While on the surface, a lot of elements seem to heavily overlap with games like Slay the Spire or Monster Train, don’t let this put you off there’s more to Roguebook than meets the eye. Before you start a new run, however, you’ll be able to unlock new cards with your experience points and gain perks for your next run.
If both heroes are knocked out during a battle, the game is over. This is significantly more difficult than it sounds: the revival cards can clog up your deck, meaning accruing resources to revive your first hero simultaneously makes it harder to keep your second hero alive. However, you’ll need to play five of them to revive your hero. Spawning only when one of your two heroes is knocked down, these cards don’t cost any mana to play. When a hero does die, however, you’ll have one shot to bring them back to life with revival cards. This is useful, particularly if one of your heroes’ health bars is low. Depending on the specific card you play, heroes can swap positions throughout the battle. If the block is broken, the hero in the front position becomes susceptible to taking damage. In addition to your decks, you’ll also want to keep an eye on the position in combat, since both hero characters share one single pool of ‘block’. While it took me a few runs to get the hang of a good deckbuilding strategy, it was incredibly satisfying to see my heroes crush a run once things lined up perfectly. Things work best when both heroes’ abilities complement each other, and you’ll have to keep this in mind when upgrading cards or obtaining new ones. Your strategy will mostly revolve around creating a synergy between your heroes’ decks. If you have fewer cards and no relics, Roguebook’s battles become significantly harder. This mechanic nicely introduces an element of luck into the game, because while you do get some gold as a reward after each battle, you’ll be hard-pressed to gather enough to buy relics without the extra gold found on the map. The gold and cards you come across on the map depend entirely on how you decide to use your ink. The number of other collectibles like gold and cards also greatly varies where in other deckbuilding games you might get a set amount of gold and a card after each battle, Roguebook has players collecting cards through dedicated tiles on the map instead. Instead, you’ll have to rely on healing items scattered around the map, and they can be difficult to come by. This can be challenging since, unlike some other card games, the heroes in your party won’t heal after every battle. If you’ve used up all your ink by that stage, your only option is to engage in battle in order to progress on the map. Often, the only way to evade a particularly tricky elite battle, for example, is to use your ink to carve a path around the specific tile with the combat encounter. While I used my ink liberally in my first playthrough, I quickly learned that the best thing to do is to ration it as best you can. I found this a really clever way to mix up the known roguelike map in the deckbuilding genre. Depending on the kinds of ink you collect, you can uncover a different number of tiles while some ink bottles might only uncover three tiles in a straight line, for example, others may reveal a whole circle of tiles in one go. By completing battles and exploring the map further, you can collect brushes and ink, which allow you to ‘paint’ and uncover more map tiles as you progress through a level. Where Roguebook differs from other games in the genre is its map layout and mechanics rather than progressing through a set world with multiple paths to choose from, Roguebook consists of a covered hex-based map, which represents a blank page in the book of lore. Each area contains a number of combat encounters, items in the form of healing potions or relics that offer a bonus in combat, and spots to obtain more cards for your deck. Like other games in the deckbuilding genre, a playthrough sees you traversing three levels in the shape of a map, each with procedurally generated elements and a boss fight at the end. In order to survive the ordeal, they’ll have to explore their surroundings and battle their way back to freedom, defeating numerous monsters along the way. The premise of Roguebook is simple: you begin the story with a pair of heroes who have gotten trapped inside the Faeria book of lore. Card game fans might also recognise Roguebook’s setting from Faeria, since Roguebook is set in the same universe. Abrakam Entertainment developed the game in partnership with Richard Garfield, who’s known for his work on games like Magic: The Gathering, Netrunner, and RoboRally. Roguebook is a roguelike deckbuilding game developed by Abrakam Entertainment and published by Nacon.