Demon Loop is Slay the Spire via Loop Hero from the designer of Great Western Trail

There's a wide range of video games that intentionally draw on board game mechanics, giving them a tactical, engine-focused edge: deck-building games, turn-based tactical games, and any game that uses cards as resources all fit into this category. It makes sense, then, that veteran designer Alexander Pfister is helping create a new video game, Demon Loop, that wears its board game inspirations on its sleeve.

Demon Loop is an upcoming tactics game from a new Austrian studio called Magnolia Games. Its big draw for analog gamers is Pfister’s involvement in the creative process, and the creator of Great Western Trail, Maracaibo, and Isle of Skye has teamed up with them and Enhydra Games to send players against hordes of demons that threaten to destroy humanity’s tenuous hold on the land.

Players will gradually build and refine a deck over the course of matches, Slay the Spire-style, using their skills to repair buildings in various villages and recruit their inhabitants to form an ever-growing resistance force. Meanwhile, players will upgrade their own cards by visiting shops or completing events. Fragments obtained in battle against demons can be used to upgrade cards already added to the player's deck.

Loop Hero is another obvious inspiration, evident in the Demon Loop system of upgrading barracks, mines, taverns, and other structures so that the protagonist’s next circuit of the countryside can take greater and more effective advantage. Demons lurk in the paths between settlements, and the player’s Demon Hunter will use a deck of cards unique to each starting location to fend off these constant threats.

Pfister describes Demon Loop in a press release as a “combination of the charm and strategic depth of a skilled board game with the possibilities of a video game,” and Magnolia Games plans to release it in early access to test out the various systems and incorporate user feedback into its design process. The designer hopes to release it fully in early access after about a year.

The rest of the team includes Daniel Rachbauer on graphics, a soundtrack by Richard Kerz, and an original story by author Katharina V. Haderer. Embrace your destiny as a demon hunter as you investigate the mystery behind the crystal shards littering the land and their possible connection to the growing demonic onslaught.

Cross-pollination between tabletop games and their digital counterparts has been growing in recent years as several notable video game franchises are adapted into board games, such as Slay the Spire, Terraria, and Stardew Valley. At the same time, video games like Armello, Demon Loop, and other deckbuilders are learning from physical game design to keep that vibrant subgenre thriving. The customer base may not always form a perfectly overlapping circle, but the exchange of ideas is always interesting to witness.