Demeo: PC Edition brings VR’s best-kept secret to the masses

digitaltrends.com:

I don’t boot up my Meta Quest 2 nearly as much as I should. That was apparent to me last year when I kept putting off Demeo. I’d heard nothing but glowing praise for the multiplayer dungeon crawler, which won numerous VR awards in 2021, but it repeatedly slipped my mind when looking for new games to try. Perhaps that was because I knew I’d have no one to play it with since so few of my friends are VR adopters yet.

Luckily, I’m about to run out of excuses. Demeo: PC Edition is set to launch on April 7, bringing VR’s best kept secret to anyone with a PC. I played a build of the game during GDC and it was the exact kick in the pants I needed to take it off my wish list and get it into my cart. The card-based tactics game is a perfect fit for mouse and keyboard without fully sacrificing the tactile element that made it a standout in VR.

For the uninitiated, Demeo is a dungeon crawler laid out like a board game. Up to four players form an adventuring crew and place their figures on a board. Each player gets two actions, which they can use to move through the dungeon or play cards from their hand. The ultimate goal is to find a key on each level and the exit it unlocks. Think Diablo meets Slay the Spire.

Like any good dungeon crawler, there’s a load of enemies and piles of loot to get through between points A and B. Each character class has its own set of cards, which range from healing flasks to special attacks. In my party, I took the role of a ranger who could pepper enemies with arrows from afar. My basic attack card did a little bit of damage, though other cards would let me hit an enemy with a poison arrow or summon an ice elemental.

It plays out like a regular grid-based tactics game where players trade turns, via