You’ve spent the last few rounds collecting cards, working out which creatures belong next to each other, and putting together a deck that might actually get you through the next encounter. Now it’s time to throw some of those cards into the fire.
Burn With Me launches today on Steam, bringing an occult deckbuilder from Nozomu Games and publisher Inner Pocket where university students learn forbidden rituals, summon strange creatures, and sacrifice parts of their decks to get closer to their own Personal Demons.
There are almost 100 cards to discover, six chapters following different characters, and a story about what happens when curiosity turns into obsession.
Sometimes You Have to Burn a Good Card
Building a deck in Burn With Me involves more than collecting the strongest creatures you can find. Where you place them matters too. Cards can interact with their neighbors, creating position-based synergies that reward you for arranging creatures in the right order. Moving something into a different position can change how the cards work together, so finding a useful combination is only part of the puzzle.
You’ll also need to think about what you’re willing to lose. Burning cards permanently is one of the game’s central mechanics, forcing you to sacrifice parts of your collection as you work towards summoning a Personal Demon. That means a card you’ve spent time building around might eventually have to go into the fire, even if it’s been helping you through the previous encounters.
It’s a fairly serious decision when your deck is the thing keeping you alive.
There are different creatures to collect, combinations to experiment with, and the game encourages you to find a purpose for the cards you may otherwise overlook. A creature that doesn’t seem useful on its own could become much more valuable when placed beside the right neighbour.
Your Classmates Have Their Own Problems
The story follows a group of university students studying occult arts under the guidance of a Teacher who seems to know rather a lot about summoning demons.
Across six chapters, you’ll follow different characters as they deal with their personal fears, desires, and obsessions. Each chapter changes the gameplay to reflect the student at its centre, so you’re not simply repeating the same deckbuilding challenge with another character’s name attached.
The wider mystery gradually unfolds as the students learn more about the rituals they’re performing and what their attempts to summon Personal Demons might mean.
Visually, Burn With Me has a style of its own. Hand-drawn artwork is mixed with real-life video footage, giving the characters and their surroundings an unusual appearance that fits the game’s strange little university. There’s something quite welcoming about the presentation, even when the conversation has turned to forbidden rituals and sacrificing pieces of your soul.
There’s More to Discover After the First Ending
The full game includes two endings, giving you another reason to return to the university once you’ve finished your first journey. There’s also a sizeable collection of alternative card artwork to unlock.
More than 30 guest artists have contributed new illustrations for the game’s cards, with the artwork unlocked by using those cards during successful chapter completions. Once discovered, the illustrations can be viewed in the Bestiary and selected as the default appearance for individual cards.
That gives you a reason to experiment with creatures you may have ignored on an earlier attempt. If you want to see every illustration, you’ll need to give plenty of different cards a chance.
Burn With Me originally began as a small Ludum Dare game jam project created in three days back in 2024. Nozomu Games returned to the idea for full development in early 2025, gradually turning it into a narrative deckbuilder that passed 20,000 Steam wishlists ahead of release.
The developer has also confirmed that the game is complete, with both endings implemented ahead of today’s launch. Burn With Me is out today on Steam, with a free demo still available for anyone who wants to meet the students and try a few rituals before committing to the full game.