Planned Release Date: 2025

About This Game

Exorcise the infernal and exact vengeance in this unholy roguelite deckbuilder from David Gaider and Summerfall Studios. Choose your path and strengthen your deck of arcane tricks. Expose, endure, and expel evil from the innocent possessed. Confront your past, forge precarious alliances, and uncover the truth. 

This city teems with demons, and among them lies your prey: Malys, a demon of extraordinary cunning and power. As you pick your path through the city, you’ll encounter its denizens - some friendly, some not so much, and some possessed by demons that you’ll need to exorcise. Use your deck of cards to expose the rot within. Find unique combinations and strategies to withstand the horrors. Help the hopeless and free the possessed, or die in the attempt… over and over again.

As Noah, former priest turned exorcist and demon hunter, you’re armed with your faith and a variety of tools ranging from the holy to the dark and arcane… but you’ll need much more for this hunt, and there will be precious few allies to provide them.

Written by David Gaider (former BioWare Lead Writer on the Dragon Age series and Creative Director on Summerfall’s own Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical), Malys is our unholy roguelite deckbuilder, with a beautifully hand-illustrated style.

Step into the feeling of an actual exorcism, with every card reflecting an action Noah can take (invoking holy and ancient powers) or equipment Noah can use (such as holy water or purified salt). In order to play cards, you must burn cards first to light Candles - making every hand a series of strategic decisions and sacrifices. 

Succeed at these exorcisms and receive a reward of Faith that will allow you to build up your deck. As you progress through the game, you gain Faith, a currency you can spend in order to buy Curios, add or remove cards, and heal yourself or upgrade cards respectively.

Curios are run-long passive effects, which each add both power and different ways to play. Spend Faith collected over a run to upgrade cards and obtain arcane curious, to improve your strategy and chance of success. Fail, and die... or do you?

In an exorcism, your candles will light the way. You'll encounter a possessed host, desperate for your help. Burn cards in your hands to light candles, and use their holy power to play the other cards in your hand. 

Each hand is a choice: What cards will you burn to light a candle, and which cards will you play? Candles are persistent between turns, and become a strategic challenge; will you use all your remaining Candles this turn, or will you preserve some for the next?

Manage your Will, effectively Noah's health. As you progress through the city - you must weigh the potential consequences of every decision in each individual exorcism against how much of the city still lies ahead. Completing an exorcism does not restore your Will fully, and you'll need to decide what sacrifices to make and what paths to take.

Demons hide within their hosts to maintain their power, and the first step to wrestling that power away is revealing their True Name. You’ll need to Expose the demon in order to gain the upper hand and begin to take control of the exorcism.

Now revealed and threatened, you must Endure the full measure of the demon’s wrath. Use every part of your arsenal to destroy its Will while protecting your own. Fail, and the host is lost to the darkness — Noah must begin the night anew.

Once weakened, the time comes to Expel the demon for good. 

But take care — a desperate demon will draw on the life force of its host to power its most terrible abilities: protect the host as you finish the battle, or all is lost.

However, in Malys, death is not the end. You’ll start the night over from the beginning, with only Noah himself and a few select others aware that the “reset” has even occurred. Noah will begin his hunt again, armed only with his knowledge of what came before.

• A variety of playable cards each with custom art, abilities, and interplay

• A hellish menagerie of demons, providing different challenges and encounters

• Over 50 adaptive stories that change and shift as you progress through the game

• A new world, story, and characters from David Gaider, former Lead Writer of the Dragon Age series

• A deeply reactive soundscape that shifts and changes based on your choices

• ...and much more!

Malys is currently LIVE on Kickstarter, with lots more information to uncover.

If you want to be part of bringing Malys to 1.0 and receive some amazing rewards, you can get involved now!

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

This Game may contain content not appropriate for all ages, or may not be appropriate for viewing at work: General Mature Content