Thank you Nacon for sending us this game to Review!

In a secluded place, in a long-forgotten ruins in a forgotten forest, is the lair of the Frog Thief. In the Frog Thief's Lair lies a book called The Roguebook. Hidden within that book’s pages is a hidden world. The book has pulled in four adventurers, and their goal is to make their way through the chapters of The Roguebook in order to find their way out. The heroes must make their way through the pages of the book finding hidden treasures and defeating the monsters that prevent the heroes from escaping from the confines of The Roguebook.

Roguebook begins as one of the heroes wakes up from inside the pages of The Roguebook; upon regaining consciousness the hero is greeted by Nassar, a merchant also stuck within its pages. Nassar begins a basic tutorial of the game's mechanics and how they work. In each chapter of Roguebook, the Heroes must make their way to the gate and beat a boss in order to move on to the next chapter. On their way they can pick up treasures, reveal more of the map, or fight monsters. The only issue is that if the heroes are defeated at any time, they must start again at chapter 1 of The Roguebook with all their progress removed.

The game is a roguelike deckbuilder game, meaning that every time the game starts, many of the elements of it are different. Everything from the map, to the treasures, down to the placement of the enemies on the map, changes with each new run. Even the bosses are different each time to an extent. Each playthrough of the game, the heroes collect relics that can boost their abilities, cards that add attack or defensive options during battles, health containers to restore lost health, gold to buy new relics or cards, gems that can be added to cards to boost their abilities, ink to reveal hexagons on the map, and paintbrushes to reveal bigger portions of the map. All this is necessary to build up the strength to beat the boss of the current chapter and move on to the next.

There are 4 heroes for the player to choose from, but at the beginning of the game, only 2 are available. A dragon slayer named Sharra and her companion, a strange monster creature named Sorocco. As they progress throughout the next few chapters, they also pick up a demon-like creature named Seifer as well as the turtle-like creature Aurora. Each of the characters has their own special abilities, and two of the available heroes are chosen for an adventure.

A lot of the game is spent exploring the map in the chapters and figuring out how to retrieve relics and other treasures. Each chapter will reveal a direct path to the boss monster. And on this path there is always 1 normal monster battle, a Vault of Wisdom where for a price a card can be drafted, a Rune of Sight which reveals the location of a treasure on the map, and an Elite Battle which has stronger monsters. However, each chapter the heroes start out with 5 paint brushes which when used reveals portions of the map in a radius around the heroes, giving them access to different areas and other treasures. With these brushes, the heroes can make their way around all the battles and go straight to the boss if so desired, but it is highly recommended that players use the paint to seek out treasures and gain more cards. Extra brushes can be gained from fighting Elite Battles, and fighting Normal Battles, the heroes gain different types of ink. Ink is used similar to paintbrushes, but in a smaller scale. Some inks will only reveal one hex on the map, some will reveal up to 3 to 5 in a straight line. Some affect the brushes and give them the ability to reveal a larger area and so on.

Gathering cards and treasures is key to beating the boss of each chapter. As the player reveals more of the map, gold will be scattered throughout the map that can be picked up. Using that gold players have the ability to buy cards off Nassar or draft a card from the Vault of Wisdom. These cards will always be of one of the two heroes that were chosen at the beginning. Players will also want to pick up relics, equippable items that give bonuses to the heroes. These items make a huge impact on battles as it gives bonuses to the heroes making them stronger. There are also some items that lead to a scenario that gives them choices, and depending on these choices, they can get cards or gems or even be healed.

The battle system for Roguebook is extremely fun, though it does require a lot of strategy and a bit of luck as well. The heroes are arranged one in front of the other as are the enemies if there are more than one. The battle starts by drawing 5 cards from the player;s deck, these cards are all the things that the heroes can possibly do during their turn. It can consist of attacking, defending, summoning allies and drawing extra cards. Each card has a power cost associated with it which means that the amount of cards that can be played on a turn is limited to the power pool that the heroes have each turn. Heroes start with 3 power unless they have items or cards that can boost the numbers. The enemies always show what their next move is, so deciding whether to go all out on attacking or making sure to have some defense is key to surviving. The heroes will switch positions depending on what attack or defensive card is used, but at the end of the player's turn, whichever hero is left out in front will take the brunt of the attack. After the player chooses to end their turn, any allies that were summoned will attack, then the enemies attack. The nice thing about the end turn button is if the player hovers over it with the mouse, it will show them exactly what damage will be done to the hero so the player can use that to their advantage in deciding what cards they need to play.

As the player continues to fight monsters and bosses, they will collect pages, which are said to be pages of The Roguebook. These pages are used to unlock things called Embellishments. Embellishments are permanent bonuses that the player gets after each playthrough, things like heroes start with more health for the heroes, or start with better cards, add more gold or relics to the maps and so on. These embellishments also assist the player making it easier to beat the chapters.

Finally, once the player beats the 3rd chapter, they successfully beat the main story; however, the game is not over. As the player starts the new run, they are given the choice of epilogues to play through. These are basically the same chapters but with slightly harder monsters and some bonuses that are offset by some negatives that are chosen at the beginning of the run. These can range from monsters drop more gold, but costs are 40% higher to the Elite Battles are mandatory and the Elites do a higher damage percentage. These epilogues also provide more pages to be found in each the maps, it also provides a large reward of pages if the player manages to make it through all 3 chapters without being defeated. There are 15 epilogues in all and each one is more difficult than the last.

The gameplay I found to be enjoyable; each run took about an hour of time before I was defeated or beat the 3 chapters. Trying to choose how many enemies to fight to gain enough paintbrushes and ink to get all the relics and healing orbs was where most of my time with the game was spent; it is almost like a puzzle trying to fit the pieces together. The battles were a lot of fun though they could be frustrating as well especially if I wanted to go all out on the hero's attacks, but all I got in my draw were defense cards, which is why luck is definitely part of this game.

I really enjoyed the graphics, all the maps looked hand painted as well as the heroes and monsters. While these were not top of the line graphics, this game was not meant to be. It felt more like a work of art or pictures from a story book. The heroes themselves never changed, however, there was a mask relic that actually showed up on the hero it was equipped to during the battle scenes. The music was fantastic, it fit well within the world it was constructed for. I did run into a few bugs; only one that caused me to lose a battle though. In one of the battles, some of the cards lost their graphics and I couldn't play them. Another bug I ran into was I was able to walk around the starting gate somehow but the moment I touched anything the game crashed; that happened twice but it was random. As of the writing of this review, while a controller will work for walking around it cannot be used exclusively as it will not recognize any button presses.

The game is a fantasy game, so there is a lot of magic involved. One of the characters is a demon-like creature that can summon demons as allies to fight for him. Some of the cards feature a picture of a skeleton. I ran across one scenario where it game me two options, one to pet a Llamacorn and the other to kick the creature. There is definitely fantasy violence, but no blood comes out of a monster when they are hit. Some of the monsters are human bandits that the heroes have to fight, but when a monster or bandit is defeated, they just disappear so there are no dead bodies.

Overall, I thought Roguebook to be an extremely fun game and at times addicting. It is an easy game to pick up and play for a bit and then stop. It has a high replayability factor as everything is different each playthrough as well.

As always, consider any appropriateness issues before making a choice as to play this game or not, but if the things mentioned do not bother you, then I think this would definitely be a good choice for any roguelike deckbuilder fans.