Roguebook

Is a well rounded deckbuilder. The runs after "ascension 5" become a little bit long (1h30 plus). But as far as a good roguelike deckbuilder should deliver, Roguebook, delivers... go ahead and it will be your next adiction.

Plays a lot like Slay the Spire, with these differences:

* You control two characters with their own unique decks
* Positioning is important for the characters and enemies. Only the leading character can be hit
* Summons play an important role
* Cards are upgraded with gems that add properties to the card
* There is a hex overworld that is either fun or annoying depending on your preferences :)

It's different enough and I recommend it if you are looking for another deckbuilder to scratch that itch.

Simple but fun, Good second monitor game.

The game is fun but I NEED to warn the game has lag issues that are a known and continuous bug that has not been fixed, I have to regularly wait 10+ seconds between each card I play. I genuinely spend more time waiting to play than actually being able to play the game.
That might just be my experience and maybe I missed a post on the discussion boards that addressed a fix but I have tried to look this up multiple times and found nothing that has worked and seen many people continue to have the issue. Be sure to check discussion boards to see if it does get addressed as it is a fun game the other reviews are accurate BUT the lag is not acceptable.
(if this is something that has been fixed or if there is a like new known fix and I will change my review it is a good game)

I'll make this plain & simple: if you are into rogue-likes and deck-builders - get this game. It's amazing and features some unique mechanics:

• Controlling 2 team mates at the same time
  
[*]Moving through hex map and choosing what and when to uncover

Roguebook is Slay the Spire lite. Easy mode. It follows a similar pattern of deckbuilding with 3 "levels" to clear.

The characters are quite enjoyable. My favorite is Aurora. I'm too stubborn to stay dead!

The exploration of the map is a new twist to the Slay the Spire-like experience. The events are interesting and add nice flavor to the game. The other addition is the concept of 2 characters and swapping positions in combat. All of these are positives.

The downside is that the game has massive performance issues, especially during certain tournaments where your deck gets large. For example, you might be waiting 20-30 seconds for the card you played to resolve, or for the "end turn" action to take effect. You may be sitting there with 2 dead characters and the game doesn't recognize that the game is over.

My only negative comment is that I wish it had a few more worlds. even 4 or 5 would have been great. Runs are short(ish).

An excellent game with cool mechanics. My only gripe is that some times the normal fights feel the hardest. Especially when you learn the ins and outs of elite and boss fights.

Fun game, nice art style.

Pretty adventurous and fantastic card game, Personally I enjoy it.

good

addictive

Excellent execution.

Fun game!

I think I prefer it over Slay the Spire!

Finally a good Slay the Spire -clone. Plus, it's got new traits, like the map revealing feature.

I can't bring myself to give this game a negative review, because there's nothing wrong with it. It's fine. The problem is, there are several other games that are better (like Slay the Spire) that are extremely replayable. There's just no reason to get this game.

Great game in many ways - on Windows. however, I have to give a negative review due to being unplayable on Linux.

It takes forever even to load into the main menu. After that everything stutters so much that even navigating the menus takes great effort - even after lowering the resolution so much that the text is barely legible. While I am running this on older laptop, it's specs are well beyond the recommended hardware - the same laptop can run it smoothly on Windows.

Pros:
-Gives me the same game feel as Slay the Spire when it comes to decision-making that just hooks me. I will be logging more hours into it after this review
-The exploration part is not just a gimmick, it is a well thought-out mechanic which is very impactful especially if you pick the difficulty settings which turn it on its head. It also adds another dimension to the decision-making you do albeit it's not really that complicated to wrap your head around
-Plays fundamentally different compared to Slay the Spire because of the scarcity of deck thinning and the game REWARDING YOU with passive abilities to pick from for having larger deck sizes. This makes it that the best way to 'remove' basic starter cards is to turn them into better ones with Alchemy stations you unlock after the first win or so. Card dupes are also not a bad idea due to this
-The gem crafting system similar to Monster Train is a good idea to implement in order to give the player more control despite the game being designed around having larger deck sizes

Cons
-Effects from gems can redundantly repeat. Examples: Cards having the keyword 'Charge' twice, 'Gain 5 Block' and 'Gain 4 Block' being two completely different lines of text instead of just saying that the playing the card will make you gain 9 block, etc.
-You can glitch out and move into the vendor's space and you can't access his store until you get out the tile.
-No fast mode to skip animations like Slay the Spire or more recent Civ games. Due to your party needing to be animated walking around and the card draw/effecrt animations, they take up majority of your tine in-game.
-Mediocre iconography, I get confused by the Mechanic Centipede elite due to the fact that it gives a buff icon to the part healing and gives the front section which us actually doing the buffing a small icon not over its head instead
-Surprising lack of polish for a finished game overall

I'll say if you're already in too deep with rogue-lites, give it a shot if you can bear it. If not, jusf play a roguelike/lite more worth your time like Hades, Slay the Spire, Balatro, or smth instead

Font size too small, resolution just lowers sharpness.

