Some games win you over with their premise, and Deck of Haunts has a good one: you don’t explore the haunted house, you are the house. The deckbuilding roguelike from Belgium’s Mantis Games, published by DANGEN Entertainment of Osaka, was released for PC on Steam on May 7, 2025, with a new trailer and Brazilian Portuguese translation.
Construction by day, scares by night
By day, you assemble the mansion room by room, scattering traps, spirits and anomalies and protecting the Heart Room, where your power lies. At night, you lure visitors in and play haunting cards on them or on the rooms: screams, ghosts, creaking floors, moving walls. When fear reaches its limit, you extract the victims’ essence to grow, open new rooms and attract more dangerous targets. There is also an Endless Mode, unlocked by meeting certain conditions.
The Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox Series X|S versions don’t have a date yet. Initial reception has been good: PC Gamer wrote that playing as a haunted house in a deckbuilder “is such a brilliant idea”, and VICE said “everyone should play it”. The game is on Steam.
Our take
What stands out is the role reversal: the game takes the grammar of horror, the creak, the corridor that changes place, and turns each scare into a card with a function. You can see the care in making fear a resource, and that’s smart design.
Source: DANGEN Entertainment and Mantis Games.
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