Roguebook is a wonderful deckbuilding roguelike that takes Slay the Spire style single-track combat and makes it double. Because, in Roguebook, you play as not one but two intrepid heroes attempting to escape the pages of the titular book within whose pages they've been imprisoned. After all characters have been unlocked, you begin your game by choosing two of four playable heroes, each with their own set of base and draftable cards. This leads to all kinds of really interesting synergies in combat and makes the mechanic of swapping between heroes - and, thus, determining who takes damage each turn - vitally important to master as you make your way through the book's three chapters.

In addition to combo combat, the second way Roguebook sets itself apart is by making its map playable. You can freely traverse the spaces inked in on the map to recover treasure, reach checkpoints where you can draft cards, interact with special events, battle enemies, and more. The gamification of the map comes in the fact that the majority of its hexes are blank when you enter a chapter, meaning that, in order to gain the power you'll need to take on each of three increasingly difficult bosses, you need to fight enemies to collect ink and explore the map by coloring in its hexes.

When you enter a chapter, you're given five brush strokes that unlock a series of hexes in a circle emanating from around your character. When you win battles or discover loot, sometimes you'll be rewarded with individual ink containers that unlock hexes in straight lines or individual morsels for improved mobility. After you're out of brush strokes and ink, the map is locked and it's time to take on the boss.

Roguebook's core loop is one fans of the deckbuilding roguelike genre will be extremely familiar with. You enter combat with non-boss level enemies, fighting your way to cards, upgrades, spendable resources, and permanent artifacts and building up strength until you face the boss. Once you beat the boss, you move on to the next area. Roguebook's map also has a loop. It nests within the core loop between combat encounters and goes as follows: use ink to unlock new areas, explore new areas, gain more ink, repeat. And so on and so forth until you run out of map to explore (or ink to explore it with). Then, the only way out is to fight.

As you can probably tell from tracing these loops side by side, one of Roguebook's triumphs is the sheer number of choices given to the player. While, in other deckbuilding roguelikes, you're usually granted the option of choosing your path along a static map, Roguebook adds interactivity and expanded choice in its ink and brush resources. While exploring the map, each move has consequences and each hex contains a precious secret waiting to be revealed.

Controlling two characters in combat - each with their own card set - spawns an entirely new array of synergies and strategies to make the most of their combined effects. The game offers a progressive tree that rewards consecutive playthroughs by allowing players to increase the chances of encountering bonuses on the map and bolster their favorite heroes. Roguebook's art is pretty good, but the score is even better, and the novelty of the map mechanic is charming, at first.

Unfortunately, that last qualifier is necessary because - although it initially was a fun new element and one I hadn't seen before in the genre - the map traversal in this game ultimately slows it down and distracts from the joy of combat. Worrying about how many brush strokes you have left feels so inconsequential after breathlessly conquering a boss with both of your characters just clinging to life. And yet it's near impossible to progress without constantly hunting for ink.

Another choice I really didn't like from this game was its lack of opportunities to cull cards from your deck. In the majority of other deckbuilding roguelikes, you're given ample opportunities to delete cards that are no longer useful or that take up unnecessary space. For instance, in Monster Train, usually one of my first priorities after getting a little bit into a run is to toss the four weak monsters that players start each run with. The game allows this option to let the player feel in control of their deck and be able to turn over their cards at a reasonable rate.

However, after ten hours of Roguebook, I had only seen one opportunity to delete a card. It came in a random event. This dearth of culling moments led to me either building bloated decks on my first couple runs before I recognized this idiosyncrasy or, in later tries, forgoing opportunities to draft cards late in the game. It's no fun to want to get deeper into a sleek strategy but not feeling like there's room to do so.

Still, I enjoyed the living daylight out of Roguebook, and I'll probably remain trapped between its pages for many moons to come. 8/10.

Where it shines:

• Combo combat
• Music
• Novel map mechanic

Where it fades:

• Inking feels bad
• Hard to cull cards