Roguebook - New Deckbuilder

[WYBaugh]

Has anyone taken the plunge on Roguebook?





Looks interesting but getting mixed reviews.

[LordMortis]

I took a look at the DLC content $7.99

The Apex Predator Pack gives you access to the following exclusive content: 5 treasures, 5 gems, 4 cards and the elite boss.

And I'll let someone else review and report before giving it a 2nd look.

[Lorini]

Richard Garfield helped with the development of Dominion, the original deckbuilder, a physical card game. I'll keep an eye on it as well, but will probably wait til a sale to acquire.

[Lorini]

I bought it anyway, it's really good, at least in my opinion They had Day 0 DLC which set the children on the internet to pouting (who says devs can't have DLC with a release??) so they now are giving it away for free.

[TheMix]

Penny Arcade is/are fans as well. For what it's worth.

[Sudy]

Geez, I thought I'm supposed to get some kind of alert when there's a new deck builder....

I had no idea this was from the Faeria team. I didn't get too far into it (I'd like to give it another look), but the design and art was superb.

At first glance this is intricately designed and highly polished. So if that lack of polish turned you off Monster Train you might want to give this a look. Or if Slay the Spire was a little too stylized for you. Mind you, this is a purely visual impression before getting into gameplay.

This is under $20 CAD for Canucks on Green Man Gaming right now. No idea about the rest of you.

[Sudy]

I haven't made it beyond the second world yet, but my initial impression is that if you adore deck-building rogue-lites and are bored of Slay the Spire, this has a fresh and beautiful coat of paint. It adds light party and formation mechanics (think Slay the Spire, but two heroes) and deeper card upgrade options with gems (more like Monster Train). It also makes the experience less abstract by providing a navigable overworld that's more than an afterthought. You uncover the fog of war using "inks" obtained from encounters. It's unlikely/impossible to access every encounter/item on a map, but if you're smart and lucky you may get close.

But it remains to be seen whether these additions improve the experience or dilute it. Under the hood, this still feels very, very much like Slay the Spire. The initial card/character mechanics may not feel as deep as those of Slay's latter characters. (But I still have a lot of cards and one character to uncover.) But they're fresh enough, and do feel very well designed and tested.

I'm having a lot of fun with it. I don't know if it advances the genre, but it definitely picks out the good bits and adds more. At this point I'd probably be more likely to recommend Monster Train after Slay, though. Monster Train's not perfect, but its twist is a lot twistier and more refreshing until repetitiveness sets in.

[Sudy]

I've "beat" the game once out of four tries now I think, which was a bit surprising. But maybe I just lucked into good synergies. Some boss battles can definitely be tough and catch you off guard though.

Overall, I'm really digging it. The overworld stuff is a lot of fun and I appreciate the more fleshed-out experience. In StS and MT there's not a lot to break up the encounters, but in Roguebook you've got to use your noggin to make the best use of your brushes and inks. It's kind of like going from Mario 2 to Mario 3.

One complaint however is that it glitched out and was unable to save my run once. I can't find any other reports of this online, so I'm hoping it's a fluke. When I got to the second world, I noticed the shopkeeper who follows you from world to world wasn't going to his proper spot; he was stuck on his "tutorial" tile where he only appears the first time you reach that world. Must have been some kind of scripting issue. I tried to save and quit, but noticed there was only an exit option. I hoped I was just misremembering the labelling; but nope, save eaten. It was a really good run so far, too. A small consolation is that I think it saved the currency for unlocks that carries over between runs.