The Hidden Scrolls is a turn-based tactical roguelike strategy game. Developed by Red Dragon Studio and published by 2P Games, The Hidden Scrolls was released on July 16th, 2026. The Hidden Scrolls blends together a Spring and Autumn fantasy realm with supernatural beings. The art of ink and oil paint displays the game’s visuals—in the backgrounds, the characters and in the many attacks they can perform. As royal power declines in the Zhou Dynasty, demons take advantage of the chaos and thrive. It is up to players to fight off the encroaching demon hordes using a variety of retainers from 13 different classes. Strategy, resources and sometimes sheer force is required in order to take down the fearsome tyrants.
The Hidden Scrolls reminds me of a mobile game and I mean that in both good and bad ways. It is quite simple in concept/gameplay but has a lot of moving parts that make things more complex. Travelling around the maps is a simple left or right and stopping for encounters. Combat is just executing attacks and is not the most intensive as it depends more on strategy than high action. The town that serves as your central hub has a variety of things for your characters and can be upgraded alongside them. This game feels like its one microtransaction or “watch ad for free rewards” away from being a game you’d find in the app store on your phone. Admittedly, I play a few myself daily so for me, this isn’t a negative.
However, there are some things I was not a big fan of or was confused by. Combat feels a bit unforgiving towards particular strategies, leading me sticking to a full on frontal attack. The grind feels unnecessary, especially when characters can disappear permanently if they die in combat. A solid batch of quality‑of‑life upgrades would help, but the developers stopped updating the game shortly after release and haven’t shown much engagement since. Overall, I don’t think The Hidden Scrolls is for me and it receives a middling score. I’m not sure if I would personally recommend this one, but this is of course my own opinion.
Is The Hidden Scrolls a Clone?
For my PC reviews, I usually read some of the Steam reviews to get an idea of what the player-base thinks. For The Hidden Scrolls, I found some—particularly the negative ones—claiming that this is just a clone of another, more popular game, Darkest Dungeon. I personally have not played this game, but I am aware of it. From what I can tell, The Hidden Scrolls does seem heavily inspired by the first Darkest Dungeon which isn’t a bad thing. Some of the more positive reviews even state that The Hidden Scrolls improves upon what wasn’t working in Darkest Dungeon.
I don’t really have a whole lot to say since I have not personally played Darkest Dungeon, but it is something to be aware of. If you have played Darkest Dungeon, you may have a stronger opinion about The Hidden Scrolls, but it is difficult for me to say if that opinion will be positive or negative. Personally, I’d recommend reading the Steam reviews for yourself to get a better idea of what the players who have played both are saying. For my review, I will be discussing The Hidden Scrolls without the comparison from this point forward.
Combating Demons & “Exploring”
The story of The Hidden Scrolls takes a backseat as strategy plays center stage. When starting a stage, you will first need to decide how much gold you would like to take with you. This is important because the first NPC you interact with will have consumables for you to purchase. These provide beneficial and sometimes even required resources to take with you as you travel. For example, rations provide your party of 4 with stamina so that they can travel. These are auto-consumed as you travel (can be toggled off) so having a good bit on hand is super important. Other resources improve your parties conditions, such as cooked millet for HP or oath wine for morale.
Travelling is quite mechanically simple in The Hidden Scrolls. You pick a path you want to take and then go left or right as you travel—mostly left in like a side scroller fashion. Different encounters can occur, such as combat or coming across NPCs asking for items, but eventually you reach the end of the path and are in the next major location which may or may not have an encounter of sorts as well. Paths have two routes for you to take, though encounters are typically random so it does not matter much. It isn’t the most in-depth system when it comes to exploration, but I suppose it gets the job done at getting you from A to B. The added stakes of needing enough rations to travel is nice, but it feels more divisive to make the game more complex/challenging rather than a neat gameplay mechanic.
Honing in on the combat, there are a few things that are important to know. Each character, or retainer, has two bars to keep track of—HP above and morale below. Having low morale can cause the retainer to flee from battle, so it is important to keep morale balanced. In contrast, enemies have frenzy rather than morale. Increasing frenzy above 100 or decreasing below -100 causes them to take a significant amount of damage and may even induce dizziness, making them unable to act their next turn. Combat is turn based with the numbers next to these bars displaying the order.
Each character class has 8 total skills available, but only up to 4 can be active. Skills can have a variety of uses, such as outright damage, raising/decreasing frenzy in enemies, applying positive boons for yourself or negative boons for enemies, and even healing HP or boosting morale. Skills don’t have cooldowns, but most require the retainer and enemy to be in a certain location in order to use. You assign your four retainers across two rows of four, but you have to set their positions before starting a new expedition. You can move the retainer during combat, but this counts as their turn. It is important to match the placement of your retainers with their active skills so that you can get the most out of their capabilities in combat.
Strategy plays an important role in combat, but sometimes certain types don’t feel all that impactful. For example, healing skills don’t heal much. An enemy can easily dish out twice the damaged healed in one hit, especially on harder difficulties. Cooked millet can restore much more HP than healers, so why would I bother taking any healing skills and instead just focus on providing buffs or debuffs?
A similar thing could be said when it comes to focusing on enemy HP or frenzy. Having two bars is interesting and adds to the strategy on paper, but they don’t really mesh well. I could increase an enemies frenzy to do 50% damage to their HP and stun them for one turn or I could just go for an all out assault, maybe even being able to kill one enemy while making another extremely low. Sometimes I felt like having a party of 4 retainers who dish out heavy damage to HP felt way more impactful than going for focusing frenzy or having support-like retainers. As you earn more gold and can start taking more on expeditions, one could reasonably just rely on consumables to support their party.
