Deck of Haunts | PC Review

Back in the 90s, there was a game called Haunting Starring Polterguy for the Sega Genesis. You play as the poltergeist tasked with removing a greedy and awful family from your home. Played for laughs, you ‘possess’ objects within the home to scare the family into leaving. Similar to Deck of Haunts, each round became increasingly difficult. I was already a fan of scary movies by then, but when I found a game that allowed me to do the haunting, I was hooked! 

Many, many years later, I’ve lamented the lack of games that allowed me to do the dirty work of the house. And now, we have Deck of Haunts developed by Mantis and published by DANGEN Entertainment and Game Source Entertainment (thank you all, by the way). 

The hooks were set immediately; I love this game.

A House With a Heartbeat

I am the haunted house. The final room in the house includes a literal beating heart, the heart of the house. I must protect my heart. As tourists enter the house, they will roam about each room. If they find the heart, they will understand that the house is, indeed, haunted, and they must destroy the heart. They will make a beeline for the exit and return stronger. Meanwhile, my heart can only take eight hits. Once I run out of health, the run is over.

Random characters and tourists enter the home: priests, cops, stone masons, random tourists, etc. Each character has certain traits that I must consider while planning how to rid my house of these intruders. I must survive 28 days in a row of intruders searching my home and trying to destroy my heart.

Cards, Chaos, and Carnage

Deck of Haunts is a roguelite deck-builder at its core. It is roguelite because at the start of each run, the house and your deck remain intact making the early enemies a bit easier to dispatch. Granted, with each run, the enemies become more varied and more skilled & powerful. However, you are better equipped to go deeper and deeper into each run as the game progresses.

The makers of Deck of Haunts subscribe to Zack’s version of roguelite: ‘run-based randomizer.’ Even though your deck is building, the cards available to me at the start of each turn within the run is random. You can learn the best way to dispatch certain character types, but that doesn’t mean the turn or run is going to include that card when you need it. 

Back to the gameplay, I start off with three action points to use on each turn. As I progress, that number increases slightly allowing me to play more cards on the soon-to-be victims who have entered my house of haunts. I am permitted to play cards which are each assigned an action point value. Cards can attack their sanity or physical health. Certain cards can, for example, also strengthen a room, lock the room trapping those within, or enhance the power of my attack cards. Some cards can only be played if the human is alone, adding an extra layer of strategy to the gameplay.

Some invaders are easier to scare, some are easier to attack.I have options to do both: scare an intruder into insanity or kill them. Either way, I will obtain their essence, which I can use at the end of the day to strengthen my deck or power up my rooms.

Till Death (or Madness) Do Us Part

The day ends in two ways: I have caused the intruders to go insane or die (possibly both, if I so choose), or one or more survivors escape the house. If they escape, they will return with their own knowledge gain and will also notify others to join them on their return, such as the cops or the priests. There’s your difference between a “day” and a “run.” If the day ends, my heart is still beating to fight another day. The run ends when my heart is destroyed.

Haunting takes place at night. Then, during the day, I expand or add rooms to my house, build my deck, and strengthen the rooms with additional built-in scares. These new traps can weaken the opponents faster or make them more susceptible to scares and attacks. I needed those powerups because as the days go on, the potential victims are better and smarter. 

I want to emphasize how perfectly Deck of Haunts was developed to manage these moving pieces without making the game feel even remotely overwhelming. In fact, the only frustrating aspect of the game was the randomization; a trademark of the roguelite genre. There were times where I felt the game set me up to fail by withholding a card or through the “random” visitors to my house. There were other times where I said to myself, “I only made it through the day because that certain card appeared at the perfect time!”

A Symphony of Screams and Shadows

Let’s just get the music out of the way. It’s fine but repetitive. Perfectly spooky but drifts into the background almost immediately. 

Fine by me! The creaks, groans, moans, and scary noises are aplenty. I recommend wearing headphones to truly enjoy the ambience of the haunted house and every metaphorical bump-in-the-night. Music might have been purposefully simplified to add additional focus on the sound design for everything else. Magnificent for fans of haunted house films!

I love the isometric view; the ability to zoom in and out is beneficial. There were times where I tried to hover my mouse over a victim of my next card play only to find them hiding behind another victim or near a wall making them hard to click. Never fear; you can also play your card on their character card in the top right of the screen. Easy fix.

The rooms are uniquely drawn. Kitchens, Living Rooms, Bedrooms, or the other rooms in the house are built and expanded throughout each run. A tip to future players: Do not expand the rooms in a way that creates a new entrance to your heart room. Whoops!

The graphics are crisp and delightful. The darkness and foreboding themes enhance the evil nature of what we are here to do. I loved the graphics.

Deck of Haunts Final Frights and Thoughts

Deck of Haunts is exactly what I’ve always wanted in a haunted house game. Let me do the haunting. Let me try to scare people to death! Did I feel bad attacking priests and cops? A little. I’ll admit that the first cop I encountered, I chose to only make insane instead of kill. In the end, was this a favor? The better outcome? We can have that moral-dilemma discussion somewhere else. I couldn’t do that every time anyway, the cards wouldn’t allow it.

I enjoyed booting the game up, starting a run, seeing how far I could make it, and learning more about the victims to better plan on my next run. I must admit that by day 28 (actually much earlier), I found it becoming a little tedious. Like I was playing the game only to beat it instead of enjoying the gameplay itself. Besides that, and the minor knicks mentioned in previous paragraphs, this game was perfect! It was exactly what I was hoping for when I saw the initial trailer and asked to be granted the review code. Deck of Haunts is highly recommended.

To hear me talk more about Deck of Haunts, be sure to listen to the May 8th, 2025 episode of The Gaming Outsider podcast around the 1:42:05 time stamp.

This review is based on a PC copy of Deck of Haunts provided by DANGEN Entertainment for coverage purposes. As of this writing, it is exclusive to that platform.