Zoeti combines monsters and poker into a fantasy roguelite, deckbuilding game

gamedeveloper.com:

Zoeti is a roguelite deckbuilding game that sees you fighting fantasy monstrosities with magical powers, all fueled by poker rules and hands. Playing for your life can be a bit more exciting than playing for money, after all.

Game Developer spoke with the team at Dusklight to learn more about how they used the known rules of poker to create interest in the game and its systems, how they needed to tweak poker rules to make the game more compelling for players, and the thoughts that went into making the playing cards look interesting without taking away from their readability.

Zoeti turns poker into a roguelite card game. What drew you to this idea?

At the very beginning of the project, our team wanted to make a whole new roguelike game and play style that was different from existing titles. Initially, we used dice as the theme for the prototype, but we didn’t come up with a satisfying mechanism. A year later, we tried to combine a skill system with playing cards. Then, the earliest prototype of Zoeti was born.

Poker is a game that can be played by everyone, across all ages, and we think it made the rules of the game easier to understand.

Can you tell us a bit about the combat system? How did you turn the rules of poker into a means of thumping monsters?

In Zoeti, the combinations of cards are called a “hand,” such as “Single,” “Pair,” “Flush,”etc. At the beginning of the game, players have eight different types of hands, and each of these hands can be equipped with one skill to be used in battle.

As the game progresses, players will continue to acquire new skills, and when there are multiple skills in the same type of “hand,” players are free to change the equipped skills they have for the next battle. It can be the