I love when an announcement comes out of nowhere and gets you to jump up and do a happy dance. That’s what happened about a day ago when a press release landed in my inbox announcing that the original Culdcept was going to be re-released on Steam, and in English for the first time, no less.
And that there was a demo, available now!
If you don’t know what Culdcept is, don’t worry, because not many do. It’s the very definition of a cult series. Put basically, Culdcept is like Monopoly. You roll a dice, move your avatar around a board, and claim spaces, or “properties”, and when another person lands on that space, they then have to pay you money.
The difference is in Culdcept, when you claim a territory, you summon a monster from a deck of cards to occupy it. When an opponent lands on the space, rather than pay the fee, they can choose to battle the monster instead. If they win, they get to claim the space. It’s not necessarily easy to win those battles, but it is a very useful way for overcoming one of Monopoly’s great weaknesses, that your ability to alter the board conditions in your favour is very limited.
So perhaps the best one-line way to describe the game is “Monopoly with a dash of Magic: The Gathering thrown in.” There’s a lot of strategy involved in the deckbuilding, and there’s a huge range of different levels, all with their own unique quirks.
It probably looks reasonably primitive to look at in the screenshots now, but there really isn’t anything quite like Culdcept out there. Square Enix’s Itadaki Street has somewhat similar appeal in the way the boards are designed, but it’s a more pure commerce game. There are some digital board games that have fantasy and combat elements, of course – Talisman comes to mind as having some parallels to Culdcept, but doesn’t have the loop of buying properties to go with the fantasy combat.
The demo is strong, and I highly recommend giving it a go as it will clarify for you whether Culdcept is for you or not within the span of a game or two. It also demonstrates that the Steam port is strong. You’ll need a controller to play (no mouse + keyboard options at all), but the game doesn’t need a particularly complex controller, and even those cute little 8BitDo controllers will be sufficient.
What I find really amusing is that Culdcept has been a series on ice for a long time now – the most recent title before this was 2016’s Culdcept Revolt on 3DS, and that was a full decade after Culdcept Saga, the prior game in the series to Revolt. Now, in 2026, we’re not only seeing the series revived, but with not one, but two games. Culdcept The First is releasing in July, initially for PC, but then consoles as well. Then, later in the year, we’re also getting a new entry in the series, with Culdcept BEGINS.
While it’s obviously a difficult time for the games industry in general right now, one silver lining, if you could call it that, is that developers and publishers are looking for relatively low-hanging fruit, and, encouraged by the boom in interest in retro gaming, they’re dusting off the old niche and cult titles to give them a new lease on life. Culdcept is the latest in this trend, and the fact I’ve already played the demo a half dozen times (in one day, despite being as busy as I am) should tell you just how much I’m looking forward to the full release.
Now if only someone could convince Square Enix to dust off Itadaki Street as well…
