Video Games: How to cure regret in five easy steps

By Edward Brydalski

(Cover image: Burn With Me poster. Game & art by Nozomu Games.)

The world needs smaller, tighter games — experiences that leave an impact but don’t outstay their welcome. PC game ‘Burn With Me‘ does just that.

Released in mid-October, it provides six to eight hours of quality roguelike¹ deckbuilder² gameplay with an engaging story and an art style that blends the cuddly with the occult.

In “Burn With Me,” a magic school professor delves into the world of the demonic and takes his students along for the ride.

There are five playable students, each with mechanics unique to them. Each one turns to occult knowledge to change an aspect of themselves, undo a past mistake, etc.

Their wishes are granted by performing The Ancient Ritual: summoning imps to use their strength to confront their Personal Demon.

If you’ve played “Slay the Spire” or “Inscryption,” the gameplay should come naturally. You draw cards representing demonic imps from an ever-expanding deck, with each having a point value and unique ability.

Synergy is the name of the game, with careful card choice making the difference between success and failure.

You play cards to earn points. If you have enough points by the end of the round, you pick a new card to add to your deck and move on.

If you don’t have enough points (or manage to blunder into having less than five cards in your deck, like I’ve done), then you fail and must start the ritual from the beginning. You also get one checkpoint halfway through the ritual, which feels generous.

The unique gameplay element of “Burn With Me” is how you arrange your cards. Each card must be placed among one of five points on a pentagram.

Many cards will interact with the cards next to them, grant bonuses when placed alone, or even grow in value over time.

Means of deck thinning³ are always available, but not without risk. At any time you may choose to draw a card from your deck, but you will burn one of the cards in your hand at random, removing it from your deck permanently.

Several cards will either burn themselves or others, so careful sequencing and placement of cards is a must.

Once all five slots on the pentagram are filled, one stage of the ritual is complete. Complete enough stages and you will face your student’s Personal Demon.

These act as unique boss fights for each student, with each one adding new mechanics and win conditions⁴.

Compared to others in the genre, difficulty skews on the easy side. Synergy is necessary to win, but some cards and strategies are immediately identifiable as superior.

Repeat playthroughs feel a bit redundant unless you have the will to intentionally make inferior choices.

The game’s most admirable qualities are the story and presentation.

Each student’s stage uses cutscenes and unique game mechanics to represent their personalities and the troubles that led them to the occult. Character choices, motivations, reactions, etc. toe the line between grounded drama and fairy tale fantasy.

Story and gameplay are presented as computer-drawn 2D cartoons with a pseudo Adobe Flash⁵ aesthetic. Monochromatic still frames pop with stabs of color amid an endless haze of wavering smoke.

Echoing, hissing sound effects are paired with full narration and an atmospheric jazz score.

It’s all effective in conveying the turmoil these characters are going through while still coming off quite cozy. Playing this game near an open window as the rain pours outside will make for a lovely evening.

Beat each Personal Demon across six chapters, and just like that, it’s done. You unlock a Hard Mode for each chapter and some alternate card art, but otherwise, the game is over — and how refreshing is that?

In this modern gamescape of always connected, Battle Pass⁶ laden, perpetual development engagement farms, it’s the limited-in-scope experiences like Burn With Me that maintain the (correct) perspective that gaming doesn’t have to be a full-time job. It’s a movie, not a marathon.

“Burn With Me” is available now for $14.99. You can play it on PC through Steam.

Trailers

Official Launch Trailer

Official Gameplay Trailer

Glossary

1. Roguelikes are a subgenre of video game that uses random item placement and procedural level generation to make multiple playthroughs feel different every time. See: Hades, Spelunky, & Slay the Spire.

2. Deckbuilders are a subgenre of card game focused on the improvisational creation of a personal deck. Cards are doled out over the course of a single game and taken back at the end. Strategy comes from building a deck that synergizes with itself and its surroundings to better accomplish an objective. See: Slay the Spire, Fights in Tight Spaces and Dominion.

3. Deck thinning is a common action in deckbuilding games. It involves permanently removing unwanted cards from a deck, typically to increase the odds of drawing superior cards.

4. Win conditions are a subset of concepts in game theory that define what is required for a player to win a particular game.

5. Adobe Flash was a popular game and animation software development platform used from the late 1990s through its discontinuation in 2020.

6. A Battle Pass is a video game monetization system in which players can earn a linear progression of in-game rewards for playing the game and completing certain objectives. Many popular online games use Battle Passes including Fortnite and the Call of Duty series.