Once Upon a Rogue's Tale Preview: Heart of the Cards

Once Upon a Rogue's Tale is a rogue-like deckbuilder in early access based on childhood fan-favorite fairy tales. As you play, you must utilize strategy regarding positioning, power, special moves, dice rolls, and more. On top of the roguelike deckbuilder gameplay, players have the power of choice. Between battles on your voyage, you have your own personal storybook where you can decide to be friends or foes with other fairy tale characters commonly seen as good or evil.

All in all, it's up to you. How will you play? Once Upon a Rogue's Tale features a solid but familiar formula, but it's refined to make or break a player's playtime. What is here has the potential to be remarkable.

Presentation

The title features a cutesy storybook art style that accurately conveys the characters' childhood wonder, making the darker twists within that much more substantial. I can't fault the game for anything in terms of presentation, but one thing I wish it had is voice acting. 

Now, that would be a lot of voices to finalize and create, but it could have helped the fan-favorite characters come to life. Also, casting for fairy tale characters and playing with the stereotypical voices we typically see could have been fun and exciting. 

Narrative

Immediately upon booting up a new game in Once Upon a Rogue’s Tale, players are tasked with choosing one of three characters. I was locked to one character, and that character was Little Red Riding Hood. However, the other two characters are Jack and the Beanstalk and The Frog Prince.

Your story is filled with choices woven before you. Some threads in between battles lead to unforeseen consequences, adding depth to the narrative and altering some character's typical storylines. For instance, I defeated a witch and unlocked her as a new character that joined my squad, with four characters available at once in a party. The witch fight itself also played into the narrative storybook, and you see it play out before you individually. 

Gameplay

For those who have played Slay the Spire, the game's moment-to-moment gameplay is similar in most aspects. Once Upon a Rogue's Tale adds the fairy tale angle and dice rolls that act as energy for each card's abilities, among other things.

To begin, you roll a die and draw cards from your deck. The die contains five classes and a joker that different cards and characters utilize differently. Additionally, if you don't like your first roll, you can re-roll one time and hope for a different outcome. The more characters you have in your party, the more die you have to roll. The cards range from character, attack, permanent, buff, passives, etc. However, an angle you must take into consideration is positioning. In the game, character cards can only generally attack straight ahead, while other abilities can move characters or allow you to attack from anywhere. 

Once you win a battle, the rewards are gold, new cards, and Exp, but you can buy other characters with your gold or heal at campfires along your chosen path as your health carries over into the next bout.

Once Upon a Rogue's Tale progresses slowly, but I didn't mind that. I enjoyed what I was playing, so I implemented new strategies as I went. The slow and methodical approach to the game complimented my playstyle well, and overall, it feels like a game with high replay value. Character deaths and the ironically locked Unlock Ability are among things I didn't experience beyond the other starting characters. Those aspects interest me, but I can’t speak too much on them.

Breakdown

Game: Once Upon a Rogue’s Tale

Developers: PolyPirates UG, Lizard Child

Availability: Steam

Previewed on Steam

Demo Length: Around an hour

Pros:

• Familiar yet evolved Deckbuilder formula

• Character choices

• Cutesy storybook art style

Cons:

• Progresses a little slow

Final Thoughts

Truth be told, Once Upon a Rogue's Tale features a formula reminiscent of Slay the Spire, but it's iterated on and expanded. I love what I've played, can't wait for more, and can only hope for a Mobile version. Additionally, I would love to use this formula and play cards from different IPs. This is not to say that the fairy tale angle didn't do it for me, but I wonder how this specific formula would be fair with something like the Berserk license or TMNT. This formula and a more mainstream or lively IP could spell money.

Preview by Austin Ernst