critically-acclaimed Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical. Gaider serves as head writer on Malys, bringing his signature lore-crafting abilities to a new supernatural world. The title is designed to be much more approachable than the average deckbuilder, serving seasoned veterans just as much as newcomers.

You play as a former priest turned demon hunter named Noah, with a deck of ancient holy powers and exorcism equipment like holy water. Instead of energy, players must utilize candles lit by burning other cards, adding another layer of strategy where they must weigh the costs of sacrificing some items to use others. Successful exorcisms grant faith, which in turn can be used to upgrade Noah’s deck. Though it utilizes a runs-based system, Malys employs the narrative style of games like Hades, where an overarching plot still progresses and characters will Noah on each journey.

ScreenRant interviewed creative director David Gaider and marketing coordinator Katy Nethercote, a previously self-proclaimed roguelite deckbuilder hater, to discuss how Malys made the genre appealing, what each run will look like, and how the game compares to Dragon Age.

Making Malys An Accessible Deckbuilder

“If You Can Play Dragon Age, You Can Play A Deckbuilder”

For those unfamiliar with the genre, a roguelite deckbuilder can seem convoluted, complicated, or even boring, but Gaider thinks much of that comes down to preconceived notions. “It's funny,” he says, “because I'll get comments where someone who’s a Dragon Age fan says, ‘Well, I don't know deckbuilders. It seems like it's really complicated, and I'm more of a story person.’ Dragon Age is a party-based RPG where you're controlling multiple characters, each with different classes and abilities you're keeping track of. If you can play Dragon Age, you can play a deckbuilder - it's not that complicated.”

A large part of Nethercote’s role in the team has been helping bridge the gap between novices and experts, which she began by diving into a myriad of communities online for games like Slay the Spire. “We really identified two different spaces,” Nethercote says, “one, this really hardcore audience who really love that challenge, and then an audience that's a bit more of an indie enjoyer. Something I flagged a lot was that they really love a frictionless experience, the ability to keep playing and to not feel like they're losing and experiencing that pain point.”

Writing it all in prose rather than just dialogue was new for me - I've never done that in a game before, so it has been very interesting. - David Gaider

Many elements of Malys will look familiar to deckbuilder veterans, with Gaider citing inspirations like Griftlands, Slay the Spire, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns. However, this idea of converting indie, narrative fans into a new genre that can seem intimidatingly complex has become a core part of the project - the team even recently posted a guide to roguelite deckbuilders on the Malys Kickstarter page designed to entice newcomers. Nethercote, whose work on Malys spurred her conversion to the genre, became a blueprint for this in many ways.

Since she began her work, Nethercote has experienced a “process of realizing I was wrong, that what I had assumed about the genre wasn't right.” She describes one particularly impactful conversation she had with the game’s engineering director Troy Ferguson: “he reframed it for me - that I wasn’t losing progress, I was gaining knowledge, and that concept really clicked. I was like, ‘Okay, I'm learning something if I'm picking something up every run, whether that's story information, some form of meta-progression, or just deeper understanding of how the systems are working - that's enough to keep going.’”

Malys’ Story Marks Many Firsts For Gaider

“I’ve Never Done That In A Game Before”

Though he’s a seasoned lore crafter, the storytelling style of Malys is quite different from what Gaider is used to. “I don't know why I keep setting these challenges for myself - maybe I should just do easier things,” he jokes. “It's not an RPG, it is a story that is told to you through blocks of prose that change and develop as you continue the runs as it reacts to the current conditions. Writing it all in prose rather than just dialogue was new for me - I've never done that in a game before, so it has been very interesting.”

The inspirations behind Malys’ story range from the Keanu Reeves exorcism film Constantine to old westerns, especially “the idea of the lone cowboy, hat down, riding into town on the hunt for his nemesis.” Gaider stayed away from a lot of typical folklore when crafting the story, though, stating that, “I've tried to avoid the idea of demons as being just humanoid things with wings and horns, to go for more of demons that prey on your psyche, and each of them represents certain human weaknesses and things like that.”

The story's bones aren’t entirely different from Gaider’s previous works, namely “the idea of the demons that are assigned to sins,” which he hearkens back to Dragon Age. However, he wanted to be sure to set it apart, both from the aforementioned series and Stray Gods. “We had a question at the start: do we want this to be more traditional Stray Gods visual novel style? Stray Gods was great, but didn't have a lot in of gameplay, and we definitely wanted to do something more gameplay-driven,” and for Gaider, a deckbuilder was the obvious fit.

Making sure players understand the narrative of a roguelike deckbuilder - which both emphasize as a key part of Malys - comes with many hurdles. “There’s the story you're being told which is in prose, what we call the storylets that you encounter as you go through your run,” Gaider explains, “but then there's also the story of exorcisms, sort of an emergent experience. The playing of the cards builds in your head an idea of the story of this particular exorcism. The challenge there was those two meeting - how do I tell an arc across these short chunks of story?”

Making Malys The Vibe Check

“Malys Is A Style That I Haven’t Seen”

Another thing Nethercote noticed in her deep dive into the world of roguelite deckbuilders is that players “really invest a lot of value in the vibes that a particular game brings,” Gaider says, which made refining exactly what those vibes were particularly important. “Malys is a style that I haven't seen,” he continues. “Normally, horror games are very horror and very serious; we were leaning towards the noir, cool vibes, with some horror as well. There's tension, but without jumpscares - it's not like we're trying to gross you out around every corner.”

Alongside its ambiance, the team focused on crafting gameplay all player types would want to return to. Nethercote’s exploration of the crossover audiences between narrative and deckbuilder games led them to a decision early on, Gaider explains: “There's hardcore deckbuilder games which are designed to be super challenging, and you have to get good. The goal is just if you're able to get to the finish line, whereas here there's a story I want players to experience. From the outset, we thought: this is something that we want to be a little bit more forgiving without having no challenge.”

One of the biggest ways to ensure this was meta-progression via mechanics like an ever-evolving artifact, which Gaider describes as an object chosen at the beginning of each run that “aligns itself with a type of play” and gives an associated starting deck. “One will be more like, ‘I’m an offensive player, I want heavy attack,’ or ‘I'm more careful and defensive.’” Players aren’t locked into one style, though: “They could pick a different artifact every time. They might experiment and see which works for them, or maybe they want to develop all the artifacts and see how it goes.”

In a broader sense, Malys also adds meta-progression in the form of things like unlocks and narrative. Gaider says this ensures that “even if you get pretty far in this run, but you still end up falling before you get to the finish line, you don't feel like you've lost everything and you start all over. This is a story that does have a finite ending built into it that you're reaching towards, so if getting to the end is your goal, we won’t make it easy for you, but not terminally difficult.”

Malys' Kickstarter can be found here.