Roguebook

Incredibly fun turn-based, rogue-lite card game. Very similar to Inscryption, but more adventure/fantasy than horror/mystery.

Really nice game

Roguebook does a good job at being "similar, yet different" to StS. So if you're in that purgatory of wanting to play StS but not wanting to play more StS, this could be the move.
I would never recommend it to someone who wasn't sick of playing Slay the Spire - just go play that then.

The most important thing to remember when playing Roguebook is that the "card rewards" are not really rewards - they are basically "shops" and it's best to think about them that way. You get to see what's on offer, but you really can just keep those 25gp instead, and you'll have one less card in your deck and be 25gp richer.

That said, Roguebook feels very clearly designed by someone who played a bunch of Slay the Spire, liked it, understood what was good about it, then tried to make a game that was similar - but different in key ways.

In StS (and most other games of this type) you have to prune your deck a lot, and big chunky decks are bad. That's just a dynamic that comes up on its own in this type of game. Roguebook has like a dozen different bits of design clearly intended to counterbalance this somewhat, so that mid-sized and even pretty large decks are actually quite playable.
There are literal rewards, several rules keywords found on cards e.g. related to the size of your draw pile, there are ways of getting more card draw or cycling, etc.
Having a big deck might be why you're dealing a lot of damage, blocking a lot of damage, drawing more cards, why you have more cool talents unlocked for this run, etc.

Ultimately, the game is balanced so that mid-sized or even real bigboi decks are very playable and kinda fun and chaotic. Smaller decks still work for the same reasons they always work, so it's more of a rebalance.

The central gimmick of combining two different characters and swapping between then when you use defensive cards is well integrated in the game. It helps make the game feel different from StS. You can combine different characters to get different talents to choose from. It works.

While Roguebook is overall a very good game with excellent design, it's just a really tall order to try to make anything that wouldn't be unfavorably compared to a game as incredible as StS. But I'm a pretty critical guy and I think it's good enough - at least, good enough for those of us in "StS purgatory". What else are we gonna do, play StS again?

For everyone else, I recommend Slay the Spire instead.

Roguebook is an interesting game. Having played 117 hours, I really enjoyed this game but I don't think it meets the quality of other Deckbuilders i've played. It lacks the simplicity of a game like Slay the Spire but also fails to present the wild combinations of decks and builds afforded to those who enjoy Across the Obelisk. If you like the genre, I think this game will hold your interest but it would surprise me if I met someone who said this was their favourite Deck Builder.

I cannot put my finger on why I don't like the game but it just did not land for me.

it's very fun game. so many card combination

DO NOT buy this game at full price.

This is a pretty fun spin on the Roguelike Deckbuilder genre, with a lot of polish, but it's also an abandoned project with no end to the story. Glad I played it, but $5 was the right price.

This is my favorite Roguelike, yet it's almost still hard to recommend for what a buggy piece of shit it is. Granted this is not as buggy as the Nintendo Switch version, but Christ almighty it still is a disaster. Clearly the devs has no intention of fixing all the issues wrong with it. All that being said, I've had this game corrupt my saved progress more than a dozen times and it's crashed on me more than 100 times. No exaggeration as I been playing this game since its release.

But now that negative is out of the way. This is my favorite Rogue like deck builder. Easily over the likes of Slay the Spire or Inscryption. I do hold those games in high regard, and at least they are mostly bug free unlike this title.

What I love most about this game is it's map system. It brings a new level of discovery and risk reward other than being given roughly 2-3 alternative paths which both Slay the Spire and Inscryption do. The graphics certainly have a Hearthstone look. Love it or hate it.

As for the combat, you can find so many ways of synergizing builds. I constantly find new and powerful ways to become powerful years later.

To me it's the best Roguelike and the most buggy.

