DEMO DIVE #3 - November 2025

The middle of November is here and I can feel it in my bones. In the frozen north, where I live, the days are so short I live in eternal darkness. Cold starts seeping through the walls. Only ungodly amounts of coffee are keeping me somewhat functional. That... and a deluge of great games to play and check out! End of the year is always pretty busy with releases. Just finished DISPATCH, going through KEEPER and in the meantime, chipping away in countless roguelikes... Speaking of, I have a selection of three deck-builders demo's to showcase and recommend checking out! Let's roll.

CROPDECK

I already wrote about this game a bit in the past, as I was happily ploughing (pun intended) through the playtest. But DEMO is here, officially, and it packs quite a serious punch with the content! CROPDECK is a farming deck-builder that has this sweet deception going on. The vibrant colours and soothing aesthetics will try to trick you into believing that this is a casual game. While the actual challenge will give you a cheeky wink, suggesting that maybe you should actually have a game plan in your pocket if you want to be a serious farmer. Oh, it starts innocent enough. The new pet system makes sure that your cute cow softens the game for you and gives you ample bonuses to breeze through. But the moment you start getting up the tiers of challenges or switch to a different pet, the game cracks its knuckles and gets serious, real quick.

In the world of deck builders, what makes CROPDECK special is its emphasis on Planning the Future. It's not about making deadly, looped combos. It's not about crafting synergies between various components to beat some clever challenge. Nah, it's all about math and mental spreadsheets, baby! It's about calculating what kind of crops and what optimised deck can make you squeeze out the proper veg and fruits out of the soil in time to pay the taxes. The misery when the deadline hits and you were 1 day away from harvesting your big crops cannot be overstated.

It is a fun, well-crafted card game with all the bells and whistles you would hope to see - cards can be upgraded with multiple paths. Scarecrows acting as powerful relics modify your run and strategies. And a variety of decks and tactical options exist here too. You can go tall, you can go wide, but most of all - you must avoid the traps! In most deck-building games, having a mean, streamlined deck is the key, but even more so here. A Scarecrow that kept pumping up hoes every time I planted something ruined my run by bloating my deck with useless cards - be wary of such interactions and be clever with your choices. I am very eager to get my hands on the full game and grind it into the ground.

PLUTO

That's how you do it - make a weirdo game for weirdos and know in your heart of hearts that they will love it. PLUTO main draw is the style. It's crude, rough, dirty, grimy, and extra grimy. One look at the screenshots and I just had to know what the heck this is all about. Fortunately for the game, behind the cool and unusual aesthetics hides a superbly crafted deck-builder with some clever ideas packed into your hands.

Literally, too, because your mittens are your weapons. Nah, you aren't going to be punching the monsters, but assigning elementals to every digit to cast a rich variety of spells. Where's the innovation? Well, you don't really play spells like traditional cards. Instead, you put their recipes down to your fingers and if you have other spells on hand (hah!) that also fit that recipe, they'll be cast free of charge at the same time, too! The act of deckbuilding becomes extraordinarily crafty. You might want to have a couple of big, four-digit spells and then try to finagle the cheaper spells in there for free by sharing the same elements. This optimisation becomes crucial later on, as many enemies and bosses will curse your poor fingies with powerful debuffs and hurty damage if you try to use your digits without preparation.

It feels completely fresh to me. A unique resource management system that is deeply woven to the cards and their utility. It's also one of those card games where accruing an ever-growing variety of stacking buffs feels like the right way to go. Your spells might look pathetic at first glance. Doing 2 damage 3 times when enemies have 100+ HP might feel a bit icky... until you realise the game asks you to first stack a bucketload of various buffs and THEN unleash your spells to suddenly melt enemies with no issues. In short? I am loving it, and beating the demo boss felt like a nice achievement.

SPARROW WARFARE

I know nothing about Mahjong, but it just so happens that about a week ago a thought occurred to me. An idea that maybe I would like to learn that game. SPARROW WARFARE was sold to me as a Mahjong-inspired roguelike deckbuilder. You gather new powerful tiles to lay them down in combination to make flashy combos. Got that; feels good. What makes it stand out for me from other card-driven games is the whole 'sequencing' system in place. You can't just play a tile and call it a day.

To execute any action - blocking, attacking, applying debuffs or using powerful abilities - you need to lay down a combination of three tiles. They need to share the same type but also either share a number or make a sensible numerical sequence. 1,2,3 or 2,3,4, you get the gist. That quickly proves to be harder than it looks thanks to the random draw and growing bag of tiles. But Lo! And behold! WILDS. Purple tiles that come with powerful and delightful abilities that have no intrinsic value or type. You use them to fill in the gaps of any sequence and open up your gameplay to not get stuck, digging into your bag of tiled for a lucky draw.

It has the making of a pretty good game here. It is still, of course, a playtest - not even a Demo yet - so give it some slack when it comes to presentation. While the birds theme is nice, the User Interface is a bit rudimentary and there is clear lack of nice, tacticle effects to bind it all together. But the systems behind the surface are pretty nifty and crafting your well oiled set of powerful tiles is a good goal to reach.