Deck of Haunts (v1.40 & ALL DLC)

A living mansion becomes the monster in this darkly playful deck-building strategy game, putting you in control of every creak, phantom, and sealed doorway. Rather than surviving a haunted house, you construct one to trap curious intruders and break their minds before they can uncover its vulnerable Heart room. The mood lands somewhere between a classic horror movie and a wickedly satisfying puzzle box: grim, theatrical, and more strategic than outright scary. Each successful night feeds the house’s growth, turning a modest collection of rooms into an increasingly elaborate supernatural killing machine.

Days focus on planning the mansion’s layout, placing corridors, chambers, traps, and specialized rooms to create confusing paths between visitors and your Heart. At night, groups of humans enter the property, and you spend cards to manipulate their route, raise fear, summon apparitions, make floors groan, or reshape the maze around them. The central loop is about reading each intruder’s position and sanity, then timing haunts carefully enough to panic them, kill them, or leave them trapped long enough for their essence to be harvested. Essence acts as the key progression resource, funding new rooms and expanding the card pool, while more notorious runs draw tougher targets such as police and religious investigators.

Its strongest idea is the blend of mansion design and hand management: architectural choices matter, but a clever card play can rescue a flawed layout or turn a safe corridor into a disaster. The house’s Heart gives every run a defensive objective, preventing the experience from becoming a simple exercise in farming helpless victims. Randomized cards, unlockable powers, and changing visitor types encourage repeat attempts and different approaches, whether you prefer a tight maze, layered traps, or relentless supernatural pressure. Fans of Monster Train, Slay the Spire, and dungeon-management games such as Dungeon Keeper should find plenty to enjoy, while newcomers can appreciate its clear, turn-based tactics and macabre sense of humor.