Burn With Me (v1.0.1)

Occult academia becomes intimate, unsettling, and strangely inviting in this narrative deckbuilder about students drawn toward knowledge they cannot safely possess. Set within a magical university, the story follows young practitioners and their fervent Teacher as private fears, ambitions, and obsessions become tangled with ancient rites. Its horror is less about jump scares than mounting emotional unease: candlelit rooms, handmade imagery, and rituals that feel comforting right up until they feel wrong. The result carries the mood of a dark campus drama filtered through folk-horror surrealism.

Play centers on assembling a deck of creatures, invocations, and effects, then arranging them carefully through a position-driven system where placement matters as much as raw card strength. Encounters ask players to build synergies, react to changing board states, and decide which tools are worth sacrificing for a stronger long-term plan. Burning cards permanently is not merely a penalty or cleanup option; it is a central tactical choice that can unlock new possibilities while forcing painful commitment. Across six character-focused chapters, each student’s particular anxiety and fixation reshapes the available mechanics, making progression feel tied to the narrative rather than pasted on between battles.

Its most distinctive quality is the collision of tactile, handcrafted art with real-world video elements, creating an aesthetic that is neither traditionally illustrated nor fully live action. Nearly one hundred cards, including alternate hidden artwork from guest artists, give repeated runs and careful experimentation extra appeal. Rather than chasing the dense spreadsheet optimization of Slay the Spire, it leans into story, atmosphere, and unusual decisions, although players who enjoy discovering card interactions still have plenty to analyze. Burn With Me suits deckbuilding veterans looking for a more experimental, emotionally charged format, while its chapter-based structure also makes it approachable for newcomers willing to learn its unconventional rules.