Demon’s Mirror is one of those games that scratches my brain just the right way. So many video games are examples of “jack-of-all-trades, master of none.” Indie developer Be-Rad Entertainment has honed in on and mastered the art of deck-building mechanics with Demon’s Mirror.
As someone who hadn’t ever played a deck-builder, I didn’t have many expectations going into Demon’s Mirror. The game promised a rogue-like deck-builder with chain-3 mechanics—three unique genres brought together. I expected Candy Crush with cards. What I got was a truly great game.
Premise
Demon’s Mirror starts with a simple premise: you enter through a mysterious mirror into a nightmarish realm where you must face foes aplenty and find your way back home. Straightforward and to the point. Demon’s Mirror doesn’t give you a whole lot of story, but it’s enough to set the stage for your adventure.
In Demon’s Mirror, you can choose between three different heroes for your runs: Wulf, Draga, and Axo. Each hero has its strengths to play to, each focusing on a different playstyle: brute force, subtle influence, or manipulation of the board. This is another one of Demon’s Mirror’s strengths: the diversity of experiences you can have with your playthroughs. Playing as different characters not only changes the mechanics but also changes what cards you’ll get in your deck. The sheer amount of cards you have access to in this game is just downright impressive—but more on that in a bit.
Gameplay
As previously mentioned, Demon’s Mirror combines three major components: rogue-like adventuring, card deck-building, and tile chain mechanics. Now, if you’re like me and your Steam library is filled with open-world RPGs, this may be a bit of a learning curve.
The interplay of these mechanics works astonishingly well, though the tutorial is a bit heavy in the beginning. Demon’s Mirror gives you all of the information you need to play the game, which is great, but it is a lot to handle all at once. Fortunately, for even the most casual gamer, it doesn’t take long to get the hang of it. Whenever you die, it resets your run and you have to start a new game. I originally thought this would be immensely frustrating. However, it was a neat way of learning the game. Run after run, you learn from your mistakes and build off of it until you move past that roadblock and hit the next challenge. It’s simply just good game design that I didn’t expect.
With the game’s simple story and rogue-like mechanics, there is a lot of replayability. Every run is unique; the dungeons shift and move around, the enemies change, and your rewards do too. You won’t have the same experience twice.
In combat, you’ve got two systems to work with: tiles and cards. You’ve got a set number of action points per round that can be used to either play those cards or chain tiles.
In a world of Candy Crush knockoffs, there are fewer and fewer games with unique tile systems. Demon’s Mirror is refreshing in its ability to use those tile mechanics in a way that feels directly impactful on combat. There are many different types of tiles and chaining three or more of them can cause several things to happen. Red sword tiles deal damage, blue shield tiles add armor to negate damage, green orb tiles buff cards, and purple diamond tiles trigger special abilities. And it doesn’t have to be linear! As long as there’s a similar tile adjacent (including diagonal) to the one you’re chaining, you absolutely can connect it. With each successive tile you add to the chain, the greater the outcome is. It’s a well-executed system that is a hell of a lot of fun to play with. I found it immensely satisfying to hunt down the longest chains I could across the board.
In a less flushed-out game, the tile combat system would be enough to satisfy. However, Demon’s Mirror’s got depth. Each round you draw several cards from your deck. The deck-building system starts you with a few basic cards (ex: damage dealing cards, armor cards), but as you go deeper and deeper into your run you’ll encounter special skill cards: ones that enhance your tile chains, ones that influence the minds of your opponents by reducing their health through their armor, among a hell of a lot more. To explain every card in detail would be an impossible task (each character has over 70 unique cards). My favorites are the damage cards that cost fewer and fewer action points each time you play them. If you draw well each round, you can kill some enemies with just that one card.
Demon’s Mirror’s bread and butter is the tile chaining system and its cards, but there is a huge variety of supplemental mechanics that just take the gameplay to another level. Some trinkets provide permanent buffs, one-time-use scrolls, and a wide variety of enemies. You can earn them, buy them, find them—really any means of getting your hands on cool items. All of this makes for dynamic combat where you can change up playstyles to nearly anything your heart desires. Do you want to focus on dealing as much damage as possible? Collect cards to buff your strength, increasing the damage of your attack chains. Want more versatility during your turns? Get your hands on trinkets that will give you more action points per turn.
With such a diverse array of abilities, cards, and enemies to fight, every single battle is a fun challenge. Regardless of if you’re winning the fight or not, the tides can turn quickly. Enemies can use special abilities to make your life hell, dealing massive amounts of damage in short amounts of time. On the other hand, a well-strategized plan of attack can bring you from the brink of death to victory. I love that Demon’s Mirror punishes you for your mistakes and rewards you for smart plays. No defeat ever feels undeserved. Every time I died I found myself thinking “Yeah that was fair, I should’ve tried to go about it another way.”
For the most part, I found the combat balanced. It takes a while to get adjusted (particularly if you’re new to this sort of game), and there is a bit of a learning curve, but once you get rolling… oh boy it’s a hell of a time. The only exceptions I found were the bosses, who had massive health pools and crazy special abilities able to wipe you out in just a couple of turns. Luckily the game is forgiving with its difficulty settings, which come in the form of modifiers you can select before and during your runs. I didn’t complete a full run until I reduced the difficulty modifier by selecting a buff. For the masochists reading this, there are also debuffs you can unlock by completing their respective objectives.
Most things in this game work as intended; I never ran into any major bugs. However, the only glitch I ran into was when my game progress inexplicably vanished. This wasn’t a huge deal as individual runs only take about an hour to complete, but it still was a bit annoying. My only concern about this game is that it is on the shorter end and leaves me wanting more. A complete run-through will only take about an hour or two, and while there is a great deal of replayability, there’s still a desire for more. To the developers’ credit, making a game as an indie studio is hard and takes time. Making a game longer is no easy feat. That being said, I do feel there is room for expansion here with new characters or cards. But for a game that’s only $20, I’m not complaining too much.
Graphics and Audio
This is not a resource-intensive game; you won’t need a NASA computer to get this game to look gorgeous. Hell, I was running this on my Dell Inspiron laptop. One of the great strengths of Demon’s Mirror is its animation and art style. Everything from the scenery to the character models is beautifully done. The animations are simple and fluid, the art is colorful and detailed.
The sound and music design of Demon’s Mirror hits the nail right on the head. I found it to fit the game’s action and scenes perfectly. The ambient music enhances the ethereal nature of the setting you’re in and is never overbearing. In combat, the music is tense and energetic, bringing together a sense of danger. The sound design is very well executed as well. Connecting tile chains is immensely satisfying because of the light pinging sound. Hitting enemies sounds impactful, especially when you break an enemy’s armor and a shattering sound plays. Everything sound-wise just really enhances the game experience. From the sound to the visuals, I applaud the art direction here.
Conclusions
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by Demon’s Mirror. Whether you’re a hardcore deck-builder fan, or just a casual gamer looking for a fun experience, this game will not disappoint. The combat mechanics are immensely diverse and one could easily sink hours upon hours replaying runs. The game also comes with masterful art direction that is just clean and beautiful all around. Demon’s Mirror is a bit short, but it never overextends itself, which ultimately leaves the player wanting more. Be-Rad Entertainment has done a great job with this game and has certainly set itself up to expand upon it.
