Roguelike Report Card: Roguebook

So far I’ve mostly graded either well-known roguelikes, games that are connected to popular IP, or games in early access that have plenty of time to find a big audience. But today I want to highlight a game that’s been out for a while and has flown under the radar. This game has under 4,000 reviews on Steam and a subreddit of just 1,500 members. Despite its relative obscurity, I think it’s an absolute banger and I’d love to spread the good word about it, which is why today I’m going to talk about Roguebook.

Roguebook is an interesting roguelike that pulls from several different games in the genre, but its closest comparison point is Slay the Spire because of its card-based battle system that relies on energy management and relics that affect your cards and characters. However, it also adds a dash of Darkest Dungeon in that you go adventuring with more than one character (two in this case) and also incorporates an overworld exploration mechanic that is found in few other roguelike games (the closest comparison point in my mind is another obscure roguelike, Trials of Fire). The game feels extraordinarily balanced despite these many features, perhaps because the design team included Richard Garfield, the designer of Magic: The Gathering.

Seifer and Sorocco take on a spider that is, honestly, pretty friggin cute.

Along with Garfield, the game was designed by Belgian games studio Abrakam Studio. The studio clearly has an affinity for card-based strategy, as their first game (which Roguebook is something of a spinoff of), Faeria, is a live-service digital collectible card game where battles play out on a “living” game board. The studio’s art style is vivid, colorful, and they love a cuddly-looking critter that’s up to no good. The art and narrative design are clearly inspired by fairy tales, and that comes through in everything they do. Roguebook’s style is backed up with an ocean of substance with satisfying mechanical depth and surprises to keep each run fresh.

Failure is Inevitable: A+ (10)

This is definitely a game where failure is lurking around every corner. Part of this is just a feature of card-based roguelikes: much of these games, whether it’s Slay the Spire, Balatro, Inscryption, or Roguebook, come down to making the exact right series of plays at the right time. The room for error in this sub-genre is often very small, so it’s very easy to find yourself facing dire consequences for misplays.

There are many places to make mistakes in Roguebook: you could not explore enough of the map and miss vital resources, you could build a deck that doesn’t synergize, you could play incorrect cards, or you could run into battle against an enemy that you’re not quite ready to face just yet. Even after you become familiar with the game, there will still be situations where you just draw a bad hand and find yourself taking lethal damage from enemies that will end your run. But the important thing is that this will happen less and less as you become familiar with the game, learn how to optimize certain characters and partnerships, and learn how to counter certain enemies.

The game is forgiving enough in that if one of your characters is killed during combat, they will revive at the end of it (but not before adding a few dead cards to your deck), and at the end of each stage your characters will fully heal and remove any dead cards from your deck. This is one of the secrets to why Roguebook scores so highly in this category: it lets you continue to fail long enough that you’re able to diagnose why you’re failing, allowing you to come back stronger in the next run.

If a character dies in combat, they will revive afterwards and you will receive two unplayable wound cards.

Rewards Experimentation: A+ (10)

Roguebook has four characters to choose from for each run. Each character has their own archetype (there’s a movement attacker, an attacker that gets stronger as it takes damage, a tank, and a support), and each of these characters has multiple different areas of strength that you can pursue (for example, the movement attacker has the ability to deal damage through multiple low-damage 0-cost daggers, but also the ability to deal heavier damage using cards that will switch her position). This makes each run an opportunity to try a new combo of characters and cards to find out which archetypes and sub-types work best against different enemies or for your playstyle.

Roguebook's four characters (from behind).

One of my favorite innovations in Roguebook that encourages and rewards experimentation is the “Talent Tier” system. This system unlocks bonuses as you add more cards to your deck, and the more cards you add, the better those bonuses are. Games like Slay the Spire and Balatro often reward players who keep a tight, smaller deck allowing them to draw the cards they need over and over again. There’s nothing wrong with this, but Roguebook forces players to ask themselves if they’d rather gamble on tightening their deck up enough that they’re able to draw the same powerful combo every time they need it, or hedge their bets and fill up their deck with “Good Stuff” (a term used to refer to cards that aren’t necessarily part of a combo but are still solid on their own) and bank on those bonuses making a significant difference.

Another nice twist is the ability to upgrade cards with gems. There are many different gems, each offering a different bonus to your cards. Common gems offer pretty mediocre, but often still very helpful, bonuses like adding a small amount of block to the card or allowing you to draw and discard a card. Rarer gems can completely cement a deadly combo for you by doing such things as guaranteeing a card is drawn in your opening hand or reducing a card’s cost to 0. You can apply these gems to your cards in or out of battle, and there are times when one might be more beneficial than the other. Cards only have a limited number of sockets for gems, and this will frequently lead to scenarios where you might find yourself socketing a gem for a situational benefit and later regretting it because you find another gem that would have provided a longer-term benefit.

Adding a gem to a card that grants a card draw when played.

With so many different systems allowing players to experiment and tinker, Roguebook is one of the most experimentation-friendly roguelikes I’ve ever played.

