u/Otherwise_Lychee9304

Obscurium is a horror deckbuilder with roguelite runs, built on Brazilian folklore. All the art is by Garcia. I didn't draw a pixel of this, I just get to watch it happen and then put the file in the build.

The card is Casca Grossa. What got me was the order he works in. Top left is where every card starts: the whole animal blocked out in red, loose enough that it looks wrong for a good while. Black ink goes on top of that. Bottom right is the red coming back at the very end, only on the blood and on the plates of the shell. Whole game is black and red, no other color anywhere.

So the question I keep circling, and this is the right room for it: does card art still register twenty minutes into a run? My honest guess is that at some point you stop seeing the illustration and you're reading icons and costs. If that's true it changes where Garcia's hours should go, and I'd rather hear it from people who actually play these than guess.

Build 2 of our playtest opens tomorrow, PC/Windows. Signups for this wave close Thursday the 6th, and the build stays playable until the 17th if you get in.

https://obscurium.firstlook.gg/signup/playtest-2

Not my game, want to be upfront about that. It's Pimbolas, made by three people at Nano Knight Studio, and it releases tomorrow, July 16. I'm posting here because this sub is exactly who it was built for: everyone on one couch, controllers in hand.

It's local multiplayer foosball for up to 4 players, same screen, top down. Where it stops being normal foosball is the power-ups. The ball might be a square that bounces wrong, or one that keeps growing the longer it stays in play until it barely fits between the rods. Sometimes it catches fire. Then a coconut shows up. Then a crab wanders onto the field and everyone forgets where the actual ball went.

Controls are all analog, rods mapped to the sticks and triggers, and the spin is the whole skill ceiling. It's the kind of game that turns a quiet room into four people yelling at each other in about ninety seconds.

There's a demo up now if you want to try it before launch, and since it's out tomorrow, wishlisting it is the thing that actually helps them: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3621200/Pimbolas/

Question for the couch crowd: 2v2, or free-for-all with four? Curious how this room would play it.

Salve, pessoal!

Estamos desenvolvendo um roguelike deckbuilder (Obscurium) e a nossa missão principal é fazer o mercado internacional conhecer e respeitar a mitologia brasileira do jeito que eles respeitam a nórdica ou a japonesa. Nada de versão americanizada, é terror cru, mecânica punitiva e arte em xilogravura raiz.

Mas eu queria a opinião de vocês como jogadores: como a gente apresenta isso para a América do Norte, Europa e Ásia mantendo a nossa essência?

A gente traduz o nome dos monstros nas cartas para eles entenderem (ex: chamar a Pisadeira de "The Stepper") ou mantém em Português e força o gringo a aprender nosso idioma? A gente foca em explicar a lenda ou joga eles no escuro para sofrerem com a bizarrice visual?

Como vocês acham que é a melhor forma de fazer o gringo consumir e respeitar a nossa cultura em um jogo indie?

Quick context for anyone who missed the first post: Obscurium is a horror deckbuilder built on Brazilian folklore. All the art is woodcut style, and I was second-guessing it after someone suggested we go for something softer and more painted.

A few people asked how the style looks in motion, on the board. So I went one step further and actually built the test: the cards in this video are a less rough version. Cleaner lines, less of that raw carved texture.

The whole scene stays the same either way. One candlelit table, the creature you're fighting sitting on the other side, watching while you decide what to play. The glowing card is Espírito Afogado, the Drowned Spirit, a red skull sinking through a school of fish.

And the timing worked out in a way I like: our playtest went live today, and that build has the original rougher cards. So everyone who plays it will see the other side of this comparison in their own hands.

For people watching the video: does the cleaner version lose something, or does it read better?

Obs.: And if you want to compare against the rough version yourself, comment or DM me and I'll send the playtest link. PC/Windows.

Quick disclaimer: the art isn't final, a lot will change before launch.

Hey everyone!

My team and I have been developing Obscurium for months and this Friday, July 3rd, is the first time the game is going out into the world for real. We're excited and a little nervous, as one tends to be.

