General News - Roguelike Deck Builder

Julian Gollop on PC Gamer: A new subgenre is born - The Roguelike Deck Builder.

The Gollop Chamber: Rise of the roguelike deck builder

From the tabletop to videogames like Slay the Spire and Dream Quest, a new subgenre has emerged.

I am often fascinated by game design evolution and how different genres and mechanics get fused in interesting ways. Much of the innovation here has taken place in board games, but there are also interesting evolutionary influences on videogames, where a videogame takes a board game idea and makes it something only possible in this medium. So today I would like to introduce you to a new videogame sub-genre—the roguelike deck builder. Now there aren't many entries in this genre, but I am sure this will change.

First, to explain deck building games. When you hear "deck building" the first thing you might think of is Magic: The Gathering or Hearthstone, but these are games for which you build decks, not "deck building games". In deck building games the game revolves around building the deck as part of the gameplay. The first deck builder I played was Dominion, a card/board game released back in 2008. In Dominion, each player starts with a deck of 10 cards containing money cards and victory point cards. Each turn a player draws five cards from that deck and may buy a card using money cards from their hand, and play a card. Then the hand is discarded, so that a new hand of five cards may be drawn on the next turn. When a player doesn't have enough cards to draw from they shuffle all discarded cards, including any cards bought in preceding rounds, in order to create a fresh draw deck. The cards you buy include money cards and victory point cards of various values, and kingdom cards which can be played for various effects which are described on the card.

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First game of this type I've ever played is Slay the Spire. The only other digital card game I played at all was Hand of Fate, so I'm not a big fan of the genre.

But Slay the Spire is f*&^ing amazing! Really engaging how they've mixed up the mechanics so the player can't get attached to a small set of cards or one strategy. The creatures are completely bizarre too, none of this dwarf-orc-elf-dragon crap.

If your a fan of Slay the Spire, you should try Dream Quest as well. It's got insultingly bad graphics, but if you can get past that it's the best roguelike deck builder around. Although Slay the Spire has a good chance of knocking it off it's throne when it's done.

If you absolutely can't deal with the graphics for Dream Quest, you could try Monster Slayers instead, which was strongly inspired by Dream Quest (probably a little too much). The graphics are much better, but in terms of gameplay Dream Quest is still much better (IMHO).

Hand of Fate is really a very different genre (and a fairly unique game in it's own right). I don't think you could judge how much you'd like other deck builder games based on playing that.

Originally Posted by screeg
First game of this type I've ever played is Slay the Spire. The only other digital card game I played at all was Hand of Fate, so I'm not a big fan of the genre.

But Slay the Spire is f*&^ing amazing! Really engaging how they've mixed up the mechanics so the player can't get attached to a small set of cards or one strategy. The creatures are completely bizarre too, none of this dwarf-orc-elf-dragon crap.

I friggin love card mechanics and deck-building in single-player games.
I will definitely get Slay the Spire as soon as I a have some more time on my hand!

I took a close look at Monster Slayers already but decided against it.

Strategy is my go-to and 2018 looks like it will be a *very* good year for strategy.