How to Play
Roll, score, survive, summon
Roll, score, survive, summon
A king, a warlock, a man who reached too far.
The archangel Michael pressed a ring into your palm and told you it could bind the 72 demons of the Ars Goetia - the 72 named spirits of the old grimoires. Kings, princes, earls, marquises, dukes, presidents and knights of Hell. He said use it wisely. He said "do not grow proud."
You did not listen.
Every run is another descent into the pit. You roll bone dice to summon souls. Souls pay your way through trials - gauntlets of mounting difficulty set by the spirits themselves. Each demon you bind grants a passive and an active, and when you survive long enough to draw the attention of Heaven, an angel descends to remind you whose ring you're wearing.
Solomon is ambitious. The angels are patient. The demons are laughing.
Seven steps. Forever on repeat until you die or Heaven catches up.
You begin with 5 dice, 3 rolls per round, 3 score slots per trial, and 3 demon slots. Trial 1 needs 30 souls. Every trial after that needs 1.5x the previous target.
Click Roll. You get 3 rolls per round. Between rolls, click a die to hold it - held dice keep their value while the rest reroll.
Pick a category on the scorecard. Your dice are scored, demons contribute, and the total becomes souls. Each category can only be used once.
Fill all your score slots. If your total souls clear the target - you pass. Fall short and the run ends. No second chances.
Passing a trial earns sigils. Spend them to summon demons, open Infernal Packs (run upgrades), or open Covenant Packs (demon upgrades).
Equip up to 3 demons (expandable to 7). Each has a passive (always on) and an active (costs AP). Level them up, feed them talent points, choose their fate.
Repeat. Survive longer. Scale harder. Climb the leaderboard. Try not to cry when an angel descends and steals your rerolls.
Your scorecard works like Yahtzee. These are every category.
Score the sum of all dice showing that number.
| Category | How to Score | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Ones | Sum of all 1s | 1, 1, 3, 4, 5 = 2 |
| Twos | Sum of all 2s | 2, 2, 2, 4, 6 = 6 |
| Threes | Sum of all 3s | 3, 3, 3, 1, 5 = 9 |
| Fours | Sum of all 4s | 4, 4, 1, 2, 3 = 8 |
| Fives | Sum of all 5s | 5, 5, 5, 5, 1 = 20 |
| Sixes | Sum of all 6s | 6, 6, 1, 2, 3 = 12 |
Your upper bonus threshold is half the trial target. Clear it across your upper scores and you multiply your upper sum by 5. This scales as trials get harder.
Match dice patterns to score.
| Category | What You Need | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Three of a Kind | 3+ matching dice | Sum of all dice |
| Four of a Kind | 4+ matching dice | Sum of all dice |
| Full House | 3 of one + 2 of another | 25 |
| Small Straight | 4 in a row (e.g. 1-2-3-4) | 30 |
| Large Straight | 5 in a row (e.g. 2-3-4-5-6) | 40 |
| Occulto | All 5 dice match | 50 (reduces -10 per extra die in pool) |
| Chance | Any combination | Sum of all dice |
Sometimes the dice are kind. Rarely.
Every score has a baseline 2% chance to crit. On a crit, your final score is doubled (x2). A bell rings. Lightning flashes. The screen shakes. It feels deserved even though you did nothing to earn it.
You can boost crit chance and crit damage through Infernal Pack upgrades. The demon Haures is built entirely around crits - his passive permanently adds souls to every future crit, and his active guarantees one on demand.
Sigils are the currency. Packs are where the compounding happens.
Sigils are earned by completing trials (base 10 per trial, plus bonuses from upgrades). Spend them at the shop between trials.
The shop offers 2 random demons per visit. Costs scale with rank: Lesser 10 sigils, Greater 20, King 30. Kings appear ~0.5% of the time, Greaters ~4.5%. Boost the odds with Luck. You can sell equipped demons for 30% of their cost.
Cost 5 sigils base, rising by 1.2x per purchase until it caps at 30, then +5 flat per purchase after that. Each pack gives you 3 cards - pick one. Options include bonus dice, crit chance, score slots, luck, sigil windfalls, and more.
