Descent of Yomi Review

A Yokai-Themed Deckbuilder Built Around Reading Your Opponent's Stamina

Descent of Yomi is a roguelike deckbuilding card battler from solo Chinese developer R-each, set in Yomi, the Japanese underworld, and populated by more than 80 yokai drawn from that folklore — hitotsume-kozō, rokurokubi, kasha and gashadokuro among them. Where the game distinguishes itself from the crowded Slay the Spire-alike field is its stamina system: every card played burns the player's own stamina alongside whatever effect it has, so a purely aggressive hand leaves the player's own guard thin, while playing too defensively bleeds away the tempo needed to land a critical hit. Reviewers responding to that loop have been enthusiastic about the presentation as much as the mechanics — "the graphics are on par with a AAA game and the heavy metal Shamisen music gets ya hyped when your in combat," wrote one, while another simply called it "Amazing artwork. And I love the Japanese mythology theme. Beautiful game."

Seven Origins, 200+ Cards, and a Map That Never Repeats

The run structure follows familiar roguelike-deckbuilder shape — a branching map with shrines, merchants and a forge between fights — but layers on seven distinct Origins as starting classes, each said to carry its own playstyle, plus a pool of over 180 cards and 170 relics whose combinations the developer promises will rarely repeat between runs. A reviewer with 320 minutes logged backed that breadth up from experience: "the cards combo fairly well, the classes are distinct in how they play, and the battle flow is challenging & enjoyable." Another compared it favourably to established genre leaders, calling it "a hidden gem for a 'souls-like' deckbuilding game… you can tell a lot of thought went into the gameplay," in the same breath as Slay the Spire and Ascension.

Sakatoki: One Chance to Undo Your Death

A run-defining mechanic sits alongside the stamina/parry combat: Sakatoki, a one-time ability per run that turns back time to the moment just before death, giving the player a single chance to recover from an otherwise run-ending mistake rather than restarting from the top floor. Past the game's final boss lies the Endless Descent, an infinitely scaling post-game mode for players who clear the main path and want a harder, open-ended test of their deck. Combined with the seven Origins and the promise that branching paths and card pools rarely repeat, the structure is clearly built with long-term replay in mind rather than a single, short campaign. Woven into that structure are Magatsu sites holding forbidden curse cards — options strong enough to swing a losing fight, but which the game frames as a one-way transaction, since playing one means the player character "can never be fully human again." Stacking curses to survive a run rather than staying untainted is a meaningful branch in how each run ends, layering a risk-versus-purity decision on top of the stamina-management combat rather than leaving the yokai-transformation theme as pure flavour text.

Player Feedback: Strong First Impressions, With a Few Rough Edges

Every review currently on file for Descent of Yomi is positive, but several point to the same rough edges around new-player clarity and small bugs rather than treating the game as finished and polished. One reviewer flagged a genuine information gap: "when you look at the names of card you see what the cards do. Not knowing what cards do in the beginning hurts endgame when you have no clue what cards are until you have played quite a few games" — a real UX problem for a genre where informed deck-building decisions are the whole point. The same reviewer also reported a specific bug, noting "the reduce max stamina cards seem to not work as intended." A second reviewer raised a smaller but similar interface complaint: "no obvious way to quit the game through a menu option of some sort… pressing Esc worked fine — but having some sort of visual indicator may help." None of these complaints derailed anyone's overall recommendation, but they're consistent enough across independent reviewers to flag as launch-week rough edges rather than isolated reports. What none of the four reviews on file complain about is the underlying combat feel or the yokai roster itself — every specific criticism is about presentation and information clarity around systems the reviewers otherwise wanted to keep playing, which is a meaningfully different situation to a game whose core loop isn't landing.

A Cheap Price for a Deep Roguelike

At NZ$7.89 with no discount active and no additional monetisation of any kind, Descent of Yomi sits well below the price most competing deckbuilder roguelikes charge for a comparable amount of content — 80-plus enemy types, 200-plus cards and relics, seven starting classes and a full endless-mode tail end to the campaign. Nothing in the review sample raises any concern about paywalls, incomplete content gated behind purchases, or predatory design; the multiplayer PvP category listed on the store page is a bonus mode on top of the single-player roguelike core, not a monetisation hook.

Verdict

Descent of Yomi pairs a genuinely distinctive stamina-and-parry combat system with a well-stocked deckbuilding roguelike structure, wrapped in yokai folklore that reviewers consistently praise for its art and music. The Sakatoki death-reversal mechanic and post-campaign Endless Descent both suggest a game built for repeat runs rather than a single playthrough, and at under eight dollars it undercuts much of its genre on price. The card-clarity complaints and at least one reported stamina-card bug are worth going in aware of, but with every review on file positive and specific in its praise, this is a strong early showing for a solo-developer deckbuilder that's still fresh off its July release.