Death Howl review

‘Deckbuilders meet Dark Souls!’ is the kind of ironically-soulless pitch that makes me want to go back in time and drown a young Miyazaki in a poisonous swamp. Fortunately, Death Howl hasn’t been made by evil money men, but slightly-less evil developers who clearly understand what makes good deckbuilders and soulslikes tick. Even if they’re slightly too infatuated with a difficulty curve they purchased from the rectangle factory.

I thought all deckbuilders had to be roguelikes by law, so it’s paradoxically a little refreshing to play one that follows a more traditional game structure. You play a grieving mother who’s in denial about her young son’s death (oh, Merry Christmas by the way!) and who’s chased him into the spirit realm in the hopes of getting him back. Looks like somebody only played the first half of Shadow of the Colossus…

Unfortunately, the spirit realm likes its new boy, and so keeps chucking monsters at you. Turn-based battles play out on isometric grids reminiscent of the excellent Into the Breach. Each turn you draw five cards and then have five mana to play them with. Ah, but you also need that mana to move around, creating a dilemma between hitting your foes or running away to hide in the corners like a coward.

Sadly there’s no sign of Into the Breach’s undo button. In true Soulslike tradition, death is the main teacher here. The game gives you a lot of information but is intentionally—and irritatingly—vague about how enemy attacks are going to work until the moment they’re killing you. Expect an aggressive onboarding period as you learn how different monsters operate.

At least your starting cards are nice and straightforward. Strikes shove enemies into adjacent squares, arrow-shooting and rock-chucking handles distant threats, sprint helps you run away, and armor helps when you’ve cornered yourself yet again, dummy. Win a fight and all the fallen enemies become death howls. These can be combined with stuff you keep finding on the floor into new cards, or banked at healing points to buy upgrades on a small skill tree. This choice can be agonising, particularly early on when the game keeps throwing enemies at you that your basic starter cards just aren’t up to countering.

Yes, Death Howl can be a real jerk. You drop all your precious death howls when you die and, of course, all enemies respawn when you heal. It’s not long before you start having to fight multiple battles in a row, with no healing in-between, and with cards that do heal you more elusive than a Half Life 3 release date.

I’d say that’s pain enough. Death Howl responds to me saying that by cutting out my tongue. You have to physically pick up your dropped death howls on the combat grid within a set amount of turns or they’ll disappear forever, often forcing you to stroll into fatal lines of fire. Oh, and if an enemy picks up your death howls first they’ll get a buff, making an encounter you just failed even harder. The first draft of this review was just a thousand swearwords with an occasional cameo from the weeping emoji.

Things improve massively when you stop trying to create an uber-deck that can take on everything and realise there’s a reason the game has tons of slots for crafting different ones. Before repeating a battle, you can swap decks out and make adjustments, removing chaff that isn’t working and slotting in a few cards that hopefully will. Well, so long as you’ve grinded enough death howls and crafting materials to make said cards already, naturally.

Each region of the map has its own distinct cards. While you can use cards from other regions, Death Howl is sadly a consistent enough bastard to punish you for it. They’ll cost an extra crucial point of mana to play, instantly transforming your lovingly-curated deck that just got you through a fair chunk of the game into an expensive unplayable mess. Christ, Monster Train 2 was about the citizens of Hell, and it didn’t treat me as nastily as this.

But the most irritating thing of all is that I kinda love it. I’m not ruling out Stockholm syndrome or that my New Year’s resolution should probably be to find Death Howl and myself a good couple’s therapist, but it has successfully broken me out of one of my worst deckbuilder habits. I’m a sucker for sticking to a once-winning strategy long after it’s peaked. Death Howl rightly has no time for such nonsense.

I had an outstanding strength deck going. It was rendered meaningless in an area where everyone apparently owned shares in an armor company. So I had to start over with craftable cards that inflict armor-ignoring poison damage but that also often injure you in the process. Self flagellation to succeed this time, is it, Death Howl? That tracks, and now I have to begrudgingly concede that my evil self-spiting toxic deck is probably my favorite in the game.

The skill tree has to be restarted in each region too, because of course it bloody does. Each region has an unlockable power, like a temporary strength boost, or—oh praise be—restoring your health. Another crucial branch of the tree unlocks spirit cards that get added to your hand whenever you defeat an enemy, and these can be genuinely game-changing. Finally taking out a monster that’s been ruining your life for the last hour and then being rewarded by being able to use their attack on all its friends makes all that pain worth it. Just.

Even though that extra mana cost can be crippling, there’s nothing stopping you from sticking a few expensive cards from other regions in your deck, which opens up the combat possibilities massively. Regions also have a nice habit of looking small, only to reveal hidden caves, routes, and even the inside of a friendly whale. (True, that friendly whale looks like it was designed by David Cronenberg on an ecstasy comedown, but take what you can get here.)

The more you explore and plunder, the more cards you’ll discover, naturally. You’ll want to wander around anyway, as it’s a fine-looking adventure with a welcome surreal streak. A cliff suddenly sprouting a realistic-looking nose doesn’t quite take the sting off losing all my death howls yet again, but it doesn’t hurt.

It’s a well-told tale, too. Given the subject matter, this could easily have been a melodramatic pummeling of the heartstrings or a grimdark misery-fest. Instead it’s surprisingly compassionate, occasionally even funny, and clearly written with a big heart. Bigger than the heart of whoever made those horrible one-hit-kill jellyfish, anyway.

Like most bullies, Death Howl isn’t perfect. Grinding to get an inroad in new areas can get tedious, and some enemy attacks are cheaper than getting someone a PC Gamer subscription for Christmas. But persevere and you’ll find a rewarding game that reminded me why I fell unhealthily in love with soulslikes and deckbuilders in the first place.