Kräuterhexe (Working title — final name to follow)
A card roguelite about medieval herbal medicine. Apothecary, not sorceress.
What it's about
Kräuterhexe is a premium card roguelike built for people who love the Balatro-wave deck-builder mechanic but are done with poker aesthetics and fantasy combat. You inherit an apothecary's hut in a small medieval village, and each run is a healing day: patients come, you draw herbs, you stack synergies, you brew remedies. 80+ base cards are real medicinal herbs — Yarrow, Nettle, Plantain, Mugwort, Wormwood, Fly Agaric — drawn from medieval sources like Lonicerus' Kreuterbuch (1557) and Hildegard von Bingen's Physica.
What makes it different
What makes Kräuterhexe different from the deck-builder mainstream is its mechanical core: healing is the win condition, not combat. Synergies follow real medieval recipe logic — bitter herbs and warmth become a stomach tea (×2.5 multiplier), mushroom and root combine into a sleep draught (×3), three spring herbs make a cleansing brew. Bosses aren't dragons; they're historical diseases: Pestilenz, Fieber, Wundbrand. Each patient has a name and a story — Anna the miller's wife, Hans the smith, the swaddled child from the farm. Healing builds village trust as meta-progression, not a personal power score.
Style, pricing, values
The visual direction is hand-painted medieval European manuscript illustration — Tudor manuscript composition meets Hildegard codex color palette, with botanically credible herb depictions. Pricing is honest: €5.99 once, plus two optional expansion packs per year at €2.99 each (Swamp Herbs, Alpine Herbs) that stay permanently available — no F2P, no ads, no in-app pop-ups, no battle-pass anxiety, no push notifications threatening sick patients. Kräuterhexe is built for the audience walking away from F2P: 30–55, Balatro-curious but theme-tired, history-interested, allergic to manipulative monetisation and witchcore aesthetic clichés.
- Genre
- Card Roguelite · Heritage · Single-Player
- Platforms
- Android · iOS
- Status
- In development
- Studio
- Loreshaper · A binshaper studio