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Night Of The Beasts is a dark 2D tactical roguelike card battler where you control a pack of monstrous beasts invading human settlements. Its turn-based combat is built around the fantasy of being the monsters, turning familiar RPG mechanics like fear, health, and combat roles into tools for destruction.

This was a Five-Month Student Project during my second year at Tiltan. I worked as the Game Designer and Tech Artist, designing the game's systems, mechanics, narrative and gameplay fantasy, while also handling implementation and VFX.

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Into The Design

01 - Invading

With only five months to build the project, I focused the vertical slice around the systems that best communicated its core fantasy:

- Invading
- Fighting
- Deciding how deep to push before escaping

In my designs, I love to make the player feel responsible for his actions, making each decision reward or punish the player.

I wanted the player to feel like an intruder rather than a hero clearing a dungeon. The run therefore requires the player to Find an exit and Escape, while deeper exploration offers greater rewards at increasing risk.

Alertness represents the village becoming aware of the invasion. Time spent fighting, moving through the village, and allowing humans to escape gradually raises it. Entering houses and successfully clearing it, reduces Alertness, while houses can contain loot or ambushes.

At higher Alertness, encounters become more dangerous. reaching 100% triggers a lockdown and sends stronger ambushes toward the exits.

I reinforced this fantasy through Fear, a condition that all monsters can apply that allows them to disrupt human behavior rather than simply dealing damage.

Feared humans can lose turns, retreat, or eventually flee, making the player feel like the threat destabilizing the village rather than simply defeating its inhabitants.

Combat was built around a small but highly differentiated pack. Each of the three beasts has a distinct role and its own signature cards, while also sharing a pool of general Vicious Cards.

This let us create strong character Identities without requiring an entirely separate content set for every beast.
Shared cards could play differently depending on each beast's stats and role, while signature cards reinforced what made each monster unique.

The result was a small roster where losing a single beast meaningfully changes the player's tactical options, rather than simply reducing their damage output.

02 - Fighting

Rather than using a fixed turn order, I designed Speed as a resource that accumulates between turns. Faster characters act more frequently, while buffs can build momentum across an encounter.

This created another layer of decision-making: investing in Speed can let a beast act again sooner, but also means the player is building momentum that can carry into the next encounter.

The raid needed to become increasingly dangerous without simply making every encounter harder from the start. Early encounters are intentionally manageable, allowing the player to feel powerful while gradually chipping away at the beasts' health.

Because beasts cannot use conventional healing during a run, Devour turns defeated enemies into a resource.
Consuming a corpse restores health and allows the player to sustain the raid.

03 - Going Deeper

I wanted the early game to make the player feel powerful and in control, gradually luring them deeper into the village.
Pushing deeper increases the risk of Alertness and stronger encounters. The systems therefore create a deliberate push-your-luck loop:

Easy encounters → Gradual health loss → Devour only for heals → Increasing Alertness → Greater rewards and greater danger.

The player feels increasingly powerful while the village is quietly becoming harder to escape.
The deeper you go, the more the role of Hunter and Hunted begins to Reverse.

Next Up!

Design through iteration and player feedback