Roguebook

Does Magic: The Gathering’s creator play his cards right?

Even poker is a roguelike if you think about it. Each game a new set of hands is dealt, and if you lose, you’re out of money and need to start all over again. Card games and the concept of trying runs again and again go perfectly together – after all, what kind of luck is easier to understand than the good old-fashioned luck of the draw?

Roguebook isn’t the first card-based roguelike, but it is the first one made in partnership with Richard Garfield, Magic: The Gathering’s creator. Transported into a faerie tome, you need to journey across the pages to have any hope of breaking free.

CARD SHARP

At the start you form your party with two heroes, able to mix and match combinations of fighters to form the perfect partnership (though our hands-on only gave us two to try). From where you begin on the page, hexagonal tiles sprawl out all the way to the boss gate, which you can challenge at pretty much any time should the route be clear.

Do that, though, and you’re liable to get stomped quicker than a Pontin’s dancefloor during the ChaCha Slide. Only by spending Ink can you reveal detours on the page, turning hexes into traversable terrain. Earned in battle, Ink comes in a variety of styles that reveal different shapes. Spending and accruing it wisely makes a big difference to the cards and boongranting artefacts you have available.

With just two party members, battles might seem simple, but there’s a deceptive amount of strategy – mixing offensive and defensive cards, and switching who’s out front and who’s at the back, is important. The more cards in your deck, the trickier the hands you might draw, but the smarter the plays that could be available to you. Enemies can pile on serious damage if you’re not thinking about how to balance dealing damage and blocking. Because of that, you’ll need every advantage you can muster against the bosses. Brutal? Yes. But we want to draw more.

“MIXING OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE CARDS IS IMPORTANT.”

IMPRESSIONS

This unusual roguelike demands a fair bit of thought, and should keep lovers of card games drawing again and again.

With only enough energy to play some of your hand each turn, you’d better pick well.