Introduction

Book of Demons is a delightful little papercraft dungeon crawler by developer Thing Trunk. It has plenty of full fat features in typical diabolical dungeon crawler style, but uses cards as items and skills, which are used in live instead of turn-based combat. It's also everything I hoped and dreamed for in such a format. I love papercraft almost as much as I loved Diablo II, and Book of Demons very neatly meshes the two. It's not a free-roam dungeon crawler through and through, however, as the player character is stuck on sort of a rail track that takes you around the dungeon. It all looks very pleasant and casual, but what it offers is a remarkably challenging dungeon crawler experience in a wholly innocent visual style.



The game is obviously rife with references to other dungeon crawlers, including a certain sage that speaks like ol' Deckard used to. I think what surprised me the most was the quality of the production. Voice acting is far above what I expected, the cutscenes are actually really good, and just about everything feels extremely professionally done. It's easily one of the biggest surprises from an indie game, and I think it criminally under-advertises itself in terms of quality. It's not as deep or complex as Path of Exile, but I'd argue it's just as difficult and even features a rogue-like difficulty mode for those who want to ruin their joy.

I also made a video review, see below: