By Linette Marte

The devil is in the details. In The Killing Stone, you must play your deck wisely in this card game against the devil and his contracts. The Killing Stone is a strategic game mixed with a 3D painterly environment in which you explore a mansion inhabited by a peculiar family. There are also different animals you can bond with and get help from in battle.​​ 

In this work in progress, eeriness and danger keep you on your toes for whatever’s next. Within these strange confines, you play as a character named Maven. You are guided to a large, creepy house which was home to a lady named Mariken, who was your friend and mentor. Your role is to engage with Mariken’s family and learn about her death through them. 

As you speak with the members of the family, you’re required to host rituals for their very souls. Specifically, you are going against the devil himself and his desperate minions because Mariken has made some mistakes of her own in the past while doing business with the evil one. From this, her soul was signed over in blood. The devil has kept it, which seemingly affected the people in her family through a curse.

The rituals are quite strange. Each family member has their own deck of cards, as well as their cursed card, or “cursed inheritance.” This means that each family member’s ritual will play a little differently from the last. These cursed cards also play a role as they take up a slot that could have been used for a better card, limiting what you can use during battle.

There are different aspects to these rituals, and it’s not all just battles. For example, the forge is where you can cleanse the cursed inheritance from your client’s deck, your client in this case being one of the family members. Of course, there’s the change that you may be unlucky with the different options the forge gives you to do with your deck. Between battles there may be resting areas where you can regain your health. (Overall, be wary when you take damage in battle. You will not regenerate health if you do not land on a resting area). 

There are also stops called boons and banes. When you stop at a boon, you can choose an upgrade for yourself that will last for the whole ritual. A bane is similar in which you choose an upgrade and it lasts the entire ritual except you are choosing an upgrade for the devil and his minions instead. 

This basically means you are at a disadvantage. To give some context, for a boon you may receive a card that plays at the start of a battle without having to use precious action points. A bane may be that the minions would receive a higher total HP count for their “eye.” Think of an eye as your base; you must use your cards to get past the enemy’s cards and attack their base.

But don’t fret: you still have resources up your sleeve. The pets/animals you encounter, like the crow called Valravn, can help you in battle. I’ve been using Valravn and he’s been a massive help. Whenever I draw a cursed inheritance card during battle, I can discard it and Valravn will fetch a card from the devil’s deck, ultimately replacing the cursed inheritance card. 

During the ritual, you’re presented with bargain rounds where you can use the currency you gain, called revelations, to wager against the devil’s minions for boons and banes. You can try to outsmart the minions by using your revelations to choose boons in your favor while countering out their bids on a bane. 

Speaking of minions, each family member you do rituals on has a separate minion from Satan you must go against. For example, Malthe is the first family member you encounter, and the overarching minion you go against is VVeregild, a weird mechanical creature.

From my current playthrough, everything runs smoothly! The voice acting is charming and the option at the beginning to choose Old English versus modern English is very unique and something that I haven’t seen before. I’ve played for a while with the old English setting, but it does get a bit wordy and confusing at times, so I continued with the modern English setting. There is also an automatic saving system so you can take a break, even if you’re in a ritual. Playing with the different cards and seeing them manifest as little occult figurines is fun! When placing a card, the figures look like the image on the card, they remind me of chess pieces almost! And like mentioned earlier, lots of items look painted, as if with a ceramic glaze. The cards have an old paper texture, like scrolls! 

It feels good to completely overpower the enemy at times with good strategy. I’m excited to see what the endgame will look like once released.

Writer/intern Linette Marte is a Bronx native who attends the Jonas Bronck Academy.

---