FIRE NICO

Its good but its WAY TOO SLOW.
Instead of just choosing what to do, you have to walk the map and go back and forth to progress, even to check the shop.
The combat animations are locked to 1X speed, card draw animation is slow, starting the run, everything is slow. You EASILY waste an close HOUR per run (my average is 1.5 hours) just walking and waiting for stuff to resolve.
I dont want to give a negative review because its a good game but after 10 hours I dont wanna play anymore because of this.

Fun rogue-lite deck builder. Like mashing up Slay the Spire battles with a dash of Heroes of Might and Magic exploration and story-like events.

Battles are Slay the Spire-esque with the added twist of having two character and their cards all together. Character position can be changed by cards and matters for who takes damage. One hero dying adds wounds to your deck and knocks them out until you can revive the, lose both characters at the same time and you're done.

I loved reading the little stories for the events in the game and the art and animations are gorgeous. You have 4 characters to mix and match in each playthrough, plus a 5th as a DLC, which you can still play when they show up in daily challenges.

I have a good 100 hours in the game now. I can safely say this is a great deckbuilding game with a few twists. The first twist on the traditional deckbuilding game (STS), you instead control a team of 2 that you choose at the start of your run. Each hero has their own pool of cards that get mixed in with the other hero's cards in your deck. You get a chance to add cards from either hero through your run. You can aquire cards either through Vaults of Wisdom that you find on the map, or you can choose from up to 6 cards from a store per area (of which there are 3).

The second twist is the way the map works. Instead of having a path similar to STS of FTL, you travel along a map freely and get brushes and inks to clear out parts of the map. The darker hexes are blocked areas. The lighter colored ones can be moved on top of. This helps in determining where to use your different brushes and inks. You find various locations on the map, including Vaults of Wisom, random events, Alchemists, orbs that increase the amount of energy that you get per turn, gold, and special eyes that unlock random portions of the map.

Another twist is the way deck management works. The ability to remove cards is very rare. The only real way to remove cards occurs from those random events you find on the map, and there is little chance that you will have the opportunity to actually remove a card. If you look at some of the other reviews, you will see people whimpering about how the game is trash because you can't remove cards like in other deckbuilding games. It really comes down to strategy with which cards to add to your deck. Instead of being able to remove cards, you visit the alchemists that will transform your cards into WAY more powerful ones. By the time you get your deck optimized, there is little to no chance you will still have your starting cards in your deck. Also, the game rewards you for adding cards to your deck. Every few cards you add, you get some sort of bonus that is either specific to the heroes, or a generic one that is usually available in every run. It comes down to weighing your options of either adding cards and increasing the randomness of your deck for the bonuses, or running a smaller more optimized deck but with less bonuses.

Overall despite being a card game, the randomness isn't usually a super huge deal. I rarely lose runs and I have been operating around 6 or 7 out of 15 prestige levels with not too much trouble. Some of the heroes work better together than others. If I were to shut off all of the prestige levels and just run without any kind of hinderance, I can win 100% of the time with any hero combination. You may need to lose a few runs in the beginning to start unlocking a few bonuses like more healing items, more alchemists, and a higher chance of getting the more rare sockets, cards, or inks.

If you like Monster Train, Slay the Spire, or other deckbuilding games, this should be a no brainer purchase.

Better than Slay The Spire!

Really REALLY unstable game. It takes like 10 minutes to open and I can't even get past initial dialog before a load screen that freezes the entire game. Unplayable.

Richard Garfield did it again

The Professor's take on Slay the Spire is worth spending time on for fans of this genre. In this instance, the roguelite deckbuilding is delivered via a hexmap, offering a little more player agency via exploration than the aforementioned archetype's on-the-rails progression. And the Professor managed to include his pet design of smashing two decks together to have fun with all the possible interactions between particular cards within broader archetypes.

That said, you know what you're here for.

This game offers a good amount of playtime and enjoyment for a low price. Honestly, it's a good buy without a sale.

I've enjoyed every run that I've played. The difficulty does ramp up quickly once you reach the third tier of the options available. You can create some very powerful decks if you pay attention to your artifact options. All of the characters feel different to play and combine.

Great deckbuilder (from a man who has over 1000+ hours on Slay the Spire). Plays different to Slay the spire, as the game encourages you to have a larger deck but the goal is still the same; build and augment a deck which synergises so hard it makes you question whether you've broken the game over how trivial it's become. Narrative elements are much better than slay the spire and the ink and brush navigation system brings a nice random flavour to your runs. I've got 4 hours on steam but have put about 100 hours into the Switch version. Would definitely recommend.

