Roguebook

I was surprised to find Roguebook in my backlog, given its relatively bad reviews, and that it looked like just another roguelike deckbuilder. Sure, there's an overworld exploration part where you can reveal the map using various types of inks you collect from battles and around the map, which in turn reveals more combat encounters and loot to power up before attempting the floor boss, but ultimately I didn't feel this system provided more depth to the game than just random encounters on a linear path.

The rest of the game is as standard as it seems. You can choose 2 heroes to play with, each of whom has their own pool of cards they are able to collect and use, and you can control their positions in battle via some cards, mostly defense cards, which allow you to strategically block enemy attacks and power up your own. There are also summonable allies, regular attacks, and other, not very remarkable features. Notably lacking is the card upgrade feature, which is more versatile by using gems with different effects that you can socket freely, allowing for very strong combinations, but they are a rather scarce commodity, so most cards will never be upgraded. Also, there is no way to remove cards from your deck, causing your decks to simply grow ever larger. Perhaps this was simply due to my playstyle choices, but I very often found myself having excess energy that I had no way to use, causing me to just play all my cards every single turn. There was still some strategy in the order I played them in, but there was usually a clearly optimal choice.

Overall, even though I haven't played a lot of what are considered the best in the genre, I could tell Roguebook was a very mediocre roguelike deckbuilder. Map exploration and combat were boring, and the game was very lacking in the strategic department. With how many options in the genre there are, I see no reason to recommend it.