“Only gets more chaotic and complex”

In deck-building games, less is more. That is, you’re usually working towards a small deck, taking every opportunity to jettison cards and thinking carefully before adding anything new.

You’re looking for predictability. You want the cards that make up your game-winning combo to come up, so you don’t want your draw diluted with things that don’t fit. In games like Slay the Spire, the ideal deck might be as small as five cards, creating one reliable sequence you can pull off every turn.

That sense of refining a deck down to its purest essence is a tactical thrill, but it’s not very conceptually fun. Your instinct is to want to grab every cool new thing that comes your way, to feel like the possibilities are expanding before you. Being miserly about your deck is unintuitive, and can make the final stages of a run a rote affair—you’ve finished making something that works, and now just need to go through the motions of proving it.

It’s fascinating how much rejecting the idea entirely makes Roguebook stand out. At its core, it’s a similar game to Slay the Spire, but the feel is very different.

Roguebook wants your deck to grow. As you add more cards, you gain powerful perks for your characters, many of which are further empowered by adding even more—and you get almost no opportunities to trim. Rather than refining down to a perfectly balanced machine, you’re bolting new parts onto your unwieldy engine of battle, trying to find the larger synergies that make each addition a boon instead of a liability.

PAYING IT FORWARD

By the end of a run, a good deck will have multiple complementary strategies. And far from becoming more predictable as you go, combat only gets more complex. By the time you hit the final boss, you’re thinking on your feet every turn.

Is it a better approach? Not necessarily—it has its own downsides, including leaving you much more at the mercy of probability. But as someone with hundreds of hours sunk into deck-builders, it’s lovely how refreshing and exciting one clever twist on the formula can be.