Nothing gets me going more than a good old genre mashup, but sometimes a developer dreams up a combination of genres that at first glance just don’t seem to make sense together. Such is the case with Heck Deck, an upcoming title from developer Torcado and publisher PID Games. This is a bullet hell card game. What? Well, actually it does make sense, as Heck Deck began life as a game jam project where the theme was to combine two incompatible genres. I would say card games and bullet hell seem pretty incompatible on the surface. However, what Torcado has managed to do with Heck Deck is actually quite interesting. The bullets themselves are cards, and the gameplay is sort of turn-based as time only advances while you’re moving. You’ll play cards into the shooter field from your hand during the breaks in action, giving you time to stop and think about what you want to do strategically. “Time to stop and think" isn’t typically a big feature in most bullet hell games, which is what I think is so clever about Heck Deck.

Other than that core gameplay we know that Heck Deck will have 5 different stages each with their own unique themes and special attributes, there will be dozens of cards to collect and use in the game giving players an assortment of attacks and spells to use, and that you’ll also be able to sell back cards to a shop in order to restore health which adds another neat layer of strategy. It all sounds like the kind of quirky idea that will work great on mobile, and Heck Deck is planned for release on both iOS and Android hopefully before the end of the year. It’s also coming to PC and currently as part of the Steam Next Fest you can play a demo of Heck Deck on your Windows machine right now until October 7th. Once a more formal release date is announced for Heck Deck we’ll let you know.