The afterlife is broken, but that’s OK, because you’re tasked with repairing it. That’s a compelling starting point for Dem Entertainment’s new title, Dziady, a deckbuilder with a thoroughly intriguing twist: you need to empathise and understand your enemy in order to succeed. If you don’t? It’s failure. For everyone.
Experiencing Dziady for the first time at Poland’s premiere gaming conference, Digital Dragons, it’s important to understand that it is based on Polish traditions and folklore. My first interaction with the team and the game was being beckoned over by a wise woman in traditional garb, who proceeded to cleanse my spirit as I played. As game demos go, that’s a first. What it did emphasise was the otherworldly and mystical aspect that permeated from the real world into the cloying darkness of the forest within. Most intense demo experience? Quite possibly.
You’ve been cast out to die. This has been a dark tradition in Poland for thousands of years, with Dziady – the Slavic Day of the Dead – related to the idea that if you haven’t received enough kindness during your life, you won’t rest when you die. The concept of understanding and reflecting on someone’s life is crucial to the game, Dziady, as you do battle with the restless spirits in an attempt to send them onwards.
Roaming through the landscape, this is a game of atmosphere and ambience. There’s no tutorial in this demo, just the forest, the shrubs and the overwhelmingly large moon, and as you roam here, you find souls waiting for you. Dziady is a deckbuilder. When you encounter an enemy, you find yourself facing them with your deck, an intriguing set of cards where you can play either the top or the bottom. Each card can then be played in two ways, and whatever you do play, affects you in the same way it affects your enemies.
You have to learn about your enemies. If you find the right card, it unlocks a piece of lore about that character, telling you their weaknesses, which then applies to all enemies of that type. These weaknesses require some interpretation, though, as they may be weak to satiation, but the cards don’t have that stat simply stamped in their corner, instead being a snippet of storytelling, perhaps talking about your grandfather’s wisdom, or food rotting. Solve the puzzle, and you’re one step closer to sending them onwards.
However, whatever cards you play affect you and your equilibrium in the same way they affect your opponents. They’ll attack you, further skewing both their and your position, and there’s some really intriguing interplay between the cards, understanding your opponents, and protecting yourself at the same time.
Dziady is the first game from Dem Entertainment, and has been co-financed by the European Funds for Modern Economy 2021-2027 as part of the KPT ScaleUp Booster project. It feels as though there’s a huge amount of potential here, with both the lore, and the evocative card system, while I think players will really latch onto the intense atmosphere and the way it promotes empathy over aggression.
As a particularly Polish project too, I think it could further the understanding of Polish folklore and the nation’s overarching outlook on life, death and the afterlife. We’ll be paying close attention as it continues to develop.
