When a run begins, a path to the chapter boss opens up and players are set free to explore the page.
While many roguelike deck-builders are content with ferrying players along with slight variations of a preordained path, Roguebook makes the stuff between the fights a more engaging part of the game. Roguebook’s hex maps are charming little adventures that help to break up the combat with more exploratory elements. This grid and how the game pushes unconventional methods of deck-building are the primary differentiators for Roguebook. Like the title suggests, the maps formed by the pages are procedurally generated in a giant hex grid. Whatever else there is to the plot quickly falls to the wayside as players get deeper into the game. Taking place in the world of digital CCG Faeria, Roguebook sees the player trapped in a magic book, each page a different adventure map to explore and attempt to escape. It makes sense that with Roguebook, which is co-designed by Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield, that the team at Abrakam Entertainment SA was attempting to push back against some of those philosophies, with mostly successful results. However, it isn’t hard to see that a lot of these games are going through the motions, hitting the obvious card-battling archetypes, and doubling down on the “less is more” truism of deck-building.
Deck construction can be meditative and satisfying in the same way putting together a puzzle can be. Keeping the deck slim by removing bad cards and replacing them with more powerful ones is not only the core strategy to so many of these games, it is in many ways the primary appeal. Much like their physical counterparts, deck-builders are all about efficiency and consistency. In the same way deck-builders quickly amassed on store shelves in the board game space, roguelike deck-builders have become another booming sub-genre. By giving players the gatekeeping boss fight right away and otherwise leaving them to their own devices, Roguebook adds a few key considerations that make adventuring in the game more compelling.
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