Fun game - really like the hero progression and matching them together to form different decks, but it didn't really grab me the way some deck-builders do. Really worth checking out, though.

This game would be awesome if it was a little bit longer. The problem is that is really quick to finish the main scenarios and then you're just supposed to play again the same but with some handicaps. It needed 2 more scenarios to be perfect and add some diversity.

8/10

"A Deckbuilding Adventure with Just Enough RNG to Drive You Crazy (In a Good Way)"

⭐⭐⭐ 1/2

Let me tell you about Roguebook. It’s like someone mashed up a tactical RPG, a roguelike, and a fever dream into one glorious card-slinging chaos machine. You start all confident, thinking, "I've got this strategy thing down!"—then the game reminds you, "Oh no, you don’t."

The game play is nothing revolutionary, but the art is stunning, interface is top notch, and the combos? Chef’s kiss. But let’s talk about the real challenge: the RNG gods. Sometimes they bless you with that perfect synergy, and other times you’re left praying your weak little frog companion can tank one more hit because the game decided to give you all your buff cards when you needed a nuke. Also moving around the hexagon map wasn't very compelling to me. Honestly it gave me some anxiety and too much freedom in a game where I don't really want any. But hey.. that's just me and how I saw it.

Highlights of my stream while playing LIVE it included:

Me yelling, “THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT TO DO!” at least five times.
Chat trolling me with fake card advice. LOL Not really, but that would have been funny.
Accidentally discovering a combo so broken, even the game was like, "Wait, what just happened?" Note: I didn't. But I think it could happen.
I docked a star and a half because occasionally it feels like the game knows exactly when to crush your hopes—like a mischievous friend who loves to see you squirm. But hey, isn’t that half the fun of a roguelike? Honestly I just didn't like the expoloration leading up to the fights. I want more Slay the Spire fights it's where the game truly shines. I appreciate what they did and I think it was a bold design decision, just not my cup of tea. I prefer Coffee I guess.

If you love deckbuilders, tactical thinking, and the occasional existential crisis, Roguebook is your jam. Highly recommend—just don’t blame me when your favorite run gets nuked by a random boss crit.

A delightful card game. Lots of pools of cards to choose from with lots of fun effects so you are incentivized to do more actual building of a deck. Probably the only game in this genre where you are taking cards more often than skipping them and it should be lauded for figuring that out.

10/10

Very fun and relatively simple. A mash up of Heroes 3 with deck building like Thunderstone. Definitely recommend.

best deck building game to-date.

Roguebook is criminally under rated! This is a must play for anyone into roguelites/deck-builders. Follows the Slay the Spire formula quite closely, but with some key innovations that held my interest for longer. Namely: the exploration in between battles, switching between two characters in battle, difficulty modifiers that change the way you approach the game, and using gems to enhance your cards. The game is very polished in terms of presentation and gameplay, but there were a few annoying bugs that I had to work around.

The worst clone of the game we all know, uninspiring, boring and just not fun

A Solid Roguelike

The elements Roguebook adds, positioning, map traveral, and controlling two characters does add to the experience. They all give more macrostrategy, where its not just your turn to turn decisions that matter. Overall I find very little that is bad, yet I find little that is great. The presentation isn't fantastic, the cards do well enough, some making interesting strategies and some just kinda being fluff.

This is an enjoyable game. Its issue is simply there are better choices on the market. If you are a glutton for roguelikes or deckbuilders this will be a great addition to your collection. It remains unique and enjoyable and is a fun time. However, if you haven't sucked your collection dry, I struggle to chose it over my other options.

A must have gave. Very playable and replayable. Better than Slay the Spire. Very cohesive in presentation, gameplay, gorgeous artwork, music, challenge. A coherent world I could spend much time in. Satisfying gameplay, challenges, rewards, unlocking development. Get it.

A solid Slay The Spire clone. Evolves the game a bit and has some fun unique ideas of its own.

Great game; has many similar elements like Slay the Spire, and Monster Train, but with a unique twist to the genre.

If you like Slay the Spire and/or Monster Train, you will also like this. A lot of the same flavors with its own uniqueness. Give it a shot!

Its Slay the Spire with 2 heroes at a time and a 4X overworld . If you like StS you'll enjoy this . It was a steal for $5 on sale.

Great little roguelike, good character design and smooth gameplay. Doesn't seem like there's a massive amount of content in the long-term, but a solid indie for sure.

I'd love to forget everything and play this game again for the first time! Loved the idea of two heroes and the swap mechanic.

A fun design for the deck builder type games. Good pace, decent variety, and combat is challenging enough without being overly complicated. The two hero concept adds some depth and the map layouts provides fun through exploration.

Amazing. Played this for 100+ hours on xbox, so I came on here to buy it just to support the Devs. Its so good.

it's a solid 7/10