Fans of 2025s otherworldly fishing game Deep Regrets should have their eyes firmly fixed on Kickstarter, as Judson Cowan is set to launch his follow up Personal Demons.
Published by Tettix Games with art and design by Judson himself, Personal Demons looks like it boasts the same horrendously brilliant art as its predecessor, with 178 beautifully hand inked unique demons in the game, as you swap fishing out ghoulish creatures from the deep sea to dealing with your own inner demons, only these guys are very much real.
With a Kickstarter due to be released soon and a hope for a summer 2027 release, Personal Demons is going to show that looking after your mental health is one hell of a battle, and very much looks like it might be one of the biggest releases of next year.
Overcome your inner demons
Personal Demons will be a spatial puzzler game, whereby you and your friends will be joining a therapeutic ritual to overcome those pesky demons inside of you like hate and gluttony. Using a card drafting system akin to Sushi-Go, you will be placing your demon cards into a summoning circle to try and match corners to create seals, which will score you points and allow you to summon bigger demons.
To create the impression of a summoning ritual, each phase of the game will be played simultaneously, with hands passed around in unison and cards placed to create this ritualistic feel. Cast as a kind of demonic therapy session where it takes an understanding approach to mental health and the challenge of overcoming your personal demons, the winner is rather fittingly the person who after three rounds has made the most progress in that session. The best way to describe victory points I have seen!
The gameplay loop looks really fun, as you use your cards to form sigils and build up huge scoring multipliers through clever planning and choosing the right card/demon for your summoning circle.
You will also gain sins which allow you to take bonus actions like summoning demon royalty, and courage cards which give players unique abilities to build up their individual engine. And as you play the card sizes getting bigger and bigger, giving you this unique spatial challenge to overcome.
Incredibly thematic with an extremely apt theme, Personal Demons looks a delight to play, with a familiar gameplay loop from other card drafting games, but its own unique style and adding layer of complexity which should make it a hit for novice and avid gamers alike.
Look at those Demons
We can’t talk about Judson Cowan’s newest board game without discussing the truly stunning artwork that again has gone into his project. Deep Regrets stood out so much because of it, and Personal Demons looks like it will continue this trend.
Reading about his process in the newest addition of Senet, Cowan describes wanting to create his own demonology in the game, with bright, colourful and family friendly demons, all of which he has again hand drawn himself. And as the Kickstarter notes, he proudly can proclaim no AI at all was used in the making of the game.
Discussing his own battles with depression and anxiety, Personal Demons and the tricky theme looks like it will be brought to life masterfully by Cowan. Just one look at the Kickstarter will show you how eye catching the individual cards and those incredible demons are, it looks like its begging to be played and works so well with its theme, with its grotesque but somehow playful demons ensuring it still provides a broad appeal to all levels of gamers.
I can imagine building up my own summoning circle with those scary but relatable demons. And like its subject matter, it appears winning and losing won’t be as important as just the experiencing of the game itself. As it states on the Kickstarter, there are no losers in therapy.
Launching Soon
While there is no confirmed date as of yet for the Kickstarter launch, it is promising the Personal Demons campaign will launch this year, with an expected release date of summer 2027 currently according to Senet.
I haven’t yet had a full playthrough of Deep Regrets but the artwork stood out to me so much, with an obscure yet thoroughly appealing theme that just spoke to me. (Maybe because I had just finished the amazing computer game Dredge!).
Personal Demons though from first impressions draws me in even more. A theme that must be so hard to tackle thoughtfully in any kind of game with winners and losers, Judson Cowan looks set to have handled it masterfully, drawing upon his own personal demons to create a stunning looking board game that does somehow look kind of therapeutic to play, with literal demons to tackle rather than those trickier ones we sometimes find ourselves facing in our day to day lives.
I am certainly going to be consistently checking Kickstarter over the coming months for the campaign to go live, and can’t wait for my next therapy session with those demons. (Though Asmodeus does look rather challenging!).
