Daniel (@dungeondive) descends into Valpiedra, a compact card-based dungeon crawl from PIF Games that wears its influences openly: Diablo’s cursed cathedral depths crossed with Darkest Dungeon’s punishing atmosphere. The pitch alone merits attention.
The structure is elegantly brutal. Four heroes descend through four dungeon levels, seize a cursed relic, then must escape back to the surface—ascending through whatever horrors remain. An optional unholy relic awaits those who find the standard difficulty insufficiently murderous. Daniel has yet to win. He’s died on the first level. Multiple times. The dice, it seems, are merciless arbiters.
Combat runs on d6 pools: ones, twos, and threes deal damage. Early game survival depends heavily on fortune’s favour, as gear and abilities that mitigate bad luck only accumulate after defeating enemies. Those enemies, when slain, present a genuine resource management dilemma—spend their XP on healing and upgrades, or equip their gear for combat bonuses? Both feel essential. Neither feels sufficient.
The art by Ignacio Garcia Gonzalez earns particular praise, lending the small box genuine visual presence. Four distinct heroes offer varied playstyles across different player counts (true solo uses two heroes; up to four can play cooperatively).
Daniel’s chief criticism: the encounter decks contain only enemies. He yearns for occasional respite—a healing fountain, a captive NPC to rescue, something beyond relentless combat. Even a single non-hostile card per level would transform the reveal from “which monster” to “what awaits?”
Setup proves mercifully quick, which softens the sting of frequent deaths. Expansions exist, though English availability and international distribution remain unclear.
Do you prefer dungeon crawls that offer occasional mercy, or does unrelenting hostility sharpen the satisfaction of survival?
Perhaps that sense of unrelenting hostility makes Valpiedra more solo puzzler than a narrative soaked adventure ;). Not that I don’t love this sort of game. Tried to get hold of it just now but alas shipping to the southern hemisphere is 3x the box value… (likely an arcane misconfiguration of the merchant making it impossible to ship downunder).
Despite a lot of angst online about the game’s inclusion of AI art, I think the production looks pretty good. Many characters and monsters may be AI generated but I suspect the art direction and graphic design have seen ladles of human love and affection.
I am so on the fence with AI art. On the one hand, some people can’t draw, dont know anyone who can at a professional level and can’t afford to hire anyone to make art for their game. On the other hand…. where is that source of the artwork coming from??
Even buying art packs online is outrageous!!
So I get both sides of the AI argument.
That said… that game looks great!!! and I wanna play it hahaha
I like the look of the graphic design but not the illustrations. Ethics of AI aside, they look a bit flat and samey to me. Maybe I’d feel differently about obviously computer generated images if the game had a sci-fi theme . Having said that, if it was PNP I’d probably pick it up. The descent/ascent idea is neat, feels a bit of an improvement over kinfire delve where the action just finishes at the bottom of a well!
The artist said they used hand drawn art, photo manipulation, and software to create the images. That sounds like art to me. Everyone who commented on the video about it being all generative AI art completely misread what the designer and artist said. So once it again, it was a total AI art witch hunt.
" Regarding AI, it’s important not to confuse a work purely generated by artificial intelligence with a creative process guided by artistic intention. The designer, Ignacio García, is the person who composed all the visuals. He worked both manually and digitally, using mixed techniques. This means these aren’t random AI outputs but carefully reviewed, formatted, and edited pieces created through drawing, software, collages, and image compositions. "
. Having said that, if it was PNP I’d probably pick it up. The descent/ascent idea is neat, feels a bit of an improvement over kinfire delve where the action just finishes at the bottom of a well!