Roguebook card software#

Roguebook card software#

The first thing to do when reverse engineering a piece of software of this complexity is to just click around all the folders and files to see if there is anything recognizable, any human readable files, any obvious assets such as images or music, any obvious indications of what game engine is being used etc.

Most of the skills in the perk tree (renamed to “embellishments” in the final release) are locked.

Player-controlled heroes have an artificial progress cap at level 7, which prevents some cards from being unlocked.

Only 2 of the 4 playable characters from the final game are available.

The pre-order demo contains three key limitations: Regular readers will know, however, that reverse engineering games by greedy publishers who raise my ire is like a pastime for me, so like an obedient microtransactionable sheeple I dutifully placed my pre-order and oh boy, ladies and gentlemen, Roguebook’s Steam package is a doozy. Normally such a marketing tactic would result in me pressing Alt+F4 and never thinking about the product again. Please keep reading, as you’ll see below just how little effort it takes publishers to capitalize on this mindset. If you are reading this thinking these are strong words for video game marketing and I’m being rather sensationalist, chances are good you are part of the reason why the games industry feels empowered to normalize this kind of abhorrent practice in the first place. There is actually another name for this behaviour, from Healthline:Įmotional blackmail describes a style of manipulation where someone uses your feelings as a way to control your behavior or persuade you to see things their way. Nacon literally crippled their own demo (the Doomed Coin makes it essentially unplayable) and played on the well-known principle of hot state decisionmaking to manipulate you into pre-ordering a game 5 months before it released.

Let’s step back for a moment here and remember that a game demo is a piece of advertising that end users interact with. I hadn’t been aware of the game before then, and what I found after completing the first area immediately set alarm bells ringing:

The Doomed Demoīack in February 2021 Nacon released a demo for Roguebook as part of the Steam Game Festival marketing campaign. Some balance and polish issues aside it’s basically a great game that can easily sell itself to its target audience based on merit alone – which makes it even more disappointing that Nacon have decided to defecate all over its potential customer base and burn through any generated goodwill even before day 1 of launch. Roguebook expands on the Slay The Spire formula primarily by allowing you to choose a pair of heroes to work together, and adding an extra layer of strategy to the game via a freely explorable overworld. Then there is Roguebook, developed by Abrakam Entertainment SA (the same folks who brought you the $90 card game Faeria) and published by Nacon. At the time of writing, both of these games are rated Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam. More recently, Monster Train iterated on the formula, adding stacked vertical areas for hero and enemy placement among various other new mechanics. Slay The Spire is an absolute classic roguelite deckbuilder / card battler that any roguelite or card game fan should play.