I'm obsessed with the bizarre 16th century inspired creature design in roguelike deckbuilder Hermetica

A naked man with a face covering its torso. A snail with a human head. And one that's half-nun and half…I don't know what.

In my office I have a wall hanging of the carta marina: a big map of the Nordic countries drawn in the 16th century. I love it because you can peer at any small section and find it filled with interesting details, like tiny soldiers marching to battle, a herd of reindeer prancing in the mountains, a man fighting several snakes with a club, some sort of mountain lion taking a huge dump… you can examine it for hours and still find something new to enjoy.

Best of all is the ocean, because it's packed with fantastic sea creatures: a whale with the head of an owl, a fish with elephant legs, and of course the Sea-Cow, which is the size of a boat and has the face of a bull. Every creature in the sea is weird, and most are combinations of two or more animals. 

So when I played a demo of roguelike deckbuilder Hermetica at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week, I was immediately enthralled by the enemy designs. Its art is also based on old European weirdness—the game is set in 16th century Toledo, Spain—and just about every creature in it is fascinatingly bizarre.

Hermetica works like lots of turn-based deckbuilders: your character, an alchemist, faces off against a handful of monsters in each level, which you visit by moving from point to point on an overland map. But unlike standing still during battles as in Slay the Spire, you move around in each arena, and so do your enemies. The arena grids are littered with traps: some might stick you in place for a few turns, a puddle of water gets zapped by a lightning bolt if you step into it, and one trap, weirdly, summons a creature that carries you off to some distant square on the grid. 

Each card you play also has a movement scheme on it: a few steps diagonally, maybe, or a long straight path, so instead of just attacking, you also move on each turn. Arenas also contain alchemical