Same price curve. Each pack targets one of your equipped demons. Boost their passive, hand them AP, grant them XP, or raise their max AP cap.
Your dice can become far more than 1 through 6.
Normal
Standard pip faces 1 through 6
Blank
Scores 0 but fuels Shax's passive
xMult
Multiplies the running total (x1.5 to x4)
AddMult
Adds a flat bonus to mult on score
Wounded
Inert face - doesn't score, doesn't count as blank (Sabnock)
AP
Score it to earn +1 AP (Naberius)
Unusable
Voided for the trial - Seere's trap
Marks are applied by specific demons. A die can only carry one mark at a time.
Bloodmark
Andras - hold through rolls for +1 permanent mult (1-in-5 chance)
Gold Dust
Cimejes - 10% per gold die to earn 5 sigils when scoring
Permanent identities that replace Standard.
Standard
A normal six-sided die. What you start with.
Petrified
Rolls once per hand. Grants +30 souls every score. Untargetable. Crocell's gift.
Undead
All six faces become x2 mult. Rots over 5 hands and melts away. Murmur's gift.
For the full list of transient states (Banished, Wild, Locked, Ablaze...) see the Compendium.
The 72 demons of the Ars Goetia are the real game.
You hold up to 3 demons at the start of a run (up to 7 via upgrades). They come in three ranks: Kings (14 in the roster, game-warping), Greaters (21, scaling synergy), Lessers (37, early-game backbone).
Each demon has two abilities. The passive is always on and affects scoring. The active costs Ability Points (AP) - a resource each demon has its own pool of. Click the portrait to fire it. Most demons start with 0 or 2 AP and earn more by scoring. Cap at 5 for most, varies by demon.
Demons start at level 1 and cap at 25. Level multiplies passive and active base values directly. Feed them with Covenant Packs or Furcas's Gift Level active.
Reworked demons unlock a full 3-branch talent tree. You earn 1 talent point per level (24 total). Each branch has 17 rankable points, and the capstone at tier 12 is the peak ability. Every branch is a different fantasy - offensive, defensive, utility - and you cannot max all three. Choose your obsession.
Non-reworked demons still use the old binary talent choices at levels 3 and 5. They'll get the full treatment in future updates.
Reach far enough and an angel comes for you.
At key points in a run, an angel descends and the trial becomes a 1-vs-1 showdown. You share a scorecard. Each round, the angel scores first, then you score. Whoever scored higher deals 1 damage. Ties deal nothing. Both sides start with 4 HP. Reduce theirs to 0 first or you die.
Your demon passives still apply during boss fights. Their actives do too, mostly - some are blocked by design. If only one category remains and the score is tied, a Showdown triggers and the winner deals 2 damage instead of 1.
Passive: Sariel scores 20% higher on upper section categories. She prefers Sixes.
Signature: After she fills 2 upper categories, she claims one of your rerolls. Don't get complacent with dumping low rolls into her favoured numbers.
Sariel is the first angel you will meet. She will not be the last. More angels are being prepared - each tier higher than the last, each punishing a different pillar of your build. Michael is coming eventually. He's the one who gave you the ring. He will want it back.
A few hard-earned insights.
Hold dice between rolls to build toward a scoring category. Every held die is a step closer to the combo you need. Greed costs rolls. Rolls are finite.
Scoring 0 still uses a slot. A whiffed slot in Trial 1 can doom a run before it begins. Unless you're running Phenex, in which case whiffs feed her passive and you should whiff with joy.
Passives multiply rolls. Actives manipulate dice. The best runs stack passive synergy AND have an active or two that transforms your pool. One-trick builds scale hard but stall against Sariel.
The upper bonus threshold scales with trial difficulty (50% of the target). It's worth chasing. The bonus multiplies your upper sum by 5 - often the single biggest score swing in a trial.
Actives cost AP. AP regenerates by scoring. A demon on 0 AP is dead weight. Consider Gaap (xMult from total AP) and Naberius (AP-face marks) as force multipliers for any active-heavy build.
The shop and packs are the compounding engine. Sigils you didn't spend are sigils wasted. Especially the early Infernal packs - bonus dice and score slots compound for the rest of the run.