A Curse So Dark And Lonely: Getting Past the Early Grind Without Losing Your Mind
I've put about forty hours into this thing. Most of them were spent staring at a save screen, wondering why my third relic run kept ending in the same dead end. The game is straightforward on paper but has some genuinely frustrating quirks that aren't obvious until you've bled enough runs to notice the pattern. It's a roguelike deckbuilder from Lizardcube. You pick a character, pick an opening relic, fight enemies by playing cards from your hand, and try to reach the bottom of three acts without dying. Each run is procedurally generated. You can save and reload. That last part matters more than the game lets on. The core loop is simple. Every floor you fight enemies, collect gold, pick cards or relics, and rest when you can. Between acts, you choose a new character and restart from scratch with different builds. There are five playable characters, each with a distinct card pool and relic synergy. The game also features a passive progression system where collecting certain items unlocks new content and modifiers.
How the Save System Actually Works
This is the thing most guides skip. A Curse So Dark And Lonely lets you save anywhere, anytime, and reload those saves freely. This isn't a traditional roguelike where permadeath locks you into consequences. You can try a risky card pick, lose the fight, reload, and take the other option. I used to beat myself up over bad decisions early in a run, then realized the save system basically turns every risky choice into a learning opportunity. Load, experiment, learn what works, restart clean with that knowledge. It changes how aggressively you should approach early-game relic selection. Shirou is the beginner character and for good reason. His block generation is generous, his skill cards synergize well, and his relics tend to favor a defensive playstyle that lets you learn the combat pacing. The downside is he doesn't scale as well into late-game builds compared to characters with more offensive kit options. Kinoko has poison and summon mechanics. She rewards patience. Her early runs will feel slow because poison takes turns to accumulate, but once you get a solid poison deck going, she melts bosses. The pitfall is underestimating how much tempo you lose early if you don't balance offense alongside your poison setup.
Tama is the energy-manipulation character. She can reduce card costs and generate extra energy, which opens up combos most other characters can't reach. She's also the most punishing if you make mistakes because burning energy wrong leaves you stranded with no plays. I spent two weeks on Tama before I stopped reloading every fight and learned to commit to trades. Miyabi focuses on attack cards and direct damage. She's straightforward but fragile. Her build space rewards aggressive scaling. If you can survive the early and mid-game, her late-game ceiling is legitimately scary. The catch is her lack of block means one bad positioning choice ends your run. Yashiro was added later and uses a stance-switching mechanic between offense and defense. It's mechanically interesting but the execution can feel clunky until you internalize the stance rhythm. Not recommended as a first character unless you specifically want that challenge.
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Relic Selection Is Where Runs Live or Die
At the start of each character, you pick one relic. This choice defines your entire run and most players undersell how much weight it carries. A bad relic pick early on doesn't mean your run is dead, but it does mean you're fighting against the game's bias toward certain synergy paths. The best relics tend to be ones that either generate consistent card draw, protect you from early attrition, or scale multiplicatively rather than additively. I watched a friend waste a top-tier relic slot on a situational boss relic in Act 1 and spend the next hour pulling cards just to compensate for the weak early game. The math doesn't lie. Early survivability relics like Vampire Relic or Straw Doll variants tend to outperform flashy damage relics across more run scenarios.
The Card Upgrade Economy
Upgrading cards is the primary way you strengthen your deck between shops and rests. Each upgrade makes a card noticeably better, but not exponentially better. This is important because it means your upgrade choices have real opportunity cost. When you can only upgrade three cards per run and you find five good ones, you're making a permanent decision. I've seen people hoard upgrade tickets until the final act when they realize their upgrade window has closed. Don't do that. Upgrade cards as soon as you get a clear sense of what your build is committing to. I usually upgrade my core recurring card first, then my most-used attack or skill, and save the third for a situational card that came in at the right moment.
Common Pitfalls That Wipe Runs
Gold mismanagement is the number one run-killer. The game tempts you into buying cards you don't need at full price, especially in Act 1 when gold feels abundant. A card at 40 gold in Act 1 is expensive relative to the value it provides. My rule of thumb is never spend more than 30 percent of your total gold on a single shop purchase unless it's an upgrade or a relic that directly enables a combo you're already running. Ignoring rest stops is the second biggest issue. The game offers free health restoration and card choices at rest sites. Skipping them to chase enemies for gold is almost always a losing trade. One extra rest costs you maybe fifteen minutes of playtime. Dying to a mid-run enemy because you're two health points short costs you two hours of progress. Building without a theme is the silent run-ender. Picking up every strong card you see creates a deck with too many cards and no coherent strategy. I learned this the hard way during a Kinoko run where I collected twelve different poison cards and had no way to consistently play them. The deck collapsed under its own weight. Commit to a theme early and cull aggressively.
Advanced Nuance: Energy Optimization and Card Cycling
Most players think about damage per card. The players who consistently clear higher difficulty levels think about energy efficiency per card. A 3-cost card that deals 20 damage isn't always better than a 2-cost card that deals 12 damage if the 2-cost card lets you play two cards instead of one. The extra card often generates more value through block, draw, or status application. Card cycling becomes critical in Act 3. By that point, your deck should be small enough that you see your key cards every turn. If you're cycling through fifteen cards and only drawing your four useful ones, you have a draw problem, not a damage problem. The fix is usually removing two to three weak cards rather than adding draw. I found this out after ten failed Act 3 runs with oversized decks before a friend pointed out the issue.
Difficulty Modes and When to Use Them
The base difficulty is manageable for learning. The challenge mode adds modifier decks that change enemy behavior and gives you a choice of curses at the start. I recommend unlocking curse removal before attempting challenge mode. Running cursed decks without a cure strategy turns every run into a guessing game about which curse will break your build first. The hardest mode stacks modifiers on top of modifiers. It's not about getting stronger. It's about perfect execution over dozens of combat encounters where one mistake cascades into a loss. If you're fresh, skip this until you've beaten the character at least three times on challenge mode.
What the Game Does Poorly
The card pool feels thinner than the beginning. Early acts give you exciting choices. Later acts start recycling the same five or six cards across runs, which makes each subsequent playthrough feel less fresh. The relic variety improves this somewhat but doesn't fully solve it. You'll notice by your fifth or sixth run that certain card drops feel predetermined rather than genuinely random. The combat AI is competent but predictable. Bosses telegraph their moves clearly, which is good for learning but bad for surprise. You'll encounter the same three boss patterns repeatedly once you've seen them. The game doesn't have enough variety in its later encounters to keep experienced players engaged for extended sessions.
Practical Tips That Actually Move the Needle
Save before every shop. Not because you'll regret purchases, but because testing what happens if you buy versus skip teaches you the economic boundary of each run. Two minutes of saving and reloading in a shop prevents two hours of a failed run. Learn your character's early game first. Shirou can clear Act 1 with almost any opening relic because his block scales so well. Kinoko needs a specific poison starter to avoid choking on draw. Match your relic expectations to your character's actual strengths instead of picking whatever sounds coolest. Track your gold across the whole run, not per act. I once ran a perfectly fine Shirou build and died in Act 2 because I'd spent so much gold on upgrades in Act 1 that I couldn't afford a rest or a crucial card in Act 2. Gold is a cumulative resource. Budget accordingly.
The game is available on Steam and usually runs on sale. If you've played Slay the Spire and want something with a similar structure but different mechanics, this is worth your time. If you're coming in cold, start with Shirou on base difficulty, save constantly, and learn the card economy before diving into challenge modes.