Requires Variation in Playstyle: A+ (10)

This is another section where Roguebook excels just by nature of being a deckbuilder. Part of the appeal of deckbuilding games is that they challenge you to make the most out of limited options. Deckbuilding allows players to feel like mad scientists, picking out the perfect ingredients to create a killer combo that’s never been seen before. Or, at the very least, it will allow players to feel like MacGyver, putting together a seemingly random assortment of cards and turning them into a tool that will enable them to beat their enemies. Players won’t always be able to get the exact card or relic they want in a deckbuilder, so they need to make do with what they get.

One of the ways Roguebook specifically requires variation in playstyle is that it tells you who the final boss is at the start of each run. Whereas in Slay the Spire you put together the best deck possible and hope that you don’t get hard-countered by the stage 3 boss, Roguebook allows you to start building around the final boss’s tricks from the beginning. While some might say this gives the player a huge advantage (and they might not be wrong), I would say that this creates more excitement in the early game where you have to both build a deck that’s strong enough to take out the early-level enemies and consider which cards will still have value against the final boss.

Another wrinkle that makes Roguebook stand out is the exploration element of the game: you get a limited amount of tools to explore a map that is full of upgrades, but you never know what you'll find when you explore a certain area. Sometimes you’ll find piles of gold, rare gems, battles that grant you a variety of rewards, or random encounters that can leave you with powerful bonuses. Sometimes you’ll find several of those things at once, and sometimes you’ll find none of them at all. Where the variation requirement comes in is in adapting to the shape of the map and the location of important objects. You may find yourself in a situation where you have to decide whether to spend your last paintbrush unlocking a path to a relic that can help your build, but you’re also low on HP and you could explore a wider part of the map if you used the paintbrush somewhere else in hopes of finding health vials. Roguebook will test your appetite for risk and force you to make tough decisions.

Using ink to reveal a path to a landmark.

Nails the Difficulty Curve: A (9)

The first category that Roguebook doesn’t ace, and it’s a mere 1-point markdown! This game’s difficulty curve is generally solid, especially when you’re newer to the game. At that point, the first level feels tough but beatable, the second level tests your ability, and the third level feels absolutely punishing. However, as you play and learn some basic strategies, the first stage starts feeling like less and less of an obstacle.

I consider Slay the Spire to be the absolute pinnacle of nailing the difficulty curve, and Roguebook has clearly taken at least one lesson from STS in that regard: the boss fights are always a test. Each stage has a variety of bosses for the game to choose from, and they are all perfectly balanced for each level. It is exceptionally rare that you’ll be able to simply run over a boss without having to make calculations or sacrifices. This strong final test for each stage does enough to earn an “A” for the category despite some shortcomings in balancing the curve in normal fights.

Stickiness: A- (8)

The stickiest part about this game is the promise of exploration each new game brings. Between figuring out how you’re going to get your two characters to synergize, what types of builds you’ll be able to create for each individual character, and the anticipation that comes with a map covered in fog of war, knowing that you have the power to lift it, there’s a lot to be excited about whenever you start a new game.

The only thing holding this game back from being tar-level sticky is the fact that it does take a moment or two for this game to get rolling, enough so that you might feel the need to take a break between runs. This is partly due to the game’s difficulty curve, but also because of the nature of having to seek out the resources you use to progress in the game. Whereas in games like Slay the Spire where you are all but guaranteed to leave a room with some kind of reward or Balatro where you know you will enter the shop between each blind, Roguebook requires you to find fights, cards, gold, and gems by exploring the map. This isn’t necessarily hard to do, but it does create a bit of a mental barrier when weighing whether or not to start up a new run.

Art Design: (1)

The art design for this game is clean, and while the characters and map are evocative of fairy tale imagery, the crisp 3D art style isn’t a perfect match for it. The animations are solid, and I love the character design, but beyond that, I wouldn’t say the art style is a real selling point for this game.

Sometimes the character models seem to clash with the scenery.

Narrative: (0)

There’s a rough narrative that you get sucked into a storybook and need to fight your way out, but that’s about the long and short of it. The playable characters have voice lines that imply a bit of personality, but there’s nothing too special about it.

Unique Twist: (1)

The unique twist that earned Roguebook a point in this category is the map system. You start each stage with a mostly hidden map composed of hexagons that your characters can walk on, and you can use brushes to reveal chunks of adjacent map or ink to reveal straight lines of hexes. By exploring the map, you can find new cards, resources to upgrade your cards, fights, special events, and relics. This creates a unique situation where you need to combine exploration with resource management while also giving you more control over how your run will play out than a game that relies on random encounters like The Binding of Isaac or Hades where you are required to complete combat to earn upgrades.

Total: 49 (A Tier)

I’m happy to award Roguebook my first official hidden gem award for a great game that has managed to fly under the radar. This game is as good as any roguelike deckbuilder not named Slay the Spire and deserves far more attention than it has received. If you have $25 to spare, do yourself a favor and pick it up on Steam. You’ll get hours and hours of rewarding playtime out of this game.