Death Howl Review: The Most Depressing Game of Chess You'll Ever Play

Review
Written By NLM Team

Most games treat death as a fail state, but Death Howl treats it like an annoying landlord that keeps raising the rent.

A moody pixel art screenshot from Death Howl showing the protagonist, a cloaked figure with antlers, standing on a rocky outcrop overlooking a blood-red lake under a dark, foreboding sky, with the text "I've seen this lake before..." visible.

I have played a lot of deckbuilders, and I have played a lot of Soulslikes, but I have never played something that made me feel quite this desolate while doing math. Death Howl drops you into the fur-lined boots of Ro, a hunter from 6000 BCE Scandinavia who is so overcome with grief over her dead son, Olvi, that she literally rips a hole into the Spirit World to drag him back. It is a game about loss, guilt, and the specific, white-hot rage of running out of action points exactly one tile away from safety.

The Sound of Silence

The first thing that grabs you isn't the combat, but the absolute dread of the atmosphere. Unlike the bombastic orchestras of other fantasy epics, Death Howl relies on a haunting, ritualistic soundscape of drums, wailing horns, and the eerie quiet of a frozen world. The pixel art isn't just "retro" for the sake of it, it is glitchy and distorted, with environments that seem to breathe in real-time to reflect Ro’s deteriorating mental state. It looks like a folk tale carved into a tree that is slowly rotting from the inside out.

The story is delivered with a refreshing lack of exposition dumps, relying instead on environmental storytelling that feels ancient and worn. You meet strange spirits, solve riddles, and piece together the tragedy of Ro’s loss through quests that are as confusing as they are compelling. It is heavy stuff - Ro’s voice acting is mostly comprised of wails of pain - but it manages to be emotionally resonant rather than just miserable.

Chess with Ghosts

If you think you can just build a generic "strength" deck and steamroll this game, the combat system is going to laugh in your face. Battles take place on a grid, and positioning is just as important as the cards in your hand. You have five action points (or mana) per turn to split between moving and playing cards.

This turns every encounter into a high-stakes puzzle where you aren't just calculating damage. You are calculating if you have enough stamina to stab a "Skulldog" and then sprint four tiles away so it doesn't maul you on the enemy turn. It feels less like Slay the Spire and more like a turn-based Dark Souls where a single misstep means you get swarmed.

A grid-based battle from the pixel art deckbuilder Death Howl, featuring the player character portrait, five enemies on a purple, rocky path, and a row of ability cards at the bottom of the screen.

The Card System Is Mean (And I Love It)

Here is where the game gets genuinely interesting. There are over 160 cards to craft using "Death Howls" (souls dropped by enemies) and materials, but you can't just use them whenever you want. The world is split into four distinct realms, and cards are tied to specific regions. If you try to use a "Swamp" card in the "Snow" realm, it costs an extra mana to play.

In a game where you only have five mana, that penalty is crippling. It forces you to constantly tear down and rebuild your deck for the local environment, adapting to new mechanics like blocking in the north or self-damage in the swamp. One minute you are dealing with a bird card that revives enemies if left in your hand, and the next you are equipping Totems to gain passive buffs like extra movement. It is frustrating at first, but once it clicks, it forces a level of strategic variety that most deckbuilders lack.

The Difficulty Spike

I need to be real with you because the first hour of this game is a nightmare. There is no tutorial to speak of, and the game happily lets you flail around, dying repeatedly while you figure out the UI. It relies heavily on trial-and-error, and because this is a Soulslike, resting at a checkpoint (Sacred Grove) to heal respawns every enemy you just killed.

You will die, you will drop your Death Howls, and you will have to do the walk of shame to pick them up before they vanish forever. It is a punishing loop that might alienate players looking for a cozy card game, but for the masochists among us, it is strangely addictive.

A pixel art screenshot from the deckbuilding roguelike Death Howl, showing the card selection and deck management UI, including cards like "Poison Dart" and "Cursed Knife," in the "Realm of Gloomy Waters."

The Verdict

Death Howl is not a game for everyone. It is hostile, obscure, and demands you learn its rules the hard way. But if you can push past the initial friction, you will find a deeply rewarding strategy game wrapped in one of the most atmospheric worlds I have seen this year. It is a 30-hour journey through hell that I am glad I took, even if I died about a hundred times along the way.

Score: 8.5/10 - Like playing chess with the Grim Reaper, and he’s winning.

We at NLM received a key for this game for free, this however didn't impact our review in any way.

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