If you were making a Lovecraft game, which creature that rarely shows up in games would you choose as a boss? What would the fight actually involve?
Picture an isolated mining town, miles of open desert, and no help coming. A shoggoth in the mine is an easy pick, but what less obvious creature would you choose and why?
Hi, I’m Rich, and we’re developing Utterance, a Lovecraft-inspired Western deckbuilder. I keep thinking about Armitage in The Dunwich Horror: learning the right words gives him a way to confront something he would rather never have known existed. We wanted language to have that kind of power in our game.
You build words from letter cards to fight creatures. In this clip, Skullduggery is weak to three-letter words. Dead Man’s Rewrite places an H over the S in SAT, making HAT a second valid word. Trailblazer returns a word’s final letter to your hand, so the combination triggers it twice.
That’s the tactical side of the game. You can also offer cards to Azathoth for a better hand, at a cost to your Sanity. Does making language itself your weapon feel fitting for a Lovecraftian setting?
Utterance on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4935920/Utterance/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=lovecraft_utility_combo_20261001&utm_content=native_gameplay_clip
Share the quote and the story it’s from. Famous or obscure, I’d love to know why it stayed with you.
Was there a particular passage or character that really stood out to you?
I’m one of the developers of Utterance, a single-player roguelite deckbuilder, and this is our main trailer.
The story begins when miners break into an eldritch realm beneath the frontier. The invasion comes through language, and surviving means learning to use it yourself. You build words from letter cards to fight your way through corrupted towns, mines, and creatures.
We wanted that dependence on something alien to carry into the decisions you make. You can bargain with Azathoth, sacrificing a card for a better hand while losing sanity and taking on penalties. A bargain that saves you this turn can make the rest of the fight harder.
That’s the cosmic horror idea we’re building around: how much would you willingly give up when something beyond your understanding offers exactly what you need?
You can learn more and Wishlist Utterance here:
What genre/type of game would fit it best?
Say they’re roughly the same size. Both can change shape and form temporary limbs, so what actually gives either one an advantage?
A shoggoth can tear an Elder Thing apart, but how useful is that strength against another creature with no fixed shape? Is there anything in the stories that suggests one could kill the other, or would this end in a stalemate?
Most creature discussions focus on the most dangerous gods and creatures, but I find the rare beings on the other side just as interesting.
Kthanid is probably the clearest example. He resembles Cthulhu but opposes the Great Old Ones and is portrayed as compassionate.
What are some other good examples from Lovecraft, his contemporaries, or later Mythos writers? I am especially interested in beings that are genuinely protective or helpful, rather than indifferent creatures that happen to spare someone.
When you play deckbuilding roguelikes - or making them, how important is some sort of deck thinning mechanic to you and if its critical how often do you like to see those sort of mechanics pop up in a game session?
Hey everyone,
Rich from Boltz Entertainment here.
Welcome to Utterance, a Lovecraftian Western roguelite deckbuilder where you fight by building words from letter cards.
Each creature has a specific weakness that will help you defeat him. Certain words can alter reality, but learning them exposes the mind to something far beyond human understanding.
We wanted the Lovecraftian influence to exist in the mechanics, not only in the creature designs. Forbidden words can bend the rules of combat and save a failing run, so there is a real reason to use them. Every use also corrupts your deck, damages your Sanity, and advances the awakening of the presence behind the threshold.
Sacrifice cards to appease Azathoth and keep him from waking.
Our goal is to make forbidden knowledge feel less like a collectible spell and more like a temptation. It may save you now while making the rest of the journey, and the world itself, much worse.
We will have a full gameplay trailer once all our art is complete =)
Utterance is currently in development and available to wishlist on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4935920/Utterance/
If you would like to check out the demo I would LOVE to have some of my favorite community on Reddit give us some feedback so we can make sure to stay true to Lovecraft's vision. Just let me know in the comments =)
Thanks!
In most deckbuilder games you can get a major deck defining relic or card right off the bat before the run. Do you think there is any value to holding off until mid-way through an act 1 or even as the reward for an act 1 boss? Or is this too late to introduce those types of objects/cards?
Lovecraft’s characters are usually remembered for learning too much, running away, or leaving behind a final warning. But a few knowingly face the horror to protect other people.
My first thought is Armitage, Rice, and Morgan confronting the Dunwich Horror.
Slay the Spire 2 has me thinking about enemy intent systems. Knowing exactly what an enemy will do makes combat feel fair and gives every turn more strategy, but it also turns the enemy into a predictable puzzle.
Would a horror game, or even a deckbuilder, be more interesting if it only hinted at the enemy’s next move instead of showing exact damage, or if it did not show the enemy’s next intention at all?
Are there any games out there that already do something like this?
Some of his characters are doomed from the beginning; others ruin themselves with one unnecessary choice. Who had the clearest opportunity to walk away, and what should they have done differently?
You build words from the cards in your deck to fight, but learning the forbidden Eldritch language comes with consequences. It can make you more powerful while corrupting your deck, damaging your sanity, and bringing an ancient entity closer to awakening. We are taking a Cosmic infection approach to our world.
You can learn more about the game here:
https://play.utterancegame.com
Some words should never be spoken.
