Forget slaying dragons or crawling through dungeons. Grab a guitar, recruit a few bandmates, and prove you’ve got what it takes to become Riff City’s biggest rock star. There are rival musicians to humiliate, outrageous outfits to wear, and enough musical mayhem to make even the loudest garage band look like a group of well-behaved choirboys. Your weapon of choice is a deck of cards capable of turning a few catchy riffs into an absolute musical massacre.
Developed by Aerie Digital, Battle Bands: Rock & Roll Deckbuilder is a wonderfully eccentric roguelike deckbuilder that swaps swords and spells for guitars, drums, keyboards, and bass. Released in November 2023, it combines strategic card battles with cooperative campaigns, outrageous character customization, and a fantasy world where musical talent is apparently measured by how thoroughly you can destroy the competition.
Despite earning a Very Positive rating on Steam, with 90% positive feedback across just 171 user reviews at the time of checking, this unusual little deckbuilder has barely made a dent in the genre’s spotlight.
Pick Your Instrument, Prepare for Battle
Every great band needs musicians, and Battle Bands gives you four instruments to choose from including guitar, bass, keyboard, or drums. Each comes with its own collection of cards, giving different band members distinct abilities and strategies. With hundreds of cards available, there’s plenty of opportunity to experiment with combinations that complement your chosen instrument.
The battles themselves revolve around generating Hype, which determines how well your band is performing against its rivals. Rather than simply throwing cards onto the table and hoping for the best, you’ll need to put together songs, play the right combinations, and build enough momentum to outshine the competition.
Your opponents aren’t going to sit quietly through your performance, either. Rival bands have tricks of their own, including ways to interfere with your songs and disrupt your plans. One badly timed move could leave your carefully arranged performance falling apart halfway through the chorus.
It’s an entertaining spin on turn-based card combat, replacing traditional health bars and monster-slaying with a battle for musical supremacy.
Four Musicians, One Questionable Band Name
You can tackle Battle Bands alone, but the real fun comes from assembling a group of up to four players. Tour Mode sends your band across Riff City in a roguelike campaign, challenging increasingly difficult AI opponents and unusual bosses as you work toward rock stardom.
Between performances, you’ll have opportunities to improve your deck, upgrade cards, and visit music shops to prepare for the next showdown. Coordination matters, especially when each instrument contributes something different to the performance. A clever combination of cards across several band members could turn a struggling show into a spectacular victory.
Playing solo doesn’t mean missing out on the full band experience, either. You can control every musician yourself or use AI-assisted bandmates, with built-in communication options for guiding their actions. That gives solo players the chance to experiment with full-band strategies without having to recruit three friends who can agree on what to play. Anyone who’s ever tried organizing an actual band will appreciate that particular convenience.
Battle of the Bands Gets Completely Out of Hand
Touring isn’t the only way to prove your musical superiority. Battle Bands also features Royale Mode, an online competitive tournament where up to 64 bands can compete for the top spot. That’s potentially an enormous number of musicians fighting for the same imaginary spotlight.
With teams of up to four players, the competition introduces a very different challenge from battling AI opponents. Human rivals can be much harder to predict, especially when they’ve spent hours perfecting their own card combinations. For players who enjoy competitive deckbuilders, the prospect of taking a carefully constructed band into a massive tournament adds another reason to keep experimenting.
There’s also the Shadow Band Reign, which challenges players against a powerful version of their own former band. Getting beaten by another group is embarrassing enough, but losing to your previous line-up could be even harder to explain.
Dress Like a Legend, Play Like a Maniac
Becoming a rock star involves more than having a decent collection of cards. Battle Bands offers thousands of cosmetic combinations, allowing you to customize your musicians, instruments, clothing, band van, and even your van buddy. You can create a band that looks ready to headline a massive rock festival or assemble the most ridiculous collection of mismatched musicians Riff City has ever seen.
Cosmetics are earned through gameplay rather than microtransactions, with Backstage Pass progression and Joe’s Variety Shop providing additional outfits and accessories to unlock. The Backstage Passes are free, and players can switch between them without losing access to their rewards.
An Encore Worth Discovering
Battle Bands: Rock & Roll Deckbuilder left Early Access on November 13, 2023, following an earlier launch in March 2022. Its full release introduced additional cosmetics, new rivals, expanded competitive content, and more reasons to return to Riff City. Yet with only 171 Steam user reviews when checked, it’s still a relatively obscure entry in the roguelike deckbuilding genre.
That’s a shame, because the combination of cooperative card battles, musical mechanics, and ridiculous customization gives it a personality that’s difficult to confuse with anything else. You can spend hours refining your decks, experimenting with different instrument combinations, and trying to create the ultimate rock band without ever having to learn a single real-world chord.
Although if your drummer keeps ruining every performance, perhaps it’s time to start auditioning replacements.