A great game, but not without its flaws

As you can see from my hours played, I’m a fan of Roguebook. It has some great and interesting ways to approach the deckbuilder genre. Copies things from tried-and-true mechanics, without making it feel like a ‘been there, done that’-game. It has some flaws and, unfortunately, some game-breaking bugs

The Faeria universe expanded

Roguebook is part of the ‘Faeria universe’, with a lot of the characters being familiar faces if you’ve ever played their first game (Faeria). You don’t need any prior knowledge of their first game to be able to enjoy this one. It’s not some complicated storyline, or has very in-depth lore for you to follow. Our heroes are trapped in the Roguebook and must fight their way through different chapters to free themselves, that’s the gist of it really. We have 4 heroes in the base game, 5 if you buy the DLC as well (which I can really recommend, the 5th hero is one of the best). We always play with 2 of them at a time. Where one hero is in the front row and the other’s in the back, these rows are an important part of how you’re playing your cards.

This ‘Faeria universe’ has a lot of heart, there are memorable allies and adversaries we face along our journey toward the end of the (rogue)book. There isn’t a lot of (spoken) dialogue but that doesn’t bother me at all within the deckbuilding genre. Every piece of lore or items you come across in-game have a small piece of info attached to it and that’s it really.

When playing for the first time, you are getting a quick tutorial about how the UI works and what the basic attacking and defending mechanic is. If you are familiar with the deckbuilding genre you can skip all the info popping up, there’s nothing you haven’t seen before.

Tough, easy, doomed from the start

Roguebook start with a basic deck, the enemies you face have their basic health pool and attack values. By completing different ‘epilogues’ as the game calls them you unlock more difficulty tiers to make the game harder. As a reward you find more pages, which are used to upgrade your heroes, gold, items and buffs. A bonus amount of pages is awarded if you play an epilogue tier with heroes you haven’t used to complete that tier before.

My experience after starting a fresh game (with all card and epilogue tiers locked again) is that the first 1 or 2 games are tough. You only have basic cards and gold, plus all the good cards are unlocked as our heroes gain experience. So our first steps are a bit of hit or miss. We are forced to use 2 heroes that do have a decent synergy but they are definitely not the best pairing the game has to offer.

When we start to unlock our 2 missing heroes (you will find them across the different acts (of which there are 3), we have more options to choose from, this makes the game way easier to play. The thing is, depending on what your personal preference is of course, there are 3 really good heroes and the other 2 just feel like ‘ok if I have to play them’. There is one pairing that feels like they’re made for each other, which is amazing, but it makes the other pairings feel way less fun to play with. These 2 (Fugoro and Aurora) let you breeze through the game in the middle difficulty tiers.

At the last 5 epilogue tiers Roguebook shows that it really can be a difficult game to master. Where each of the cards you’re choosing to add to your deck really are making a difference between life or death. I like my games to be tough but fair, I think Roguebook manages to achieve this most of the time. Downside is that after about 30 minutes in when doing a new ‘run’ you know if you’re deck is going to get you to the end or not. There is very little you can do to fix a deck that isn’t great to start with. Once you notice these patterns the game has it makes me want to drop the runs I know I’m going to die on, instead of trying to find something to make them work.

Bugs & Bricks

It sucks to have to say this, but the patch history of Roguebook shows that the dev didn’t seem to care much about some of the game breaking stuff that can sometimes pop-up. The UI can sometimes not respond at all (especially when using flash gems), quitting the game will then let you completely lose the run you where on.

The controller support is okay for the UI, but my DualSense controller isn’t able to select spots on the map that are at a diagonal position of where I am (So top left and right, plus bottom left and right). There are some UI-glitches, the mine you can enter can make your heroes get stuck and there are many more. By playing this game so much I know there are ways to get the game to respond again, but it’s not what you want to see really.

Conclusion

I love Roguebook’s universe, a lot of the gameplay elements and the fact that it has a lot of interesting new ways to deal with things that can make deckbuilders feel like the same type of game but within a different world. It does however has flaws, and these flaws are sometimes things that are difficult to ignore. But it is an amazing game if you can see through that part.

