You just lost 40 minutes of progress. You're back at square one - and yet, somehow, you're already planning your next run. Welcome to the world of Rogues: a genre built on punishing you, confusing you with its own terminology, and keeping you hooked until 4 AM anyway.
Megabonk was made by one person, sold a million copies in two weeks, and its own developer calls it "Vampire Survivors but 3D" - which raises an obvious question. Is that all it is? A clone with a dimension added? I spent a lot of time with it trying to answer that honestly, because "clone" is a word that gets thrown around carelessly, and how we answer it determines whether this game deserves the attention it's getting.
Moonlighter is, on paper, two games that probably shouldn't work together - a cozy shop management sim and a Zelda-like dungeon crawler - and in practice, neither half is particularly exceptional on its own. But the seam between them, the moment where economic survival meets literal survival, is where the game becomes something genuinely worth playing. With the sequel on the horizon, there's never been a better time to understand what made the original quietly special.
Roguebook was designed with the help of Richard Garfield - the creator of Magic: The Gathering - and it shows in every interlocking system the game puts in front of you. It sits in the shadows of the deck-building genre, consistently overshadowed by Slay the Spire and Monster Train, despite being one of the most thoughtful next steps for any fan of either. If you know how to build a deck, this game was made for you.