The Killing Stone

Very underrated game and experience. The theme of the game is fantastic, the card game itself is surprisingly deep, the story is dark, and the minor decisions you make really help impact future decisions through the bargaining and revelations mechanic. I have had nothing but fun playing this game. I will say it is a bit of a tougher start because the card game is a little on the hard side to pick up, but once things click into place, you have so much freedom to be able to exploit any advantage you can get to help you turn the tide.

demons hate this one weird trick: [alt-f4s] In all seriousness, I'm having a blast playing! I'm not great at deckbuilders/card battlers generally, but while it's felt challenging it hasn't felt impossible at all and I've been enjoying myself even on the occasion when I get stomped, and I've felt like I am learning and getting better as time passes, especially at countering specific builds the enemies are throwing my way. The game also has a few options for recovery AFTER being stomped if they're needed; either restarting the entire ritual (which is a little punishing but not terrible since it lets you go back and try a different strategy/correct past mistakes), or continuing on without restarting but taking a different penalty to the rest of the ritual. There's also an option to turn on story mode which to my understanding allows you to experience the story without the gameplay, but I haven't tried that yet so I'm not sure how it works. (As hinted, you can also be a wuss like me and alt-f4 out of the current battle, and hope when you come back you don't somehow repeat the misfortune of pulling five invocations and not a single creature to play despite having like 17 of them in your deck). I'm not even fully through the available story yet (never mind what's still to come after early access) and I find myself wanting to come back and keep playing more often than my schedule is currently allowing. I'll probably update my review when I'm further in, but I can't imagine that anything will make me feel less positively! The writing is also stellar; I've been playing on the period English setting and while I sometimes have to stop and squint at what I'm reading/hearing to make sense of it, that's been part of the fun as well; it really adds to the sense that you're wading through demon legalese. That said, ou're also able to change the setting at any point if you're having a hard time. Liam and Emma have also knocked it out of the park with the voice-acting. Some of the sinister whispering has very nearly had me shiver. The sound design in general and the music has also been very pleasing; I was streaming in Discord to a friend who was only half-paying attention while they played their own game, but they still made a point of calling out how good the music was for the battle I was in, and they were absolutely right.

I seem to be alone in this which surprises me but I actually absolutely hate the language. I LOVE the game mechanics and I'm really enjoying all the card games but I find myself skipping most of the conversations because I find going through the dense text absolutely tedious, even with the modern English toggle on. It's such a shame because it's such a well-made card game system, and I normally really enjoy the story parts of games.