You wake at a table in a house in the woods. Across it sits a dealer with a skull for a face, and he wants you to play.
Coming soon to Windows, macOS and Meta Quest
It is raining. You do not remember your name. The candles are lit, the cards are dealt, and the thing across the table is smiling with a face that has no skin.
The Hollow Table is a first-person horror card game in two halves that feed each other: a game of tarot creatures played against him at his table, and a house to walk by candlelight between hands.
Trailer
1 minute 51 seconds, with sound.
At the table
Your row is four spaces; his lies across from it. Lay creatures, feed them with blood and bone, and ring the bell. A creature strikes the space straight ahead, and if that space is empty the blow goes to the board.
Build your deck spread by spread down a road of duels, charms and choices, to the Arcana at the end of each one. Every Arcana plays by rules of its own.
The bell
When you have played what you want, ring the bell. Your creatures strike, leftmost space first. His waiting creatures step forward into any empty space, and then his strike.
Blood and bones
Most creatures cost blood: offer your own creatures on the table, and each counts as one. Every creature of yours that dies leaves you a bone, and bones pay for other things. The Straw Poppet is fodder: free, no attack, one health.
The planchette
Each point of damage that reaches the board slides the planchette one mark: your blows toward YES, at his end; his toward GOOD BYE, at yours. There is one planchette, so his blows undo yours. Five marks toward YES wins the duel. Five toward GOOD BYE loses it, and a candle goes out.
Omens
An omen is a card of the Major Arcana that he stands on the easel beside the cloth. It changes the rules of the coming bell only, and you see it before you play. For a few bones you may turn it upside down. Reversed, it turns against him.
The Arcana
A night at his table goes down through six spreads, and at the end of every spread waits an Arcana, one of his faces. Each has more than one face, and a trick that falls every few bells. Drive the planchette to YES and a face breaks: obols spill, his side of the cloth is swept bare, and the next face begins.
And the last face he keeps for himself
Every road crosses rows of readings, and each must be won. A hexed reading is harder and pays a rarer creature. Between them wait new creatures, the Scrimshaw Slab, the Cauldron, the Ferryman who sells charms for obols, satchels, games, and things in the dark.
You begin with two candles. Each duel you lose snuffs one, and beating an Arcana lights one again. When the last goes out and the night ends, you leave one creature behind as an Echo, which may join a later night with one more attack.
A hundred creatures, every one a tarot card
Most are numbered and court cards of wands, cups, swords and pentacles. The rarest carry the Major Arcana: the Winter Phoenix is the World, the Hollow King the Hierophant. There are over a hundred to find, and what a creature does is written on it in sigils, up to three to a card.
Eight of nearly thirty sigils
Soaring Flies over blockers and strikes the board directly, unless a Watcher stands opposite.
Venom Creatures it wounds are poisoned: 1 damage at the end of each round, for 3 rounds.
Shell The first hit it takes is completely absorbed.
Thorns Any creature that strikes it takes 1 damage back.
Twin Strike Attacks twice each round.
Unending When it dies, it returns to your hand.
Bellwether The creatures either side of it follow its bell: +1 attack.
Looking-Glass It strikes as hard as whatever faces it.
Add charms that work once, cursed cards, and a Lunar Altar to mend them.
In the house
Stand up from the table, take a candle, and walk the house. Every room hides something: riddles in clockwork and paint and bells, papers in drawers, memories that come back in pieces. Three little sisters want to play their games with you, and they do not like to lose.
And the house goes deeper than a house should: a drowned crypt, a bell tower whose church is gone, a field of corn where not all of them stay on their crosses. Some nights the moon is full, and there is a way out into the woods, and something out there that runs.
What you find in the house comes back to the table with you: some of its secrets light more candles, and Moon Pieces mend cards that have been cursed.
After the end
The dire omens
Once the night has ended, he offers to deal the table darker. There are ten dire omens, taken as many at a time as you dare, and each one more is opened by a night won under the last.
- IThe Long Night The omens on the easel come from the crueller deck of the spread below.
- IIThin Coin Every duel won pays an obol less, and the Ferryman asks an obol more.
- IIIThe Hungry Dark His creatures on the road come with one more health.
- IVThe Short Straw Only half the Straw Poppets to draw on, every duel.
- VThe Thin Field One creature fewer laid out to choose from, wherever you choose.
- VIThe Cold Wick Beating an Arcana does not light a candle again.
- VIIThe Crueller Faces The Arcana’s own creatures come with one more health.
- VIIIThe Second Wave Now and then a second creature comes with one of his.
- IXThe Deeper Reading Every duel on the road is dealt harder, as if the night had come round once more.
- XHe Is Waiting Against the Arcana, the planchette begins a mark his way.
The day’s dealing
Once you have sat one night at his table, a card lies face down beside the decks: the same night for everyone who sits down that day. The same deck, the same road, the same cards offered, and nothing the house has given you. One a day, scored as it ends, and on Steam each day’s scores go to that day’s board.
And
- Story, Normal and Demonic difficulty, changed whenever you like: play for the house and what happened in it, or for the cruellest table there is
- A whole story told in riddles, papers and memories, with several ways it can end
- Optional hints for the riddles, given slowly and only if you ask for them
- Text size, sound captions, reduced flashing, colour-blind marks and full controller support
- Achievements on Steam, and a board of scores for each day’s dealing
- Eleven languages: English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German, French and Turkish
Where to play
Windows and macOS
On Steam, coming soon
Play with a mouse and keyboard, or with a controller.
Meta Quest
On the Meta Horizon Store, coming soon
Walk the house with a candle in your hand, sit down at his table and take each card from the cloth yourself. Turn in steps or smoothly, with a comfort vignette or without, and play seated or standing.
Before you play
The Hollow Table is a horror game. It has frightening imagery and sudden frights, with skulls, bones and blood as part of the card game, and it speaks of death, grief and the deaths of children. A “Reduce flashing” setting is there if you need it.
It has no sexual content, no gambling for real money and nothing to buy inside the game.