Obscurium is a horror roguelite deckbuilder based on Brazilian mythology. Not the creatures everyone already knows. We went after the obscure ones, the ones that show up in stories told in small towns in the interior of Pará, Maranhão, the northeast of Brazil. The Capelobo has the head of an anteater and tears off its victims' skulls to drink from them. The Pisadeira sits on your chest while you sleep and paralyzes you. There are people in Rio and São Paulo who have never heard of these creatures. Outside Brazil, even less so.

And that's exactly what we want to find out with this playtest: is the game fun? And do these Brazilian stories connect with people who didn't grow up hearing them?

If you play deckbuilders or roguelites, we'd love to have you. If you know someone who would enjoy this, send them the link. We genuinely want to hear what people have to say.

Sign up here: https://obscurium.firstlook.gg/

Hi guys! We're looking for people to playtest Obscurium on July 3rd.

Obscurium is a horror roguelike deckbuilder based on Brazilian folklore. You fight creatures from Brazilian myth like the Capelobo and the Pisadeira using a grid-based card system where positioning changes what happens each turn. Every powerful card you play corrupts your future draws, so your own decisions slowly become the threat across the run. The art direction is woodcut print style, black ink and red accents only.

What stage it's at: this is our first external playtest. The core loop is working and we want real players telling us what feels confusing, what feels good, and where they lost interest.

What we need from you: play for 30 to 60 minutes and fill out a short form after with about 10 questions. If you want to hop on a quick voice call to talk through the experience, even better but totally optional.

Who's a good fit: anyone who plays card games or deckbuilders. You don't need to know anything about Brazilian folklore.

Platform: PC / Windows only.

Sign up here: https://obscurium.firstlook.gg/

Feel free to comment or DM me if you have any questions!

We're making a horror deckbuilder with Brazilian folklore and someone just told us to change the whole art style. I don't know what to think

So this has been sitting in my head for a week and I figured I'd just post about it.

We've been working on Obscurium for months. It's a horror card game built around Brazilian folklore creatures, things like the Capelobo (anteater-headed demon that tears off skulls to drink from them) and the Pisadeira (a nightmare hag that sits on your chest while you sleep and slowly crushes you). The card art has been this raw woodcut aesthetic, black ink, red accents, very rough and deliberate. Woodcut is an old printmaking technique where you carve the image directly into a block of wood, ink it, and press it onto paper. The lines are never perfectly clean. The shapes are blunt. It has a quality that feels handmade in a way that can't really be faked. It's dark in a way that feels old. Like something printed on paper in a village a hundred years ago.

The team loves it. I go back to the Capelobo card sometimes just to look at it.

But during one of our early feedback sessions someone said it felt "too aggressive" and asked if we had considered something more atmospheric and painted.

I get what they meant. There's a version of these cards with moody dark backgrounds and soft lighting that would probably read better on a Steam page thumbnail. But I keep coming back to the same feeling: the roughness is the point. The Pisadeira isn't supposed to look pretty. She's supposed to look like something your grandmother warned you about.

The doubt is there now, though. Which is a weird place to be eight months in.

I'm posting both cards right here in the post. The first one is the Capelobo in the old style. The second is a different creature in what the new direction would look like, I'm not saying who it is, that's a spoiler. The difference is subtle but it's there. Curious which one feels right to you.

We're running a playtest on July 3rd if anyone wants to actually sit with it and tell me what they think. Drop a comment or DM me and I'll send the link.

Hello! Working on a game and want some experienced eyes on it.

Obscurium is a horror roguelike deckbuilder with positional card placement. Where you place a card relative to other cards and to enemy positions changes what happens. The goal was to create decisions that have weight even when your deck is small.

Whether we got there is the honest question. Some playtesters felt it. Some didn't. And I'm still not sure if the ones who didn't were missing something in the design or something in how we explain the system.

The game wraps all of this in Brazilian folklore horror. Creatures like the Capelobo (a wolf-headed demon that tears off skulls to drink from them) and the Pisadeira (a hag that sits on your chest while you sleep and crushes you). Woodcut print aesthetic, heavy atmosphere.

If you play deckbuilders or turn-based card games and want to tell us whether the positioning system adds something or just gets in the way, you're exactly who we need.

Playtest is July 3rd, PC/Windows, free. Sign up here: https://obscurium.firstlook.gg/