Deck of Haunts – Everyone Who Enters Becomes Your Prey

I have to admit that I was immediately drawn to Deck of Haunts when I first saw it. It offers an interesting concept: you play as a haunted house that must defend itself against people trying to reach its heart, which is essentially its only weakness. Yes, you actually play as the villain, and we have to agree that this is a pretty cool idea that you don't get to see very often.

Story

The story revolves around the idea that you are an ancient, evil haunted house that wants to become more powerful. You are the heart of this haunted building, while people enter your home, drawn in by its mysterious nature or their desire to investigate paranormal activity. Your task is to trap them, frighten them, or even drive them insane, then use their energy to grow stronger. The story itself doesn't offer much depth, but the main focus here is clearly on the gameplay. As someone who appreciates a good story, I couldn't help but mention that.

Gameplay

At its core, Deck of Haunts is a strategic roguelike built around cards. Each card you play has its own powers and effects on the people inside your house, making your cards your primary weapons. What I particularly liked is how Deck of Haunts combines house building, room management, and tower defense elements with a card-based system.

The gameplay revolves around three key elements. First, there is building your house, where you arrange rooms and create a maze to make it harder for visitors to reach the heart of your home, its main weakness. Then there is playing cards, allowing you to inflict fear, summon ghosts, change the layout of corridors and rooms, and activate various supernatural effects and traps. Finally, there is progression and upgrades, as you collect essence from your victims, unlock new rooms and cards, and prepare yourself for increasingly dangerous intruders.

The game forces you to think like a predator, almost like the ones you see in horror movies, because you don't defend your house's heart with conventional weapons. Instead, you design the space so that people walk straight into your traps, slowly lose their minds, and take damage along the way. I should mention that the gameplay can become repetitive after a while, but I think fans of this type of game will still find plenty to enjoy. My only other concern is that the game doesn't do the best job of explaining its mechanics to newcomers. Perhaps saying that the tutorial is bad would be too harsh, as it is more a case of the explanations being a little too brief, but you gradually figure everything out as you spend more time playing.

Atmosphere, Visual Design and Sound

The atmosphere is excellent, and I really liked the visual style. The visuals are fairly small in scale, but they are impressive, and the rooms give the house a convincing haunted mansion vibe. You can add, move, expand, and remove rooms under certain conditions, which adds considerably more depth to the gameplay. I also really liked the card designs, although I think they could become even better with a little more detail, but there is nothing particularly wrong with them as they are.

The sound effects aren't especially impressive on their own, but they fit the overall presentation perfectly. Combined with the visuals and the haunted-house setting, they help create the kind of atmosphere that feels especially fitting for this time of year, when horror games and stories about haunted places are always welcome.

What I Liked

• The concept of playing as a haunted house
• The small-scale but dynamic visual design
• House building is incredibly fun and adds a lot to the gameplay

What I Didn't Like

• The gameplay becomes repetitive after a while
• The tutorial could have explained things more thoroughly
• The story lacks depth

Score: 7/10

The game was played on: PS5.