Indie developer UmiArt and indie publisher Offbrand Games have a delightfully devilish game of cards that’s a roguelike but not really a deckbuilder. The game is called Demon Bluff, and it’s a game where you figure out which cards of villagers are secretly evil, and specifically demons. To conceal this deceit, the cards lie.
Demon Bluff is essentially a solo social deduction game. Every card has a role that either provides information or an ability that when used properly can provide information. Or misinformation. It’s your task to suss out the what info to trust.
While not specifically mentioned in press releases, Demon Bluff’s role-based mechanics should make a lot more sense if you’re familiar with Blood On The Clocktower, the multiplayer social deduction tabletop game by The Pandemonium Institute, which is regularly played among board game and tabletop creators.
Demon Bluff has Villages and Outcasts that are Good, and Minions and Demons that are classified as Evil. Cards can be Corrupted, where their ability won’t work as intended and will provide misinformation, something like the Drunk/Poisoned state. And of course, some roles are mechanically similar to board game inspo.
Now don’t get it twisted, that’s not to say Demon Bluff has no ideas of its own. For one, the game has a roguelike structure where the deck of cards (to use Clocktower parlance, “script”) grows as you continue to save the villages by executing Evils, so each round gets progressively harder. There are roles that only exist in Demon Bluff that should shake up that social deduction muscle, like the Bard that can detect how far a Corrupted card is.
Speaking of not getting it twisted, content creator Northernlion is involved with the development of Demon Bluff, as he not only playtest, provide feedback and help market the game through streams and content creation, but also directly fund its development.
Between this and the recently released Dupery, which wears its “clocktower-like” influences up its sleeves, there are two solo social deduction games that plays like a logic puzzle where you don’t need to interact with other players and have to socially bluff and lie to said players. Two cakes!
Demon Bluff releases in November 2026 on PC (Steam). A demo is available.