Growing up, I always thought that I’d make a good medieval doctor; I’m not squeamish around blood, and I’m pretty handy with a butcher’s knife. It was just an inkling, though. But after playing only an hour of Bloodletter, I now know that this is what I was put on this earth to do.
Stranded in a strange town that’s stuck with some strange, evil, eldritch god that’s possessing the townsfolk, you have to heal the sick and try to ward off the evil all at your medieval bathhouse.
Each day, some of the weird locals come knocking. They have a purity meter, a health meter, a sickness indicator, and a trust indicator. You then use the cards in your deck to try to get their health and purity meter up to 100, cure them of sickness, and make them trust you (so you can use more cards on them). All so they don’t die.
If you get their health meter up to 100, you get a special card which’ll grant huge bonuses and the more purity you dose your patients with, the closer you’ll get to filling up the purity hourglass, which will help you cleanse entities until they’re gone for good.
After you see all your patients, night falls, and the eldritch monster comes out, striking down townsfolk with sickness, distrust, and depleting their health and purity. It can even kill villagers, which will curse you with a negative card in your deck and prevent you from getting any bonuses from them.
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This is also when you can pick a bonus from the villagers who trust you, like increasing your hand size or having a 50% chance of healing the sick. After which, you can also pick one random card to add to your deck. Then you take on the next day, and keep going until you’ve purged the evil entity for good.
My first run against the tutorial enemy was nothing to write home about; it was the tutorial after all. But my second run against The Corrupting One was where it all kicked off. Being the good and trustworthy doctor that I am, I refused to let anyone die at first, which may sound like the right idea, but in truth, it made my job far harder than it needed to be. In my effort, I ended up in a 13-day stalemate with the demonic being, as I was barely keeping villagers alive and unable to purify the entity. So I quickly changed tactics.
Yes, you get lodged with a bad card if someone dies and can’t use their mid-game bonuses, but as long as you kill off a useless one, you have nothing to worry about. The Bonecarver, Butcher, and Glazier are all good villagers to keep around, as they can duplicate cards, upgrade a card and draw a card, and increase the amount of cards you can select from after each round to add to your deck. Whereas I’ve found the Miller and Seamstress to be less useful, so to the fiery pits of hell they went (I told you I’d make a good medieval doctor).
With a few fewer locals to worry about, I could really focus all my efforts on the living, which meant I could heal them and purify The Corrupting One in just a couple of extra days. I am a surgeon.
But the best part of Bloodletter isn’t just a vindication of a childhood dream; it’s that the runs are just a hell of a lot of fun. There’s plenty of variation in the cards, which allows you to change, update, and buff them to your liking, alongside changing modifiers and bonuses like the travelling alchemist, which can visit you if you play on a harder difficulty, but there’s still enough familiarity that you can learn combinations and strategies to help you in later rounds.
The harder it gets, the more rewarding winning feels. And the more you play, the faster you get, meaning you can blast through rounds while still making informed and efficient choices. It’s a very intuitive game.
On top of all of that, the concept is cool as hell, and the art style makes me want to plaster my room with screenshots of the game. All of which comes together to make a really fun and pleasant deckbuilding experience, which is why this is now my go-to deckbuilder.
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