Roguelike Deckbuilder Tropes, Part 1
A while back I started writing a post going through all the roguelike deckbuilder tropes, and discussing how I’m considering using (or not using) them. Turns out that was going to be a MASSIVE post, so the new plan is to discuss just one trope at a time, in an ongoing series.
BUT before we get to that I wanted to share a piece of art from the second artist to join the project as an ongoing contributor, Ivan Nathanael Juarez (or Yurthoz, in his online portfolios).
The Duskwing is a deadly stealth bomber.
Reshuffling and Drawing
Most other roguelike deckbuilders I’ve played have card-processing mechanics inspired by the tabletop deckbuilder Dominion:
At the start of every turn you draw up to a certain hand size.
At the end of every turn you discard cards you didn’t play.
When your deck runs out you shuffle your discard back into it.
My best guess at why this is the standard—besides the age-old wisdom “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”—is that it lets you get through your deck far more rapidly. In a genre about building your deck, it’s nice to see more of it in every battle.
That said, I have around 5 years of experience designing a game with more MtG-inspired fundamentals:
Draw 1 at the start of each turn.
Hold onto cards you don’t play.
When your deck runs out you don’t get any more cards (or you might just lose outright).
I plan to stick with this ruleset, and not just because I’m good at designing content for it. As a player, I really like the subtle resource management problems it asks me to solve:
Should I keep holding onto this incomplete combo, or should I just play the pieces now to survive?
How much card draw do I need to keep a decent handful of options during each phase of the game? How much does the answer change based on how expensive my cards are?
Based on quite a lot of testing, I think this ruleset works. For me it feels like a small but fresh twist for the genre.
I’ve been working through trying as many competitors as possible, but at least so far I haven’t seen any with this ruleset. So if you’re aware of any, send me a note on the community Discord, and I’ll check them out!