Review: None Shall Intrude

Genre / Tags: Strategy, Card Game, Card Battler, Roguelite
Developer/Publisher: Aeterna Ludi/GrabTheGames
Steam URL: None Shall Intrude

Off on another demo review that I learned about during Next Fest 2024. None Shall Intrude is a Card Battler / Roguelite game, think of it like Slay The Spire, or another game I’ve reviewed recently, Commander Quest.

This time however, instead of being the hero going against the different battles to find yourself in a boss fight at the end of each level / stage it’s the opposite here. Now you’re the Dragon boss that has various heroes trying to take you out. All while you try to take over the countryside and get stronger to keep them from causing you to perish.

Right away in your first run of the game, you’re right into the basic tutorial showing you what you can do with your various cards. Which is always great in my book, while you fight the first hero dragon slayer trying to destroy you.

Something that this game does that’s pretty unique is it’s all about what they call “special interactions”. These are when you combine one or more of the three available element type card effects with one another. These elements are Fire, Wind and Earth.

Shown in the below image is a display of the various types of combos and what each does. It’s quite a unique system that makes the playing field of each round super interesting with how many different combos you can do. Mousing over any of these gives you either their name or what each one does with a bit of text.

Another cool system that the game has is “Inhale” and “Exhale”. This system just feels like a set of combo cards to me, since the only couple of ‘Exhale” cards i’ve seen basically just make your attack stronger if you’re in an “Inhale” state.

This inhale/exhale system does make for some neat combos though because you can find things that like “draw a card when you enter and inhale state” which is a neat way to roll through your deck easier.

Rage is another battle mechanic that’s pretty cool. One of the basic ways to get rage in the beginning is doing fire damage to the lava tiles that you make. When your rage hits 100, you can click the button and unleash your rage, doing a mass damage to anything hit-able on the field. Nifty for mowing down enemies, or hitting the landmines you’ve made to hit things, etc.

Once you get through that tutorial fight, you’re sent out into the field where None Shall Intrude takes another turn slightly away from similar other card battler games and gives you much more freedom to where you want to attack the land to conquer.

Down at the bottom of the screen you’re given 12 turns before the dragon slayer will return to battle you once more, as well every 5 rounds you’ll be attacked by what this game calls a “raid party” which really just ends up being more of a mini-boss battle.

Each area has many different regions in it, and within each region there’s a handful of fights you have to complete to conquer that region and get the rewards to do so. But really you have free reign to choose whatever fight you want to do whenever. Each fight unlocks more of that certain region to let you do more of said region. Sometimes it’ll be a nice boon like giving you more hit points. Other times it’ll be a mystery if you have to answer a question to get a buff or loot.

I was able to give this game a few attempts. I found it’s pretty difficult to get the hang of at first and start to understand the various combos. Once you get the hang of that you start to get further in. Ultimately you either get taken down by the dragon slayer or defeat him, thus ending the demo. It’s still fully replay-able though because of the various “meta-progressions” the game has with leveling up with your achievements. Whether you win or lose to the dragon slayer, or if you lose even before him.

You can then begin again with some upgrades to your skill tree. You can have up to three buffs that you’ve unlocked through playing to have for your run. Giving loads of options for each unique run, as well as new ways to play each time.

I’ll easily give None Shall Intrude an 8.5. Didn’t have any issues with the game in it’s current demo state. It’s highly replay-able and a unique take on the card battler / roguelite genre. I’ll be playing more of it in the near future as it gets closer to it’s release.

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