cards feel a bit weird or overpowered Book of Demons is a game that stayed in my game library for a long time and I was not sure either I should play it right away or just wait for the end of the Early Access. The majority of my friends were not so happy with this game, so I was not ready to test my luck. And when the game was officially out and the review score looked pretty good, I decided to give it a chance and have a look. [h1] Story [/h1] The story is the weakest part in this game, something that you will not remember at all. Basically, there is no storyline in Book of Demons at all. There is a lonely church situated in the village with a dungeon system located straight beneath it. These dungeons lead deeper and deeper under the ground, where you have to face and slay the main enemy. To do this, the player has to clear procedurally generated levels, divided into three sections. During the game, the player always has a chance to visit the village between cleaning the dungeon floors and talk to its habitats. They can tell you a bit more about the lore of the game but it still doesn’t feel enough. [h1] Gameplay [/h1] In its core, Book of Demons is a classic dungeon crawler with an interesting mix of card deck building, hack and slash, and a few RPG elements. One of the most interesting mechanics for me personally was the ability to tail a perfect dungeon run based on the free time that I have. Before each journey, you can set the duration of your run, setting a short, long or big one, with a different amount of time from 5 to 40+ minutes. The whole gameplay thing is very simple and it’s presented as a simplified hack and slash game, where you control the character through the procedurally generated levels. Your moves are limited by the path you have to follow and you can’t turn off from this path. Player has to attack enemies by clicking the left mouse button on them or simply hold this button to continuously auto-attack them. Sounds pretty simple and trivially, but there is a twist! The player has a set of special cards that greatly helps him during the exploration of these dungeons. Cards are divided into four different categories: special cards, artifacts cards, item cards, and spell cards. Special cards are needed to upgrade the main cards that you use directly during the battles. Artifact cards grant you some great passive skills like a critical chance, chance to ignite the enemy, restore mana, etc. Items cards let you use a variety of different items like potions, the portal to town scrolls, throw a bomb to the enemy, etc. And finally, spell cards are the main active cards that do the whole damage and bring some fun to the game. It’s important to understand that you will have to find and build your own powerful deck for being able to complete the game. Some of these cards can be completely overpowered or just weird in its mechanics, but I guess developers will continuously patch them from time to time. The variety of demons in this game is simply impressive. I really enjoyed the battle effects made in this game. Enemies can freeze you, put you on fire, poison and stun you. The player can interrupt most of them if he is fast enough to click the shiny icon above the enemy’s heard. Stunning is the most fun part in this list - when this happens, you must complete a mini-game, where the player has to gather starts flying around the dark screen to become conscious again. If the hit is too powerful, your cards can be even disabled and you have to enable them again by clicking on them. After you finish your dungeon run and gain enough experience, your character will level up. You have to distribute one point to either enhance your health or mana. Also, when you level up, it’s a good idea to visit the town and have a talk with its habitats. They can offer you their services in exchange for money. Basically, the town is the main place where you make your character stronger and prepare for your next run. Here you can replenish your health and mana, upgrade your cards, identify the unknown cards and charge them. One of the most interesting offers is a magic cauldron that gathers all the useful stuff you gather during your runs. In order to obtain this stuff, you have to pay some gold and every next time will be more expensive than the previous one. Magic cauldron contains extra points, rare cards, and gold. Keep in mind, that every time you die during your journey, your cauldron will be emptied. If you are a streamer, then you will be happy to hear that developers recently added a new feature that allows your audience to participate in your game during your streams. The player can freely set which type of viewers are allowed to do certain types of actions such as setting traps, spawning demons or help you click on the abilities at the most intense moments. This is a very interesting addition that lets you communicate with your audience on the brand new level. Be aware that if you play on the Casual difficulty your game can turn into one big tedious and repetitive routine, where you will kill every single enemy easily. If you like to have a bit more challenging game, consider the idea of setting a game on the Normal difficulty. [h1] Graphics [/h1] To support the idea that the game is actually a book every single character, demon, building and all the items lying around on the dungeon floors are made with folded paper. It looks pretty unique and interesting. All these graphics effects of freezing, poisoning, setting your character on fire and screen shaking after the enemy rally on you are designed in a simple way but perfectly fit the whole atmosphere. Developers also made this really cool design of footprints that you leave behind yourself which turn into gold once you complete the area to prevent you from unnecessary traveling here and there. [h1] Sound [/h1] I really appreciate the voice acting in Book of Demons, it sounds pretty professional and polished. All these sound effects you hear during your journeys like goat bleating, fireball throwing, screen frozing, and many others are designed on the highest level. The only thing that can be annoying for players is how the hero repeat the same phrases again and again until you complete certain levels. [h1] Conclusion [/h1] Book of Demons is a truly interesting game with a great mix of different genres and mechanics perfectly implemented in one place. This game is a good choice for both casual and veteran players. It has a great replayability value and challenging gameplay on the higher level difficulties which can make your gameplay experience last for a very long time. Highly recommended for the hack and slash fans and someone who is looking for a good dungeon crawler game with an interesting mix with other genres. [quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/23741321/]Follow our curator page,[b] Alexander's Club Curations[/b] if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.[/url][/quote]

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.

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. [i]Book of Demons[/i] also borrows heavily from [i]Darkest Dungeon[/i] 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 [i]Book of Demons[/i] being some sort of a hidden gem. It's not. It's just all right.

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.