Roguebook

I was a Faeria player when this game was announced. I waited long months until I was allowed to test alpha. Since then, I knew Roguebook would be good, but now it's even better than what I expected. Graphics are beautiful, characters are well designed, cards feel pretty balanced with all the interesting mechanics, and plenty of strategies are viable. Soundtrack is good, though I wish they took this chance to reuse some music from Faeria too (specially the ambient ones, they would fit perfectly here). If you played Slay the Spire, or something similar from the genre, you already know what to expect: start with basic cards, explore map, defeat enemies, unlock more cards, earn gold & artifacts, defeat tougher enemies, repeat. Among other cool things, Roguebook incorporates roguelite elements (through obtaining 'pages' you'll be able to activate permanent perks at the end of each run), the Faeria-style hexagonal map which makes exploration very engaging, and a two character system that makes positioning an important factor in combat. It sounds more complicated than it is ; combats are very intuitive and the map, even though it forces you to make choices, is easy to navigate. Every victory is meaningful and satisfactory - if you like deckbuilders, I strongly recommend you to try it.

Challenging and fun. A bit frustrating to get into, but once you get the hang of it, careful, you can sink some hours. Very satisfying when you win the scenarios.

A well made, colorful game. I quit after 15 hours and 35% achievements, because I had beaten the game and didnt find the "Epilogue level" interesting enough. The game is similar to Slay the Spire, Monster Train or Tainted Grail so I will not write about the cards and perks and items too much but instead focus on the differences. + Exploring the world is FUN! For the first time, you have to make interesting choices not only during combat, but on the world map. You can move freely in all directions and use items to get to places you couldn't reach before. + Gorgeous triple A graphics (unlike other similar games) + Racoons firing yaks at you! With catapults! - Sometimes, the game hides vital information from you. For example, I died because the game didn't tell me what Final Upgrade on the mecha centipede boss does. Losing all your progress to bad UI is even worse than losing to RNG. If you like Slay the Spire and Monster Train, give this a shot. It's a steal - especially when discounted.

I really enjoyed this little game. It's a solid card-battler game with distinctive characters, a charming art style, a good amount of cards, diverse enemies, and addictive gameplay dynamics. Like other rogue-lite games, its gameplay loop has you exploring a map, fighting monsters, losing fights, and collecting better cards so that you can do it all again. It works well, even though the difficult can spike if you don't get the right cards or don't have a decent strategy. The negatives of the game are few but worth mentioning. While there are 4-5 characters that you can use in pairs, the game really needed about twice that number to have any kind of long term appeal for me. Also, it needs more than three main maps, even though they are somewhat randomly generated. After I finally beat the game once, I had seen about everything that the game had to offer and really wasn't inspired to do it all again with different characters. Anyhow, this is a well-done, fun game. If you like card-builder games and you can get this (and the DLC) for $15 or less, I would recommend it.

The music, art and general gameplay loop are good and interesting. However, there's too few characters and too few maps/chapters. If it is a rogue-like, why can't there be more randomly picked and generated biomes? I also would have liked if there was an option to change the secondary character at the start of every map. But there's one thing i find problematic: Drawing the maps and using drawing tools in general is inconsistent in controls, behavior and presentation, at least when playing with an xbox controller. 1. The regular brush is used by holding down Y for 2 seconds, after which the drawing will be considered as 'confirmed'. During that time, the impacted area is highlighted and the number of none-blocked newly painted tiles is shown. If i just want to see this number to find a better place, i always have to just shortly 'tap' the button and be quick about reading the 'blinking' number, otherwise it will just quickly be drawn... 2. ...however, when the 'star-something' brush upgrade is active that allows to paint anywhere on the map, there will be no number when just tapping. The drawing shape and number will only appear after holding down the Y button long enough to confirm the drawing. Then i have to actually select the target area and confirm with X. 3. Using inks works similar to 2., expect that one first has to press X, then select the ink from the inventory and press X to confirm that selection to get to the actual tile selection mode. Why can't the regular brush also just use a "select, review then confirm" control flow like everything else?