Love, PJ

this game makes me happy

This roguelite is highly slept on. Great mechanics, fun characters with decent depth and tons of playability.

Its honestly the best card based rogue lite that I have played (other than StS). The gameplay is super fun, lots of configurations / characters, building a solid deck feels good and finding the OP combos entertaining. For me its just below Slay the Spire (which is the pinnacle for card based games IMO) Its sad that the game hasn't seen more gameplay on Twitch etc. but its a very crowded field out there.

TL;DR - You can't have situations where you can out think with sub optimal stuff, you HAVE to strive for being OP as possible to even have a chance to win ( it feels like a bad tournament with cold opponents ).

Yea this game sucks, it offers the illusion of strategy. If you do not get the BEST STUFF you just automatically lose to some bosses and encounters. A lot effects all ways happen like bleed and there is no way to get rid of it, the debuffs are extremely powerful and annoying. There is no counter play or gotcha, everything is flat and requires you to over power.

Its all about being unstoppable more than it is having a cohesive strategy. I don't even know why the game lets you play if a character dies. You gain so many downsides to reviving you might as well start over. Dying in boss fights causes you to lose half you hand and can completely end your run if you are caught in between an attack and no way to stop it.

This game is not a strategy game its an gathering game.

I feel as if my time and money was wasted, which is a shame because the game looks really nice. If i wanted to get bullied by cheesy mechanics, id make a new MTG Arena account without my extensive library of cards. The only time you lose in this game is either you ran out of resources ( HP ) or you didn't have enough power or defense, regardless of strategy.

I am supremely disappointing.

Roguebook is a delightful addition to the roguelike deck-building genre, offering a fresh take on familiar mechanics. Developed by Abrakam Entertainment and co-designed by Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering, this game brings a wealth of strategic depth and replayability to the table.

One of Roguebook's standout features is its rich and diverse character combinations. Players can choose from a roster of unique heroes, each with their own playstyle and deck of cards. The game truly shines in its duo system, where you combine two heroes, mixing and matching their abilities and cards to create powerful synergies. This system offers an impressive variety of strategies and encourages experimentation, keeping the gameplay fresh even after multiple runs.

The game's innovative map system adds another layer of strategy. Unlike traditional roguelikes where you navigate through predefined paths, Roguebook presents you with a blank map that you gradually uncover using brushes and ink. This exploration mechanic ties seamlessly into the game's progression, as uncovering more of the map allows you to find valuable treasures, encounters, and power-ups.

Visually, Roguebook is a treat. The hand-drawn art style is charming and fits perfectly with the game's storybook theme. Each character, enemy, and environment is beautifully crafted, bringing the world of the Roguebook to life.

The deck-building aspect of the game is well-implemented, offering a good balance between strategy and luck. As you progress, you'll acquire new cards and relics that can dramatically change your playstyle, encouraging adaptive strategies and on-the-fly decision making.

While the game can be challenging, especially for newcomers to the genre, it provides a satisfying learning curve. Each run, whether successful or not, feels like a learning experience, and the unlockable content provides a strong sense of progression.

One minor criticism is that some character combinations can feel significantly stronger than others, which might limit variety for players focused on optimal strategies. However, this also allows for some incredibly powerful and satisfying builds.

Super fun game easy to play and also has progress between runs ( which similar games don't have that much ).
Whould definatly recomment it to others who like card games!

Pretty good deck builder card battler when compared against the gold standard Slay the Spire
much better than a lot of the others ones out there

2 hero with positioning system kind of like in Darkest Dungeon (front vs back)
decent animations (something StS suffered from)
characters have some voicing/sounds
music is aight (StS music was pretty bad imo)

ignore the other reviews that say the game rewards a larger deck size. there are only a few things that do, but for the most part, you still want to keep a small consistent deck like in most deck builders.

game starts to get really difficult as you add on the difficulty modifiers, so replayability isn't as good as StS, its also not as fluid of a game (StS is very low req)

pick this up if you are an avid deck builder card battler and want to try something different
I got it for $5-10