Heretic's Fork

Heretic's Fork is a devilishly fun deckbuilding roguelite that puts you in charge of managing the overcrowded depths of hell. As Hell's newest manager armed with the titular Heretic's Fork computer system, your job is to keep the sinners in line through strategic tower defense and resource management across procedurally generated levels.

At its core, Heretic's Fork revolves around its card-based deckbuilding. You start each attempt at a level with a small deck of basic tower summon cards, but as you play you'll unlock new cards representing fiendish creatures and torture devices to add to your repertoire. This gives you more options to construct the perfect deck to handle each level's randomized pathing and sinner types.

Punishing With Style

When it comes time to punish the massed sinners in each level, Heretic's Fork delivers a twisted tower defense joy. The pathing patterns force you to think ahead with tower placement while still allowing for emergent chaos when waves approach from multiple angles.Each of your unlocked tower types has strengths and weaknesses, like the zoning power of the Unholy Obelisk or the single target DPS of the Hellfire Cannon.

Finding the right balance of towers to cover all situations is key, especially when facing special sinner types or boss waves. While not quite as deep as dedicated tower defense games, it's still gratifying to look upon your handiwork as your maze of creatively cruel towers demolishes the legions of sinners.

Managing Hell's Resources

On top of towers, you also must make strategic decisions with limited resources. Souls gathered from defeated sinners act as both your currency and mana. Do you spend souls to summon more towers, or save them to hire upgrades from special sin departments that boost your capabilities? This forces you to evaluate priorities in the moment. Do you need more raw strength to build towers, or is now the time to invest in support? This lends each run a fun seat-of-your-pants management feel as you balance short term survival versus long term bonuses.

A Wickedly Good Time

With its mix of strategic defense and ongoing progression, Heretic's Fork scratches a similar itch as Cult of the Lamb while throwing in a distinct dash of its own satanic flavor. The wicked writing and premise gives it an appealingly dark sense of humor that pairs well with the engaging core gameplay loop. While it could use a bit more variety in sinner and level types in the long run, Heretic's Fork still provides hours of ghoulishly good fun for deckbuilding and tower defense fans.

Pros:

• Satisfyingly strategic tower defense
• Addictive progression and card collecting
• Engaging resource management decisions

Cons:

• Could use more variety in late game
• Deckbuilding a bit simple compared to dedicated card games