Roguebook

Every run of Roguebook begins not with a single hero but a pair, and the interplay between those two characters shapes every decision that follows. Developed by Abrakam Entertainment SA, the studio behind Faeria, and designed with input from Richard Garfield, the card game designer best known for creating Magic: The Gathering, the game released on June 17, 2021 as a deckbuilding roguelike set inside a sentient, malevolent Book of Lore drawn from the studio’s earlier card game Faeria.

Players choose two heroes from a roster of six possible characters, each carrying their own deck of over 50 cards, a personal relic, and an individual skill tree. In combat, one hero occupies the front position and absorbs incoming damage while shielding the other; swapping positions mid-fight is a tactical resource in itself, letting players time combos across both decks. Enemies telegraph their intentions, rewarding players who read queued actions carefully rather than simply playing cards as fast as possible. With over 200 cards total, 80 relics, and 30 upgrade gems, the space of possible builds is wide, and no two decks assemble the same way across runs.

Outside combat, the map is a procedurally generated field of hexagonal tiles that must be actively uncovered. Magic inks reveal terrain, and what gets revealed matters: merchants, ruins, travellers, and quests are distributed across hidden cells, so exploration itself is a resource-management layer sitting beneath the deckbuilding. The game estimates roughly 20 hours to reach a first full clear, with 20 escalating difficulty levels unlocking new relics, gems, and encounter types as players progress, extending the challenge considerably beyond that baseline.

• Two-hero party with positional front/back switching during combat
• Procedural hex-tile maps revealed incrementally using magic inks
• Six hero options yielding distinct card pools and skill trees
• 80 relics and 30 card-upgrade gems feeding build variety
• 20 post-game difficulty tiers that introduce new content and harder enemies
• Story Tournament system added post-launch alongside a fully playable third character

The game’s update history shows sustained post-launch development through its first year. A Community Card Update arrived in November 2021, followed by balance patches and hotfixes through December and January. The most significant addition came in February 2022 when a new playable character, Fugoro, entered the game via Update 1.10, accompanied by a live-streamed reveal and a developer-run tournament with an anti-cheat system added shortly after. The game won the Grand Winner title at the Nyx Awards in April 2022. Players who enjoy tight resource decisions and want a deckbuilder where party composition and spatial exploration carry as much weight as individual card quality will find Roguebook pulls in a meaningfully different direction from genre peers that rely on solo-character builds alone.