Anyone who has found their niche in the recent trend of deck-building and dungeon-exploring roguelikes will find something to enjoy in "Roguebook," a confident effort from Abrakam Entertainment, veteran card game developer and creator of "Faeria" You'll find it in Roguebook. Set in the same world, the game is a colorful, whimsical, and engaging fantasy. It also proudly fits the genre mold of a run-based game where you can repeatedly unlock new cards, treasures, and characters to make your build more powerful and challenge yourself at your own pace.

Roguebook takes some great design cues from other recent rogue-lite games. The game offers a buffet of advanced Hades-like challenges that can be combined after you first "beat" the game; you can collect and use strange artifacts such as "Slay the Spire"; you can use the "Rogue Train" to create a "monster train" that will take you to the next level; and you can use the "Monster Train" to create a "monster train" that will take you to the next level. You can even mix and match two card pools every time, a deck-building staple used to great effect in "Monster Train". The deck itself also levels up, giving you points to spend on random talents based on the number of cards.

The "Rogue Book", while an achievement, is not particularly new. Familiar parts are arranged in new ways, with a few clever twists. Your deck is a combination of two of the four characters, each with a unique set of cards and talents. You use your two picks to move to the blank pages of the book (Hex Grid) and explore, consuming limited brushstrokes and ink splashes to reveal parts of the book that are not on the map. There you will find gold coins to spend in the store, magic cubes to draft new cards, adventure events with strange endings, and battles to flex your deck muscles.

Combat is a simple brawl of attack cards versus block cards, but with a little twist. Your two characters have positions, leads and follows, and respective health, and the cards often shuffle them around. Moving characters around is a major tactical decision: the enemy always attacks the lead character, and certain cards can only be used from certain positions. Enemies always attack the lead character, and certain cards can only be used from certain positions. They can also summon allies, who are more like battlefield effects that wear down opponents or give them limited-use abilities, rather than physical beings.

The reward for winning a battle always includes an increase in ink for a limited reveal and a new brush for a large reveal. When the ink runs out, you will fight a level boss, and at the end of the third level you will fight a big boss and win.

Whether you win or lose, you gain character experience that unlocks new cards and general experience that unlocks new items. This currency can be used for upgrades, unlocks, and a tree of permanent bonuses for future runs. In such future runs, you will be challenged with challenges that will make you take every new card you find or significantly increase the price of new items in stores in the middle of the run.

New runs are a chance to test your chosen character. Shara is fast and aggressive, but relatively fragile if she cannot use her tricks to avoid damage. Ogre's Sorokko is a deck that can take a hit while reeling in a giant punch. Seifer is a strange entity, a pain-fueled wolf whose all-out assault is backed by a demon ally. Finally, there's Aurora. It's a great deck design, fragile on the surface, but clever card play can turn it into a healing stream that can be damaging when overhealed.

Roguebook's most interesting twist is in the gems, which are picked up during the run and placed in the sockets of the cards. These gems provide upgrades to that card, adding bonus effects or boosting existing effects. They can be as mundane as +3 damage or -1 cost, or as exotic as always putting the card in the starting hand. My favorite was Boomerang's Gem, which instead of being discarded when cast, the card is always shuffled back into the deck. Unfortunately, the gems either starve or they don't. In some runs you will find almost nothing, and in others you will socket even the bad cards you have on hand.

Getting something new is based on a search that reveals the hexes of the map. Clever use of ink pots and sparing use of brushes can puzzle out the best way to reach things on the map. However, it is not possible to reveal the entire map. Sometimes there are not enough cards, gems, gold, or items. Sometimes you can't even find half of the good stuff.

This represents the entire rogue book. The mechanics generally work, are fun when they are running smoothly, and give you the run-based deckbuilding fix you want. But games like "Roguebook" have to resort to either being perfectly and tightly designed for perfection or so rich in fun content that you don't care about it otherwise; "Roguebook" is neither of those things. It's a good game for deck-building fanatics and non-hobbyists alike, but it doesn't reach for the stars.