Dark Cards of Candlewood
Candlewood is a solo collectible card game with the soul of a classic JRPG. Embark on replayable dungeon runs with deceptively deep, two-choice card combat. Draft items for your backpack, master chain attacks, and even crack a few card packs...then save the world from eternal darkness!
I'm looking for feedback on my demo! The game is still in development but you can join the Discord for regular updates, private betas, support, and discussion.
Greetings, Traveller
The world is on the brink of endless night, but you just lost all your best cards in a shipwreck. Rebuild your collection and save the town of Candlewood in this single-player fantasy deckbuilder that combines the best parts of trading card games with a party-based RPG.
- Unique, two-choice card combat with over 300 cards, items, and enchantments to uncover.
- Build your collection from packs, singles, drops, drafts, crafts, and more. No microtransactions ever!
- Recruit up to 7 playable party members, each with their own signature ability.
- Customize your characters' stat points to equip different cards from 6 class-based sets.
- Upgrade the town of Candlewood to unlock even more capabilities and perks.
- Experience an epic JRPG adventure story across 10 unique locations with over 50 enemies.
- Roguelite-style randomized dungeons with a variety of encounters, but no permadeath.
Candlewood is made by a small team that cares deeply about our community's feedback!
🕯 Lead developer Chris Smith (Lunoland)
🎵 Music by Max Kinghorn-Mills (Runecaster)
🔊 Sound by Joel Corelitz (Waveplant)
🙌 Community and production help from Humberto Cervera
💛 Published by Joystick Ventures
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- New Essential Features ✨8 days ago
- Welcome to Candlewood!35 days ago
Comments
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I was just wondering, great game, but will it be a payed access? I understand this is the demo. (PS: Do a collab with Deepwoken plz)
Ya the full version will be paid (pricing TBD but likely will be typical for indies) and should be available on itch and all other major stores.
I'm sure we'll be doing some contests in the Discord and giving away keys too. There are better free demos with more content on the way in the mean time.
Just some gamplay, not much critique :D
loved it! nice little intro, always happy to have more critique if you end up doing another video - sound, QoL + fixes, and more content coming soon!
played all the battles here's what I think about it:
pretty satisfying system of using cards, however there are some issues with it. You are somewhat incentivized to spam cards due to losing momentum if you take too long, that means that you are more incentivized to build a more simple deck using cards that are more stat oriented rather than synergy oriented. your given too many link cards at the start with not much information on them while not having a lot of start cards. A lot of the zero energy cards with start are good simply because it increases momentum and allows you to play link cards. I think there should be a menu for each different effect or a tutorial on how linking works, also it would be nice to be able to skip the tutorial if you want.
boomerang seems quite strong due to you being able to potentially going for a power build and probably getting boomerang since there's not a lot of backpack items currently. Maybe give boomerang 3 uses and then it breaks?
Best cards (I think)
warrior: flex and battle cry, both cards give power and start which is very good.
rogue: backflip and boot knife, boot knife gets you a kunai which lets you start or link as long as you don't get hit, backflip lets you start or link while also letting you dodge.
neutral: throwing dagger, parrying dagger, both cards deal 3 damage for 0 energy which is very nice with momentum since you can cycle damage quicker, parrying dagger does require you to break but that's pretty easy once you get a few start cards.
haven't played the other class.
one potential way to solve the momentum problem would be having the ability to swap out momentum for a different ability that wasn't time oriented that triggers like playing 3 weapons gets you 1 power or something like that.
Overall it's a pretty fun deckbuilding game with a lot of potential, it does seem a bit tricky to balance though since your incentivized to play simple strategies and not do anything too complicated due to momentum.
Great feedback, ty! There's for sure going to be a menu in the Library with more tutorial info. I'm considering a total rework of the momentum mechanic and ditching the timer (or maybe only having it on hard mode).
Game is fun. Kunai are very good. Placeholder graphics are funny.
