If you’ve played Book of Demons or HELLCARD, you’ll already be familiar with Thing Trunk’s rather distinctive approach to making games.
The Warsaw-based indie developer has spent more than a decade creating games inspired by the PC classics its founders grew up with. Rather than trying to recreate those games, though, the idea has always been to take what made them memorable and build something new around it.
So far, that’s given us a hack-and-slash dungeon crawler and a cooperative roguelike deckbuilder, with an alien invasion still to come.
Here’s the story behind the studio, the people who created it, and the games they’ve made along the way.
The Team Behind Thing Trunk
Thing Trunk was founded in Warsaw, Poland, on August 14, 2012 by Maciej Biedrzycki, Konstanty Kalicki, and Filip Starzyński.
It wasn’t the trio’s first venture into game development. Biedrzycki had previously co-founded Codeminion, while Kalicki and Starzyński were behind Twinbottles. Their previous work included games such as Saqqarah, Magic Match, Brunhilda, and Phantasmat.
According to the studio’s own history, the three had become increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of the casual games market. They eventually left their previous brands behind and started again, this time with a very different type of project in mind.
That project became Return 2 Games.
The concept was to create seven games inspired by seven different PC classics from the 1990s. Each would take the basic appeal of one of those older games and reinterpret it with modern mechanics and its own identity.
They would also exist within the same unusual universe, known as the Paperverse, where the characters and environments are presented as pieces from a pop-up book.
Games From Thing Trunk
Book of Demons was the first game to emerge from the Return 2 Games project, entering Steam Early Access in July 2016 before receiving its full PC and Mac release in December 2018.
The inspiration here isn’t particularly difficult to spot. Book of Demons is a tribute to the original Diablo, complete with a cathedral, procedurally generated dungeons, hordes of monsters, and an Archdemon waiting below.
The similarities don’t make it a Diablo clone, though. Equipment, spells, and abilities are handled using cards, while movement is restricted to predetermined paths through each dungeon. Players can choose between Warrior, Rogue, and Mage classes, each with their own cards and approach to combat.
There’s also a separate Roguelike mode with permadeath, restricted healing, and other changes designed to make runs considerably less forgiving.
One of the game’s more interesting features is Flexiscope. It allows players to choose the approximate length of their dungeon sessions, with the game learning their playstyle and estimating how long different sections will take. It’s a small feature, but a surprisingly useful one if you don’t have an entire evening available for dungeon crawling.
HELLCARD started out as an additional game mode for Book of Demons before growing into a standalone project of its own. It entered Steam Early Access in February 2023 and received its full release on February 1, 2024.
This time, the focus is firmly on roguelike deckbuilding. Up to three players can tackle runs cooperatively, with solo players also able to use computer-controlled companions.
Combat takes place on a circular battlefield divided into different ranges, so positioning becomes an important part of deciding which cards to play. Some attacks work against nearby enemies, others can reach monsters further away, and cards can be used to manipulate enemy positions.
It’s a fairly simple change to the usual deckbuilding formula, but one that gives players another problem to think about beyond what’s currently sitting in their hand.
What’s Next for Thing Trunk?
The next announced Return 2 Games project is Book of Aliens, which was revealed alongside HELLCARD in December 2019. As the name suggests, this one moves away from demons and dungeon crawling.
Aliens have begun emerging from beneath the surface of PapEarth, and players will be placed in charge of an international organization bringing together scientists and military agents to deal with the invasion.
Details are still fairly limited, although the studio has confirmed randomized levels, card-based mechanics, high replayability, and the same papercraft visual style used throughout the Paperverse. There’s currently no confirmed release date for Book of Aliens but it is listed on Steam.
More Books Still to Be Written
Return 2 Games was announced as a much larger project, with seven titles planned around seven different inspirations from the golden age of PC gaming. Book of Aliens is another part of that plan, which potentially leaves plenty more of the Paperverse still to explore.
It’s been a much longer journey than the studio probably anticipated when it was founded back in 2012, but the original idea remains the same…look back at the games that defined an era and find a different way to play with them.
For roguelike fans, that approach has already given us Book of Demons and HELLCARD. Now we’re waiting to see what Book of Aliens adds to the story.