Lovecraft has trapped the great horror authors to feed on their imaginations. Poe is the last one still free, and the Literary Battle between them is where the game opens.
The demo is our USC Advanced Games Project build, free to play now on Itch.io. Masterworks Studios, a small team carrying the project forward, is continuing development on the full Steam version, with beta cohorts opening throughout 2027.
Masterworks of Horror is a real time card game I created and led as creative director, built with a team of more than 55 people. You draft a deck from the great horror authors, Poe, Lovecraft, Shelley, Stoker and more, then face another player live in a Literary Battle, reading the board and answering their moves as they happen. The Prologue is the first piece of it we sent out into the world.
The core idea was mine, and it was simple. Take the depth of a real card game, let it breathe inside fast, live play instead of turns, and set the whole thing in a horror world we already loved. Watching a team turn that pitch into something you can actually play was the honor of a lifetime.
When a Fabled card hits the board it should land hard, and your opponent should feel it from across the table. I never wanted power you had to squint to notice.
I grew up on these writers, so I cared more about honoring them than leaning on shock and gore. I wanted the world to feel familiar to a lifelong horror fan and still welcoming to someone seeing it for the first time.
In a live match there is no time to stop and study what happened. So we made the art, the UI, and every effect work together to keep it clear what is going on, even when things get loud.
A few moments from a real match, on the phone build players sat down with at our booth.
Lovecraft has bound the great authors of horror and leans on their work to feed his own. Poe is the only one still free. The Prologue opens on their Literary Battle, and on the question the whole game is built around, whose stories win.
I created Masterworks of Horror and led it as creative director. That meant setting the vision, then doing everything I could to help a team of 55 people make it real. Here is the honest shape of it.
Bring your favorite stories to life using the works of legendary horror authors, and become the genre's greatest wordsmith.
The Prologue is the first slice of that, a focused set of cards, the core real time Literary Battle, and the feel of the bigger game I want to make.
More than anything, this game taught me how to lead people toward a single vision.
To hold the vision firmly and the details loosely. The best ideas were often not the ones I walked in with, and making room for them made the game stronger every time.
That directing is service. My job was to get 55 talented people to their best work, not to do it for them, and that turned out to be the part I am proudest of.
How a game actually gets made, the slow and patient middle where a pitch quietly becomes something you can hold in your hands.
How much it means to watch a stranger pick up something you imagined, sit with it, and grin.
It was an honor to see this vision come to life, and a gift to have built it with the people I did.
The Masterworks card library features over 120 cards. Here are some of my personal favorites, based on our three featured archetypes.
Every card is built around keywords, the rules text that drives how it behaves. Tap any card to read its full card text up close. Here is what each keyword above does in a match.
Card art from Masterworks of Horror, made by the art team led by Bee Wynne and Lucas Delgado, with my input.
Sharing it in person was the best part of the whole year.
We built a haunted bookshelf, hung a Cthulhu and a few ravens, and let strangers sit down to play at GDC. Watching people lean in is something I will keep with me.
A few of us at the booth.
We also brought it to the USC Games Expo, the program's public showcase and one of the most watched stages in student game development, and got to share it with players, families, and friends. You can find the game on the 2026 Expo page.
One pitch, a year of work, and a gentle march through every milestone the program puts in front of you.
The concept was pitched for USC's Advanced Games Project, a real time card game built from the legacies of horror's great authors.
The pitch was chosen, a team formed around it, and pre production began.
The core real time Literary Battle came online, with online multiplayer, card placement and combat, and an early mobile build.
Three battle acts, a custom deck builder, and the first wave of art and audio brought the loop to life.
Full Poe, Lovecraft, and Trapped decks went into a booth build we ran on the floor at the Game Developers Conference.
Tutorials, a kinder single player opponent, and a lot of polish landed for a cross platform beta on PC, Mac, and mobile.
The release candidate proof of concept arrived on Steam, and we got to show it to the public at the USC Games Expo.
This page lists the leads and senior roles only. It is not the full team.
Masterworks of Horror was made by more than 55 students and volunteers across every discipline. The whole team is credited in full inside the game, and it would not exist without every one of them.