For one reason or another Burn With Me (the rather stylish occult card game from Nozomu Games, published by Inner Pocket) has managed to slip under my radar more than once. It’s actually out already on PC, so it’s time to get around to it and learn more. The game is a narrative deckbuilder which blends creature combinations, occult rituals, and a university experience with a fair bit of questionable extracurricular.
The students are learning the occult under their Teacher’s tutelage. The classic route to summoning personal demons is via ancient ritual. The nature of the demon you summon is going to be a reflection of your own desires, your own fears and your own obsessions. There’s a bigger mystery that runs through all of their stories, but each of the individual characters has their own set of problems that they bring to the ritual.
During play, you lay your creature cards around the pentagram, using their effects to get to the points target required for a successful ritual. The way you place them and the order in which you play them is going to have a bearing on how they interact with each other, and there are a number of effects which make the arrangement of your hand relevant.
Then comes the fire. It permanently burns cards out of your deck, making sacrifice a very real part of resource management. The devs call it a ‘deck burner,’ and the practical issue is simple, really: if you go too far, you can find yourself with absolutely nothing to play. Forbidden knowledge appears to require a little bit of inventory management too.
Across 6 chapters, Burn With Me introduces different stories, different cards, different mechanics, and different bosses. The mechanical changes are all there to reflect the students themselves and the way they’re going through life. The full game has just under 100 cards and a number of secret alternative art pieces from guest artists.
It’s a mixture of hand-drawn art and live action footage (complete with the rather unnerving Hand that appears during play). I think the visual style is distinctive, giving the occult setting a particular texture, with illustrated characters and creatures alongside something tangible. Nozomu describes the intended feel as ‘cozy dread’ which is a very apt way of introducing a world that has a very welcoming appearance but with a few disturbing little details.
The Oct 31 update also included secret memories for completing Hard Mode (further insight into the characters’ lives and more hints as to what the ending will be). Other features are the ability to rewatch cutscenes, skip the cutscenes from chapters you’ve already completed and access a new set of gameplay tips.
Burn With Me launched 12th October 2026 and is available on Steam at $14.99. A free demo of the first chapter is available for anyone who wants to give a few rituals a go before they commit. Below, I share the release trailer and look forward to your thoughts.
