Review: Draft of Darkness

destructoid.com:

I’m not above being lured in by aesthetic. Draft of Darkness hooked me in with its grainy, pixelated photo manipulation. It looks like a tacky game that followed in the wake of Mortal Kombat. In fact, it would fit right in alongside titles that pushed the limits of tastefulness back in the ‘90s. It’s hypnotic.

In my experience, a well-executed aesthetic can be indicative not necessarily of a game’s quality, but of its inventiveness. Not always, but sometimes. My favorite type of game is one where the developers fucked around and found out. However, that methodology doesn’t always result in an appealing game.

Draft of Darkness is so well-executed in its mechanics that it makes them seem accidental. Aesthetics aside, everything I’ve seen surrounding the game makes it out to be this quiet little project by a solo developer. But when you get into it, you find a well-tuned machine. Yet, while I find myself captivated by it, there is one unavoidable flaw that I think is going to be very divisive for a lot of people: its roguelite backbone.

Draft of Darkness (PC)
Developer: Crawly Games
Publisher: Crawly Games
Released: August 23, 2023
MSRP: $14.99

In Draft of Darkness, you pick a survivor from an ever-growing list of them. Each one is proficient with their own type of combat, from the knife-wielding Cara to the Chainsaw-swinging Rene. Each one plays extremely differently.

Draft of Darkness is a deckbuilder roguelite, but it plays a lot like a tabletop RPG. Or rather, it plays like a TTRPG if the GM had lost the will to live and was holding you hostage in a ‘90s metal music video. While your abilities in combat are controlled by the hand of cards you’re dealt, it’s backed by an abilities stat system and heavily reliant on