Blood Bowl 3 and Roguebook Updates at Steam Digital Tabletop Fest

Lesquin, France, October 21, 2021 – At the Steam Digital Tabletop Fest 2021, which takes place 21-25 October, Nacon is playing its trump cards and hosting exclusive livestreams for Roguebook and Blood Bowl 3.

Click here to explore the Steam Digital Tabletop Fest

For Blood Bowl 3, there will be a livestream on Friday, the 22nd of October at 6am PDT (3pm CEST) with two members from the development studio Cyanide: Project Lead Gautier Bresard and Victor Wathier, Lead QA. They will talk about the origins of Blood Bowl 3 and review the latest beta and improvements added based on fan feedback.

In its livestream, the Abrakam Entertainment team will discuss the latest updates to its roguelike deck builder Roguebook and what's next for the game. It will also be a chance to revisit the card design contest, in which the newly crowned winner was given a legendary Magic: The Gathering™ card worth $20,000: the Black Lotus. The livestream will occur on the 25th of October 4 pm PDT (1 am CEST).

Funnier, bloodier, and more spectacular than ever, Blood Bowl 3 will be a hit with fans of the universe and strategy games alike. At launch, the game will include 12 teams' each with their own pitch and cheerleaders, Campaign and Multiplayer modes, and more customization options than a Blood Bowl game has ever received before.

Developed by Abrakam Entertainment and co-designed by Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The GatheringTM, Roguebook is a roguelike deck builder set in the magical world of Faeria. Players must build a team of two heroes from the four available and battle the legends of the Roguebook in tactical turn-based combat.

Roguebook is now available on Steam

The game will arrive later on PlayStation®4, PlayStation®5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo SwitchTM

Blood Bowl 3 will be available soon in early access on PC. The full release will be later on PC, PlayStation®4, PlayStation®5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Steam, and Nintendo Switch™.

Check Roguebook Steam page

Add Blood Bowl 3 to your Steam wishlist

All NACON games and accessories are here: nacongaming.com

About Abrakam Entertainment

ABRAKAM ENTERTAINMENT is the AA Video Game Developer of the successful PC strategy game 'Faeria,' which launched in 2017 to 85% positive Steam reviews and praise from critics and major influencers. With their own tools and a very dedicated team, ABRAKAM has the ability to develop innovative strategy games efficiently. Roguebook, a roguelike card game, is their next next major title to be launched on PC and Consoles.

About Cyanide Studio

Cyanide is a French video game development studio created in 2000 and based in Nanterre. It has two subsidiaries located in Montreal and Bordeaux. The studio is known for its sports games, such as the popular PC series Pro Cycling Manager and its console version, Tour de France. Cyanide is also the author of Blood Bowl (Sport/Fantasy, 2009), the adaptation of the famous Games Workshop board game; Game of Thrones (RPG, 2012); Styx: Master of Shadows and the sequel Styx: Shards of Darkness (Infiltration, 2014/2017); and Call of Cthulhu, a game adapted from the tormented world of HP Lovecraft (investigative RPG, 2018). Since 2018, NACON, one of Europe's leading video game publishers, holds a 100% stake in the company. More information can be found at www.cyanide-studio.com

About NACON

NACON is a company of the BIGBEN Group founded in 2019 to optimize its know-how through strong synergies in the video game market. By bringing together its 14 development studios, the publishing of AA video games, the design and distribution of premium gaming devices, NACON focuses 20 years of expertise at the service of players. https://www.nacongaming.com/

About Games Workshop

Games Workshop® Group PLC (LSE:GAW.L), based in Nottingham, UK, produces the best fantasy miniatures in the world. Games Workshop designs, manufactures, retails, and distributes its range of Warhammer®: Age of Sigmar® and Warhammer® 40,000® games, miniature soldiers, novels and model kits through more than 529 of its own stores (branded Games Workshop® or Warhammer®), the www.games-workshop.com web store and independent retail channels in more than 50 countries worldwide. More information about Games Workshop and its other, related, brands and product ranges (including our publishing division ‘Black Library’ and our special resin miniatures studio ‘Forge World’) can be found at www.games-workshop.com.

Blood Bowl 3 © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2021. Blood Bowl 3, Blood Bowl 3 logo, Blood Bowl, the Blood Bowl logo, GW, Games Workshop, Warhammer, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likeness thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world, and used under license. Used under license. All Rights Reserved.

 

Article by:  Susan N.

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Faeria - XB1 Review

Faeria by developer Abrakam Entertainment S.A. and publisher Versus Evil—Microsoft Xbox One review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Faeria is an interesting hybrid of tactics and collectible card game that bucks many of the trends we’ve seen out of other, similar titles. Having released a few years ago on PC to very positive reviews on Steam, Faeria brings its unique blend of gameplay mechanics to consoles with very positive results

I got into collectible card gaming a couple of decades and change ago with Magic: The Gathering, but also branched out into numerous other ones such as Legend of the Five Rings, Marvel Overpower and several others. I had a lot of fun and made some good friends through doing so – but anyone who has played these types of games heavily also knows it is a potentially expensive hobby. Somewhere along the way, several video game developers took note of the consumer spending habits and began to offer up the digital equivalents.

