Nozomu Games’ wonderfully strange occult deckbuilder Burn With Me launches on PC this October, bringing university students, personal demons, and the deeply upsetting requirement to destroy your own cards deliberately.
I have spent years being trained by card games to protect my good cards.
Find the nice card. Keep the nice card. Upgrade the nice card. Build an increasingly elaborate little ecosystem around the nice card. Become emotionally attached to it despite knowing perfectly well it is a rectangle containing some numbers.
Burn With Me would like me to throw it directly into the fire. Myyy precious. How rude.
Nozomu Games has confirmed its supernatural deckbuilder, Burn With Me, will launch on PC via Steam on October 12, bringing six chapters of forbidden rituals, deeply questionable university extracurriculars, and strategic self-sabotage.
The whole thing revolves around a wonderfully nasty idea. Your cards are also fuel.
You summon creatures, arrange combinations, and build strategies as you would expect from a deckbuilder, but powerful abilities can demand a permanent sacrifice. Burn something useful now, and you might claw your way out of immediate disaster. Get too enthusiastic with the matches, and Future You inherits a significantly worse deck.
Future You already has enough problems.
Watch the Official Trailer below:
Please stop making me destroy my nice things
The studio calls Burn With Me a “deck-burner”, which feels appropriate when one of its defining mechanics involves permanently torching cards for power.
That creates a slightly horrible decision every time something valuable starts looking flammable.
A strong card represents future options. Burning it might save your current run. Holding on to it could leave you too weak to reach the point where it becomes useful.
There is something beautifully mean about forcing a deckbuilder player to dismantle the collection they have been carefully constructing.
Usually, I hoard useful resources in games until the final credits because what if I need this later?
Now somebody has made an entire game about putting that psychological problem on the table and staring at me. Great.
The system also fits neatly into the story Nozomu Games has wrapped around it. Burn With Me follows university students studying occult arts under an intensely committed Teacher, as each character confronts their own desires, fears, and obsessions through increasingly dubious supernatural rituals. Steam describes the result as a narrative deckbuilder steeped in what the studio calls “cosy dread”, which is an excellent phrase for something that simultaneously invites me in and quietly suggests I should absolutely leave.
Each of the six chapters introduces its own characters, mechanics, cards, and bosses, with the gameplay shifting alongside the personal nightmare being unpacked. The existing Steam demo covers the first chapter, so there is already a way to poke the demon-shaped object before October.
Occult university sounds exhausting
University is stressful enough without your lecturer introducing forbidden rites. These people have demons. The broader story centers on obsession and sacrifice, with students chasing the things they desperately want and discovering the unfortunate complications that arise when occult rituals become part of the syllabus.
That connection between narrative and mechanics is what has my attention. Burning a card works mechanically because you are trading future security for immediate power, while the characters themselves are making increasingly dangerous bargains in pursuit of their desires.
It gives every sacrifice the potential to feel a little grubby. How much are you prepared to lose because you want something now?
Personally, I once paid express international shipping for a limited-edition video game art book, so the demons already know I am weak.
It looks properly peculiar, too
Burn With Me has a scrappy, hand-crafted look that suits the whole “occult students playing with things they probably shouldn’t touch” situation beautifully.
The illustrated characters and environments sit alongside live-action footage, including a mysterious entity known as the Hand. Steam describes the game as a combination of handcrafted art and real-life video, and the clash between the two gives everything a slightly wrong texture. I mean that affectionately.
There is something inherently unsettling about a game that establishes one visual language and then suddenly introduces an actual human hand into the proceedings.
My brain immediately goes, “That does not belong there.” Which is presumably why it belongs there.
The supernatural horror also comes with jazz influences rather than relying entirely on the usual droning basement noises, Gregorian chanting, and somebody dragging industrial cookware across a concrete floor.
Thank you. Occultism can have rhythm.
The demo has already found some very happy weirdos
There is a free Burn With Me demo available on Steam now, and gamers seem to be getting along with their demons quite nicely.
At the time of writing, 97% of its 111 Steam user reviews are positive, giving the demo a Very Positive rating.
It has also caught the attention of Inscryption creator Daniel Mullins, whose endorsement currently appears directly on the Steam page:
“Enjoyed it a lot!”
Four words. Efficient.
And yes, the Inscryption comparison is going to hover around this thing simply because “strange narrative card game involving occult forces and unconventional deck mechanics” now activates a very specific part of the gaming brain.
Burn With Me has its own interests, though. Position-based collaboration, permanent card destruction, and a chapter structure closely tied to individual characters give it plenty to chew on without needing to borrow somebody else’s creepy woodland cabin.
The actual test will be whether sacrificing cards creates the sort of decisions that make me stare at the screen for thirty seconds while whispering fuck. That is the deckbuilder sweet spot.
October is apparently demon season
The full game will contain six handcrafted chapters, with new mechanics and stories unfolding as different students confront whatever terrible thing they have decided they desperately need. And I am intrigued.
Narrative deckbuilders live or die on the relationship between their systems and their story. I can forgive a card game for making me suffer if that suffering feels deliberate.
Burn With Me seems very interested in making the mechanics part of the emotional problem. Your deck gets stronger. You become attached to it. Then power asks for something in return. Put the card in the fire. Go on. You wanted this, didn’t you?
Awful. Excellent.
Burn With Me launches October 12 on PC via Steam. A free demo is available now, featuring the first of the game’s six chapters.
I’ll bring the matches.
TL;DR
- Burn With Me launches October 12, 2026 on PC via Steam.
- Nozomu Games describes it as a narrative “deck-burner” built around permanently sacrificing your own cards for power.
- You’ll summon creatures, create position-based collabs and decide how much of your carefully assembled deck you’re willing to destroy.
- The supernatural story follows university students who dabble in ancient rites as they grapple with their desires, fears, and obsessions.
- The full game contains six chapters, each introducing different characters, mechanics, cards, and bosses.
- Its hand-drawn artwork is mixed with surreal live-action footage because apparently ordinary demons were insufficiently alarming.
- A free Steam demo is available now and currently has 97% positive reviews from 111 players.
- My lifelong instinct to hoard every useful item until the credits roll is about to become a significant liability.
Stay unruly.