I played a bit, looks interesting and I like vibe of the graphics.
probably the best deck-building roguelike i've ever played on itch, which is saying a lot considering how many slay the spire clones are out there
a few things to ask about the full game:
really cool, got a follow from me! will be looking forward to more :3
wow thank you so much! you have no idea how happy it makes me to hear that it doesn't feel like another STS-style game. I really like STS of course but yeah, hard not to be compared to it and trying my best to do something fresh
"will there be a 'fast mode'?"
Yes! The options menu is coming soon but this feature is already done. I'm even planning to increase the default combat speed by 20% at some point.
"can you respec your class?"
Yah absolutely, this is coming soon too. There's a town upgrade system that's in the game but just not in this demo...respecs are something you get access to by upgrading the guildhall, but they're a bit limited. You can only re-spend one stat point for each upgrade tier of your guildhall up to a max of 3 stat points, and respecs cost a special currency called renown (used for buying talents, duplicating cards, ...also not in this demo). If people want unlimited respecs I'm open to that, but my current thinking is I don't want it to feel too "free" and kill any replay value.
"were any of the card names inspired by STS?"
Not intentionally, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few verbatim references on accident! I know for sure some of the names have to be the same. It might be fun to do some more deliberate card game references if you have any ideas.
I've put more hours into MTG and Hearthstone than any other card games at this point (though it feels like I've played them all). Megacrit mentioned that Magic Shandalar was a big influence, so depending on the card you're thinking of we could both just be channeling MTG :D
That was such a cool introduction to the game. Well done.
This game is goated
For someone who's never been interested in deck builders, this was surprisingly fun. The only gripe I have with the demo is the lack of explanation given to the in-battle mechanics. Specifically the timer, momentum and and such incrementing numbers. That or I'm just getting to know these kind of games lol.
I'll be sure to share the game in any way I can and support you as well. Please keep it up!!!
Thank you so much!!!
You're right that the timer is barely explained, I will be adding a section to the library where you can read about all the mechanics at some point.
Basically, the timer shows you the turn order: whoever's timer will hit 0 first goes next! Most card games do not have a timer like this, although Wildfrost is a notable exception (I highly recommend it).
For example, if it's Fer's turn and Dari has 5 timer but the enemy has 2, that means the enemy goes next (unless Fer plays a card that makes Dari faster by -3 timer or slows the enemy down +3 timer).
After your turn ends, your timer goes up by a number based on your speed. A slow character might gain +12 timer, a fast character might only gain +6 (that means the faster character in this example takes twice as many turns).
Wow, this is a really polished demo, I enjoyed it a lot! I'll look forward to the full version in the future.
EDT: I also want to mention how much I enjoyed the dialogue and appreciated the down-to-earth reasons for why things are happening in the game. Fer is much more relatable than some other PCs I could name. :)
Will you be adding an option to manage allies' cards in the future?
whoa thanks so much for the kind words!
so you should be able to edit everyone on your team's deck already, but they do come with a starter deck. If you go back to town there's an "edit deck" button in the library or the guildhall (I know the UI for the guildhall is busted right now, there's a new version for the next major release)
oh, ok! I didn't realize I could switch between profiles when I first got Dari. It makes sense on a replay tho. Maybe add a flashing pointer when she joins up for clarification?
One thing I noticed, and I'm not sure if this is a glitch or not; sometimes when I went to target enemies the screen went totally grayscale. It didn't affect any gameplay mechanics, but it was a
little annoying, especially because it didn't happen every time. Small thing,
but I thought I'd point it out.
Thank you again for the great game!
ty, will do!
the grayscale thing you noticed is not a glitch, it's actually used to show you who the enemy is going to attack when you mouse over them (everyone but the enemy's target will be grayscale, there's also a pulsing target icon too)
when picking a target for one of your cards, some cards can only target specific characters, so similarly in that case only the valid targets will be in color and everything else is grayscale - maybe I gotta find a better way to show this though 😅
Really well done. Good mechanics, dialog, and good introduction / tutorial. I'd like to see more.
ty! will be adding new demos here for sure
I'd love to see a full version!
working on it! thanks for playing :D
This game is great.
🙏