Retainers can also equip up to 3 artifacts which can be gained through various means. These artifacts increase passive effects, such as resistance or defense. To be honest I haven’t really felt the impact from these during my gameplay, but I did make sure to equip them whenever I had them.
Eventually, you can take on one of the spirit leaders. These are particularly challenging enemies—boss battles if you will— that really test your strategy. They can dish out some heavy damage to your retainers if you are not careful. Fleeing might be the best option if you feel underprepared. If your retainers lose their HP, they enter a near-death state where any following damage may kill them. If they die, they will be lost forever, including any upgrades made or artifacts held. This feels a bit unforgiving, especially on easier difficulties. The Hidden Scrolls has 4 difficulties to choose from—ranging from scholar, the easiest, to monarch, the most difficult. I played on grandee, an average difficulty, and still had a tough time dealing with the tyrants. Fighting enemies otherwise felt like a breeze, so the sudden spike in difficulty caught me by surprise.
That’s pretty much it for combat and “exploration” in a nutshell. There are other things, such as traits and various status effects, that add to the combat. Again though, it feels more divisive for complexity/challenge rather than interesting game mechanics. I honestly wouldn’t mind if the combat remained very simple, relying far more on strategy than on any RNG elements—something I’ll dig into in the next section. In defense, I don’t think these things will make or break your strategy, but they certainly play a bigger role on harder difficulties.
Over time—as happens with many roguelikes and roguelites—expeditions started to feel repetitive. I felt like I was going in with the same strategy every time and getting the same results. Retainers don’t earn XP from combat. Once I explored a location and/or completed the objective, I went to town only to rinse and repeat the process. The game states its a test of both strategy and humanity, but I think humanity is a stretch. NPC encounters were repeating and I either helped them or walked away. Strategy does exist, yes, but I think using certain strategies just isn’t worthwhile. The visuals look nice, but combat only shows quick flashes of each move and nothing more. You never see a full animation play out when an ability is used. Overall, not my cup of tea.
The Town – A Central Hub
The town is where I mostly get the feeling that this reminds me of a mobile game. Serving as a central hub, the town is where you go after expeditions to recuperate. You can upgrade every building in town to improve its benefits, and you can even upgrade the NPCs themselves. These upgrades require wood and stone that you can gain during expeditions as well as a decent chunk of gold. I won’t cover all of the buildings in depth, but there are quite a few things you can do.
Recruitment is where you can recruit new retainers to your team. Players have limited space for the number of total retainers they can have. It is entirely possible to have multiple retainers of the same class. Where they might differ though is in their traits—a slight RNG factor. Retainers may gain new traits after completing an expedition. Upgrades to the recruitment building offer you more and improved retainers, including some that start with better traits. It may prove beneficial to dismiss a retainer of the same class if their traits are not as good as one you can recruit.
Speaking of upgrades, the barracks and blacksmith are where you’d go to upgrade your retainers. You can improve their skill levels at the barracks. They can be improved up to the maximum level of the retainer and of the barracks themselves. You can also upgrade your retainers’ gear at the blacksmith, following a similar process. Keep in mind though that these upgrades are specific to that retainer rather than the class as a whole. If you have two retainers of the same class but only upgrade one, the other one will not have them. Personally, I would much rather it be tied to the class rather than be retainer specific. Again, it feels divisive to make the game more complex/challenging rather than an interesting game mechanic. There is little reason for me to upgrade retainers of the same class in different ways. Why not make it universal?
This feels like a good time to mention the unnecessary grind that this game has. The choice to have retainer upgrades be specific to that retainer and also the potential to lose that retainer forever if they die in combat is…well, a choice, and frankly not one that I like. Knowing that I could potentially lose a very useful retainer that I put a lot of gold towards upgrading and then have to restart the process all over again with a new retainer of the same class does not sound fun to me. Don’t get me wrong, I am usually fine with grinding in video games. However I want to know that the thing I am grinding for is going to stick around. If the option to not have permanent death was available, I’d turn it on instantly.
I digress. Another thing that is important to note is that retainer’s HP and morale don’t heal back to full when returning to town. In fact, sending them out on expeditions also decreases their mood. If mood is low, the retainer will refuse deployment. Buildings like the leisure center and admin office become essential because your retainers don’t recover on their own. These facilities restore them, but the process takes about two days to finish. Every expedition you run counts as one day. Oddly, items that can restore retainers during expeditions don’t work in town at all. Needless to say, another divisive way for complexity.
I’m Letting the Demons Take Over
Overall, The Hidden Scrolls feels like it has a lot of moving parts, but I’m not sure if all the parts are moving cohesively. I feel like many elements exist purely to add complexity and challenge rather than to create fun or interesting gameplay. I would greatly appreciate some quality of life features to make them feel a bit more cohesive or at least more options to customize how I’d like to play—for example, removing some of the grind by not having permanent death. This might make it more like a roguelite than a roguelike so this might just be a personal preference.
However, as mentioned earlier, the last update was a small bug fix a few days after the game’s release. I’m not sure whether the developers plan any larger updates or if the game has already been abandoned. I certainly hope that this isn’t the case as the game does have potential. Strategy combat is enjoyable and think that adding in more classes and/or unique enemies could make things much more interesting to avoid repetitiveness. Though I don’t think all the parts of moving cohesively, I like the amount of things you can do/upgrade and enjoy a grind to a certain extent. Being able to customize some of the difficulty settings to how I prefer would for sure make me interested in picking this one up again. For now though, I’m not sure if I could recommend this one in its current state.
Thank you for reading and good luck with your bamboo slips!
