SpellRogue review for PC

SpellRogue is a roguelike deckbuilder. One of my all-time favourite games, Slay the Spire, is a roguelike deckbuilder. As you can probably guess, it’s awfully hard for me to a) consider SpellRogue without comparing it to Slay the Spire, and b) not find it lacking in comparison.

But rather than saying why I didn’t like SpellRogue as much as one of my all-time favourite games, I should first acknowledge that it still does a lot well in its own right. Not too long ago, I played a game that didn’t just borrow here and there from Slay the Spire, it basically copied it with a different skin. SpellRogue, by contrast, inhabits the same genre, but it’s still undeniably its own game – for better and for worse.

For starters, you’re rolling dice rather than throwing down cards, which means that you’re relying on luck almost as much as you’re relying on skill. You can carefully curate your deck, and you can try to plan ahead, but at the end of the day you’re still hoping you can roll the right numbers to use the cards you want. This probably makes SpellRogue much more frustrating than it needs to be – but, at the same time, when rolls of the dice go your way it becomes easy to understand why some people love to gamble in games of change.

SpellRogue also has a visual style all its own, one that makes it look more like a board game come to life than anything else. The map you’re progressing on has a tiled look, the characters look like figurines – it’s definitely not a tabletop simulation, but between the graphics and the rolling dice, it’s at least not far from one.

Unfortunately, as I said up top, because SpellRogue is structured and plays out in a way that’s so similar to Slay the Spire – you get three dice rolls (more if you get the right charms), you move your way up a board that features enemies, shops, havens in which to rest, and lots of random encounters –it’s hard to say that SpellRogue comes out on top when you make that obvious comparison. There’s a little too much grinding to go through for not a lot of reward, and while some people may love the challenge, it makes for a less addictive experience.

Ghost Ship Publishing provided us with a SpellRogue PC code for review purposes.