The world is on the brink of endless night. The bad news: you just lost all your best cards in a shipwreck. Dark Cards of Candlewood opens there, at rock bottom, and builds outward. Collect cards back from scratch, recruit a party of misfits, rebuild the town of Candlewood, and push back the darkness before it swallows everything.
The engine driving all of that is a two-choice card combat system that's easy to pick up and quietly devastating. Every turn, players choose between two cards. Underneath that simplicity, chain attacks, backpack items, momentum, and enchantments turn a binary decision into a puzzle worth mastering. Cards come from packs, singles, drops, drafts, and crafts, earned entirely through play. No microtransactions, because Luno has enough work already to figure THAT out on top of everything.
The demo includes the opening chapter, 150 cards, the first three recruitable party members, and four increasingly difficult adventures. Beat the hardest one and earn a special role in the Discord.
"I got my start trying to build a MUD in Notepad with a copy of 'Sams Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours.' That didn't pan out, so I took a 15-year detour to play music before learning Unity in 2016. Dark Cards of Candlewood is basically everything I've wanted to build since that first terrible attempt." - Luno (aka Chris), Lunoland
Dark Cards of Candlewood's free demo is available now on Steam. For more information, follow Lunoland and publisher **Joystick Ventures** on socials, and join the game's official Discord.
About LunolandLunoland is a one-person microstudio founded by Luno, aka Chris Smith, and based in Chicago. After a background in indie music and digital design, Chris shifted into game development in 2016 and has been building pixel art games ever since. His work blends retro aesthetics with modern systems, with a focus on creative freedom and thoughtful mechanics. Dark Cards of Candlewood is his most ambitious project to date.
About Joystick VenturesJoystick Ventures is a California-based investing and publishing company whose main goal is to encourage indie developers to stay honest and promote experimentation to push the limits of game design across all genres, styles, and geographies. They are most known for titles like StarVaders, Antonblast, Lost in Play, Mandragora, Chicken Police: Into the HIVE!, and upcoming games including Enter The Chronosphere, Trailblazers, WILD Tactics, and Runeomicon.