This then brings us on to the town that works as your base of operations. Do you use it to acquire two or three upgrades or risk losing it to acquire four later on? The key is the price for that cauldron goes up each time you use it. The other goes into a cauldron which can be bought to acquire all that’s in there. You can choose one mana or one HP to increase in each level. The level-up system is simple but also plays into the risk-reward elements well.

The mana is an interesting system within Book of Demons – as you can focus on saving it for attacks or preserve it for your equipment, allowing you to become a glass cannon or a steady, but not hugely powerful, warrior. Further to that is the inclusion of cards you can equip to your character, giving a buff in exchange for using up some of your mana pool. There are skills that can be used but require mana to work, and there are items that have a limited supply but work without it. The cards you acquire can be equipped to your character at the bottom of the screen and offer unique advantages. This is something that is affected by each character type, of which there are three the warrior class focuses on melee combat and defensive cards, the mage on ranged offensive attacks, and the rogue mixes these playstyles together with a mix of melee and ranged attacks.

This brings a nice risk-reward system into each encounter as you can risk standing still to finish one foe off, or retreating to defeat them flawlessly. You can move along these paths and your character attacks enemies automatically, but this attack speed can be sped up by holding the A button, effectively making a difference between the odd hit whilst moving and tanking damage whilst focusing DPS. Then the deck-building aspects draw inspiration from the likes of Slay the Spire and Deep Sky Derelicts.

Its movement system is like that of a board game, having linear paths to go up and down, and the way it treats enemies and its hellish theming fit right into the Diablo world. Initially you may only clear a few levels, but this works well at acclimating you to the base loop.īook of Demons has a surprisingly original combat system pulling parts from Diablo, board games and Slay The Spire. After witnessing the opening, you are told to try your hand at fighting downwards from the church. But this brings us to the central gameplay loop.

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