Heartless! is a solitare dungeon crawler featuring dark themes and difficult luck based gameplay.
The game is played with 4D6 and a deck of 54 playing cards. Heavily inspired by "Scoundrel" and other dungeon crawling solitare playing card games developed over the years.
In Heartless! you see your Character, a face card from the deck, face off against enemy after enemy in high risk, luck based dice combat. Using your regular dice pool of 3 dice, or 4 dice if you are fortunate enough to find a Weapon, represented by the diamond suit cards of the deck. This additonal die added to your pool is called the Slayer Die and is vital to finding sucess in this game. Companions you find strewn through the dungeon, non diamond/heart suit 2 and 3 cards, can also help you earn your way to the Slayer Die in combination with having a weapon.
Often times you will find your Character placed in a situation they are unlikely to win (like when they are paired against the almighty boss monsters of this realm, the Ace Foe cards!) And in cases like this your Character can Flee, taking only a Flesh Wound in the process! Or you can just Trip one of your companions you've gathered along the way to suffer the enemy's wrath instead (how cruel, utterly Heartless!)
Heartless! has a unique damage system surrounding the Hearts suit cards, specifically the Ace of Hearts. Shuffle up the hearts cards and put the 10 of Hearts on top. This is your LifePool. The most important card of the Health deck, the Ace of Hearts aka Your Beating Heart, is shuffled somewhere in that lifepool deck. When you take damage from enemies you simply take cards off the top of the Lifepool until you have a lesser value of health than when you started with. That means you could possibly go from being completely healthy to being right down to your Beating Heart in a single hit!When you die, you are Heartless!
Finally, this game makes use of Lord cards, the Jokers in the deck. These entities can heal you, give you the most powerful weapon in the game, the mythic Lord Sword, and even revive you after death! Forever maintain caution, traveler, for these deities are known to thirst for blood.
Slice, dice. Human Sacrifice!
Can you traverse the twisted depths with your Beating Heart in tact?
May the Lords be with you.
Card Game, Dice, Fantasy · Dice Rolling, Move Through Deck, Push Your Luck, Role Playing, Solo / Solitaire Game
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