App Store Description
Embark on an epic hand-animated adventure from Zach Gage, Pendleton Ward, and Choice Provisions.
Cast powerful spells, slay fantastic monsters, discover ancient secrets, and ultimately save the world — just by picking up the right cards.
Card of Darkness is a full-featured adventure designed around an accessible, minimalist, card game core.
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The journey has been long, but finally you're here in the heart of Glinhorn Forest at the edge of darkness. The people asked for a hero and they got you. Good thing you're a hero.
Many stacks of cards lie before you filled with monsters, treasures, weapons, potions, and spells.
You can only see the top card of each stack — what lies beneath is a mystery.
Sometimes the cards you see are fearful monsters, fantastic treasures, or weapons you really really need, and you can take any of them... but there's a catch! You must finish what you start.
If you take a card from a stack, you must eventually take all cards under it... and you won't know what dangers (or treasures!) lie beneath the surface until it's too late.
Every level in Card of Darkness is a slow reveal of a compelling and ever-changing puzzle, filled to the brim with risk/reward decisions.
But thats no problem for you — hero.
------JUST GIVE ME THE NUMBERS
- Journey through 8 environments in your quest to recover the Card of Darkness
- Defeat 5 ancient and terrifying bosses
- Find and equip 52 cards from the Deck of Darkness
- Discover over 100 unique monsters, weapons, treasures, potions, and spells
- Cooperative teamwork and clear win conditions (quests and escape)
- Expansion boards and campaign options add variety
- Strict silence rule can hinder communication and cause tension
- Complex rules with many components and phases
- Penalties for breaking silence (curse cards) add risk
- survival, cooperative horror with escape objective
- dark and cursed island
- silence-enabled, quest-driven progression with a three-phase round structure
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- combat_resolution — Combat uses strength values, optional weapon dice, and hits to eliminate foes; health of guardians can be reduced.
- Combat: Damage Based — Combat uses strength values, optional weapon dice, and hits to eliminate foes; health of guardians can be reduced.
- curse_and_silence — Breaches of silence can trigger curses; curses affect endhand/discard and add strategic penalties.
- gate_and_damage_tokens — Gates act as barriers; advancing creatures damage gates; destroyed gates cannot be repaired.
- player_turns_and_actions — On a turn, a player may perform a set number of main actions and any number of free actions; actions include moving, talking, trading, combat, or location actions.
- quest_and_loot_system — Quests must be completed in numbers equal to players; loot, radio parts, and quest cards drive victory.
- rescue_and_escape — Escape requires radio parts to be delivered to the lighthouse, and the rescue boat must arrive; darkness affects win condition.
- sanity_and_strength_tracking — Characters have strength and sanity that track damage; damage reduces strength and sanity, affecting outcomes.
- spawn_phase — Each spawn phase draws spawn cards per player to determine which creatures appear and where.
- Variable Phase Order — Each spawn phase draws spawn cards per player to determine which creatures appear and where.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Heart of Darkness is a game of Highly restricted Communications
- you are not allowed to make any verbal or nonverbal communication among the players about the game state
- if you can escape by sea without the darkness exceeding seven then you'll win the game