Three-person Danish team The Outer Zone and Frostpunk creators 11-bit studios have announced Death Howl, a very gloomy soulslike deck-builder set in a “stone-age Nordic-inspired” open world that consists of biomes with names like “the Forest of Howling Shadows”. Lots of howling round these parts.
You play a mother, Ro, whose son has been claimed by the Grim Reaper, or whatever they had instead of the Grim Reaper back then – this was, I think, prior to the invention of scythes? And cards? Anyway, while searching for Ro’s son, you’ll take part in grid- and turn-based battles against a regular cauldron of unspeakables, including disembodied raven heads and what appears to be a huge pair of subterranean lungs. Here’s a trailer.
“Each realm visited offers unique deck types and mechanics, enriching and deepening the strategic layer,” howls the press release. “Players can further enhance their decks with shamanic totems, ensuring they are best prepared for the deadly encounters ahead.” What’s more, “each region not only unlocks aforementioned new cards to craft, but also unveils fragments of Ro’s story, steeped in themes of love and loss, and uncovers the forgotten lore of this mysterious spiritual world.”
I quite like the game’s stark, emaciated, slightly rotten pixelart. It looks like somebody’s taken a chisel to a seam of obsidian and discovered a layer of organic matter beneath – pinkish bones, greening flesh. The cards are pleasingly grisly. “Take Skin”, for example. Eesh! There’s another one with a drawing of an arrow going through somebody’s leg – hopefully the owner of that leg survived and is now living out a prosperous second career as a guard in Skyrim.
I’m less sold on the game’s self-serious narrative direction, which make me think of Hellblade at its shoutiest. “The loss of a loved one is universal – an inevitable part of the human experience,” howls director, artist and writer Malte Burup in the press release. “We believe our narrative approach, enriched by compelling lore and a fresh take on the deck-builder genre through its fusion with soulslike exploration, will resonate with players of all kinds.”
I’m always up for a good Universal Theme, but foregrounding your takeaways so baldly feels false, and a certain amount of clunky melodrama seems inevitable when your tale of woe is literally called Death Howl. The talk of wrestling with one’s mortality sits a little uneasily alongside the paint-by-numbers Steam tag spectacle that is “open world soulslike deckbuilder”. I wonder if I’m going to end up feeling about this game the same way Alice B (RPS in peace) felt about Gris and its massive, sobbing statues.
Still, all that could be more of a marketing problem than an issue with the game – and it’s clearly “resonating” with me to some extent, or I wouldn’t be writing this. Death Howl is out later in 2025, and there’s a demo coming to Steam on Monday 20th January.