There were benefits to this of course – readily available virtual packs and plenty of online competition. I have enjoyed but also found it difficult to stay invested in most of these games though. There is just something off to the money-grubbing nature of digital cards versus real ones, and many of these online collectible card games start off being very accessible and enjoyable, but often hit a point too early in where you need to either start spending quite a bit of money or grinding obnoxiously long hours to get continued, satisfying progress as the single-player content dried up and forced players to commit their time and money to competitive online multiplayer.

So, when I saw Faeria claiming that you don’t need to buy card packs, and offering a robust community but also hundreds of hours of solo content? I was more than a little intrigued. Even better? I would say that based on my time so far, the statement appears to be true. Certainly you have to spend time playing – and sinking dozens of hours into a game like this is not unheard of. However, after dozens of hours (and not the often hundreds required by many other games to field a complete or competitive deck), I was still enjoying my experience without the usual pay-creep that tends to work its way into the genre.

Much of this is likely due to the numerous opportunities to acquire crystals (used mainly for cosmetics such as avatars or card backings) or chests (which give you five random cards) abound. There are daily quests, solo missions, objectives (such as casting ten blue cards or completing a set number of puzzles) that were entertaining and relatively easily attainable. The first day I played, I must have unlocked over a dozen chests, and in a good afternoon or evening of play? That is not uncommon. There are other mechanics as well, such as forging cards, that allow you to round out collections and build new decks.

If there is a potential concern, it is one of how robust the community will be. One of the primary advantages of the free-to-play / pay-to-improve model is it invites more players into the fold. By having this be a purchased game, that might make it slower to gain community adoption. Perhaps the ones that are here will be more invested because they have already paid and don’t need to worry about the pay-to-win disparity that can occur.

In terms of the mode offerings, there are plenty of solo objectives in the forms of missions and puzzles that reward experience and new cards. There are also player vs player options (ranked and unranked) All of this offers a nice sense of progression and variety – but none of this would matter if the core game was lacking. Thankfully Faeria delivers on that front as well.

Neither of the two primary aspects of gameplay are all that revolutionary, but how they are woven together helps to make Faeria such a unique experience. You draw cards into your hand, and you have magic points that you gain each turn that are used to pay for these cards. This resource / play card mechanic is the foundation for just about every card game out there, and it provides the core gameplay here as well. The variation comes from the hex-styled board that should immediately look familiar to fans of tactics games. The general layout is a honeycomb looking pattern with two opponents facing off at the northerner and southern ends. These gods start with twenty life and summon the cards in their hands to deal direct damage to one another, or summon creatures to the battlefield. There are also four wells in the corners of the board, and having one of your units next to a well allows you to draw an extra point of magic to use in casting your cards.

Simply casting the cards and having the creatures combat one another (with the typical attack / life points assigned to them to help dictate how the combat resolves) is interesting and strategic enough, but Faeria adds an element of board creation / manipulation as well. You can put down up to two ‘regular’ tiles as long as that spot is a) open and b) next to your god / one of your creatures.

However, there is one last element to the cards that needs consideration, and that is ‘type’. There are four colors – red, yellow, blue and green. These cards tend to be slightly more powerful than the ‘colorless’ types that can summoned simply by having enough magic points. If the cost is 3, and you have 3 magic, you can summon those. But these colored cards require tiles of a specific color to be on the board. So the cost to a blue card may be 3 magic points – but also ownership over 2 blue / water land tiles. Unlike the regular / uncolored ones you can dole out two at a time, these colored ones can only be placed one at a time. This sets up an interesting power balance, as having more tiles makes it far easier to move your creatures around the board (you can walk on an opponent’s created tile – but you can only summon a create to one of your created tiles).

This creates a sort of internal debate: do you lay down tiles directly towards your opponent’s base and try to get as many of your creatures over there as possible? Just put down two of the uncolored ones and try to beeline over there? You can likely get some quick, cheap cards out and make that sort of push, but you won’t have the terrain tiles like forests that stronger, green creatures need in order to be summoned. Also, if you go straight for your opponent, you won’t be branching out towards those magic wells in the corners, which means you have less magic per turn, which could keep you from casting more powerful cards or multiple cards at a time later in the game.

All of these elements come together to put more of an emphasis on strategy than the typical collectible card game, which tends to rely very heavily on the luck of the draw. Of course careful deck construction is still key and you quite literally have to play your cards right, but when playing Faeria I felt as though I had more control over the outcome and very seldom looked at my opening hand and thought: well, I’ve lost already.

I never played Faeria on PC, but I suspect the interface was tuned for the clink and point of mouse controls over using an actual game controller. There are times I found moving around unit-to-unit or selecting cards to be a bit clunky. Additionally, I would like a way to limit the lands available to be put down. Yellow cards have a tendency to look just reddish enough to me that there were times I clicked the red land tile instead of the yellow. If my deck contains no blue or green or yellow cards – why are there land options for those types? Maybe some sort of smart filtering could be applied where it looks at your deck and sees if you have cards eligible for the land types. It’s a minor quibble, and it’s fully user error on my part – but all the same, I have had matches where I accidentally clicked down the wrong land type and just surrounded to start over because it is a pretty major strategy misstep when it occurs.

Summary

Faeria offers excellent value to people who enjoy collectible card games but dislike the feeling that the devs have their hands in your pocket almost from the beginning. It will be interesting to see how the community fleshes out, but I found the combination of tactics and deck management to be a rewarding experience.

Score: 8.25 / 10

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