I feel like they had a good formula from DD1. It seemed to me a grand slam to just build off of that and improve, but instead the really took some risks that I personally didn't like. Do you feel the same?
Eliminating the team management aspect of the game in DD2 really cut a lot of the feeling that was present in DD1. Every run you'd have unexpected heroes and characters who just couldn't cut it despite having good traits. It was a master class in risk/reward gameplay that rewarded game knowledge and good team building. The art style was also incredibly charming in DD1, which had a comic book style aesthetic that was beautifully animated. DD2 'upgrades' to 3d, but I frankly found there was an uncanny valley effect to it; characters' heads went from being too big to too small, and the attempt to ground the aesthetic with more realistic proportions killed the charm of the first game imo.
I'm disappointed by DD2. Despite its mechanical improvements to combat, it simultaneously removed the core of what made the game unique at the same time. Not that I forgive DD1 for everything, Crimson Court is an extremely oppressive expansion that stopped being cool or interesting past the first playthrough with it, at least for me.
I’m working on Utterance, a word-building deckbuilding roguelike where enemies have several protected Seals. Matching letters in an enemy’s weakness breaks one Seal, while regular damage can still win the fight. I’m trying to decide how rewarding Seal breaks should be without turning each encounter into a prescribed puzzle.
The tension I keep coming back to is between building a strong deck for the entire run and adapting that deck to individual encounters.
Enemy weaknesses can make fights feel more distinct than simply attacking another pool of health. However, if exploiting the weakness is dramatically stronger than playing your deck normally, the encounter can start feeling like a prescribed puzzle with one intended solution.
In our current system, enemy health can be divided into three or four Seals. Completing a condition, such as forming a word of a particular length, alternating vowels and consonants, or using specific letters, immediately destroys one Seal. Regular damage still works, but triggering the weakness removes roughly 25% to 33% of the enemy’s health.
That certainly makes the weakness worth pursuing, but could it overshadow the deck a player spent the run building?
I can see three possible approaches:
- Weaknesses provide a helpful but optional efficiency bonus.
- Weaknesses are the primary solution, but most decks can improvise a way to trigger them.
- Weaknesses are effectively required, especially at higher difficulties.
Which approach feels best in a deckbuilding roguelike? Should every reasonably constructed deck have some route to an enemy’s weakness, or is it acceptable for certain builds to ignore it and win through raw strength?
Are there any games you think handle enemy-specific weaknesses especially well or particularly poorly?
For context, Utterance is available on Steam:
Hi everyone. We’re a small indie team working on Utterance, a Lovecraftian Western roguelite deckbuilder where words are your weapons and letters are your ammunition.
Our original idea sounded simple: draw letter cards, build words, and use those words to fight monsters. The problem was that longer and more obscure words were almost always the best move. It started feeling more like a vocabulary test than a deckbuilder.
We changed the design so that the cards you draft and the encounter itself matter more than knowing the longest possible word:
- Build and refine a deck of letter cards with different values and effects.
- Combine letters into useful chunks such as TH, ER, and ING.
- Exploit weaknesses that reward specific lengths, letters, or word patterns.
- Deal with creatures that mute letters, corrupt cards, change the rules, and attack your Sanity.
- Create builds where the right three-letter word can outperform an ordinary seven-letter word.
The game takes place across a cursed Western frontier infected by something beyond human understanding. You play as a Word-Slinger trying to uncover a forbidden Eldritch language while keeping something much worse from waking.
Utterance is still in development, and its Steam page is live. If word games, roguelite deckbuilders, or Lovecraftian horror are your kind of thing, you can take a closer look or wishlist it here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4935920/Utterance/
One design question we’re still working through is what makes this kind of system feel strategic rather than frustrating. For people who play word games or deckbuilders, what would make or break it for you? Would you care most about build variety, ways to recover from bad letter draws, unusual enemy rules, or keeping vocabulary from outweighing strategy?
We’re Boltz Entertainment, a small indie studio currently developing Utterance, a single-player word-based roguelike deckbuilder set in a Lovecraftian Western world.
Instead of drawing completed attack or ability cards, players build a deck of letter cards and combine them into words during combat. Words deal damage, certain letter patterns trigger enemy weaknesses, and consecutive words must climb in length. That means the makeup of your deck matters, but it also creates a design problem we have been wrestling with.
In most card games, a bad draw can force you to improvise. In a word game, the wrong combination of vowels and consonants can leave you with no valid play at all.
We currently give players several ways to manage this:
• Their hand persists instead of being discarded every turn.
• A limited recycle lets them replace unwanted letters.
• Letters can be sacrificed to obtain letters of the opposite type.
• Special unlocked words can occasionally act as wild plays.
The challenge is finding the line between randomness and player responsibility. If we provide too many safety nets, deckbuilding stops mattering because almost every hand can be repaired. If we provide too few, losing can feel like the shuffle decided the outcome.
How do you prefer card games to handle this?
Should a game secretly guarantee that every opening hand contains at least one legal play? Should an unplayable hand be considered a fair consequence of building an unbalanced deck? Or is the best solution a costly emergency option that always gives the player a way forward?
I’d also love to hear about physical or digital card games that you think handle bad draws especially well.
If seeing the system in motion would help, our Steam page has a short overview and trailer:
