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Roguebook PC Review

Over the past year I have played a lot of deck-builders, rogue-lite or otherwise. See, I’m a big board game fan and deck-building is easily one of my favourite mechanics – it just feels great to see what you’ve created mesh together as you snowball momentum or crumble as you hurry to find the missing piece of the puzzle. So, naturally, as that genre started to move across into the digital space I was pumped, if a little nervous, but fortunately it has been a huge success! They very easily could have flopped by not innovating during the transition but developers quickly discovered how to build on those core concepts in ways you can really only do via video games (without adding a ton of upkeep and melting your brain). The trick? Take inspiration from card games.

The thing is, board game deck-builders are very, very different. Video game deck-builders are actually a hybrid of deck-builders and card games, like Magic the Gathering or, my personal favourite, the Final Fantasy Trading Card Game (available now at your local game store *wink*). The main difference between these ideas is that in a classic deck-builder you pretty much always want to play your entire hand every turn because it doesn’t cost resources to do so. In fact, it actually provides you with the resources to buy new cards. Card games, however, limit the player because of each card’s inherent cost, or via some other mechanic (see Keyforge), and, more often than not, don’t fully replenish a player’s hand each turn. Card games are also infinitely more complex in their design, which is easily seen by the amount of text and keywords a single card can contain. I’m a massive fan of them, also.

Many games handle this mish-mash of design well – Roguebook may just do it best. 

I suppose this isn’t much of a surprise when the team have as much experience as they do in exactly these spaces plus the mind of Richard Garfield. 

P.S. Mr. Garfield, if you’re reading this, please help get Netrunner back on its feet!

The downside for some is that this makes Roguebook probably the most complex video game adaptation of the deck-builder/card game medley available. I love that. I recently reviewed Tainted Grail: Conquest with high praise for its interesting, dark narrative and huge array of cards and classes to unlock and revel in. These are things which Roguebook doesn’t have at all. There’s hardly any story and the list of unlockable cards and gems is worryingly short. What it does with the lean selection at hand is what really counts, though. And it doesn’t hold back. To succeed in this game you need to know how to manage your resources very well. You need to know how to build combos and, more importantly, how to then execute those big threats and work on making them more consistent. You have to balance your offense and defense but not just with attack and block cards – the swapping of your characters’ positions is a huge factor, too. What threw me off personally is how it rewards bigger decks with extra ‘talent’ abilities. As an experienced deck-builder I know it’s best to trim all the fat you can and focus on your win condition but here I’m made to do the opposite, which has been a hefty re-learning curve and a crazy amount of fun.

So it’s great. But what actually is Roguebook? Well, it’s a successful product of a Kickstarter campaign by the team that brought us Faeria and a rogue-lite deck-builder with totally unique exploration and positioning mechanics. ‘Deck-builder’, meaning you have a set of cards (your actions in the turn-based combat system) that can be trimmed down, added to, and upgraded; and ‘rogue-lite’, meaning there are permanent upgrades to purchase that will forever make your future runs more powerful. The big twist is that there are four characters to choose from (once unlocked) but you roll with two of them at a time, making for six wildly disparate combinations. Each character has entirely different abilities, cards, strengths, and styles. I’m not joking – they are significantly distinguished and need to be treated as such if you wish to survive. The mixing of teams makes all the difference, even more so than the clan system in Monster Train, I’d argue. That’s not all, though. The two combatants can be swapped back and forth during battle to shield each other, tank damage, and take advantage of keywords that make cards cheaper to play. Usually only the ‘leader’, the character in front, takes the damage and debuffs being thrown out by the creatures you face so it’s imperative to find the best line cards for the situation whilst also considering who ends up where. This is massive.

It may sound simple on the surface but this limitation is tricky and wonderful. It can force you to hold back and lose a powerful card from your hand but it can also be used to great effect as you whip out card after card in a dance of death. On the other side, the enemies in Roguebook are also incredibly unique, making each fight special. This is mostly a positive thing but it also means a run can be quickly hard-countered if you get unlucky. Outside of combat is an overworld usually unseen in games like this. There’s free roaming over uncovered tiles, full of fights and goodies, but to reach further out it’s necessary to use ink. By using paint brushes and ink pots (rewards for encounters) to strategically colour in narrow paths and wide areas of the ‘Roguebook’, the magical tome in which everybody has become trapped, it’s possible to explore deeper. Getting the hang of this can take a few tries but it’s very rewarding. Hidden out there between the pages are health potions, gems that can be slotted into cards to add extra keywords or effects, treasures that grant powerful passive abilities or bonuses, vaults to draft cards from, pieces of parchment that present beneficial events, and more!

Honestly, I could go on. About the exploration and how exciting it is to not know what you’ll find. About combat and how mechanically beautiful it is. About how beautiful the game itself is. About how gratifying it is to pull together a crazy set of cards and come out on top. About how there’s little narrative but each attempt becomes a sort of micro-story through the shaping of the team and deck. About the way each character’s distinct strategies and personality are built into their cards. But really it comes down to this; if you like deck-builders or ever have, you should give Roguebook a chance. Tainted Grail: Conquest isn’t for everyone and I knew that right away, even if I loved that game in its own way. Roguebook is one that everyone with even a passing interest should try. You may get your ass kicked but I doubt you’ll regret it.

9 out of 10