Developed by Montebearo, Banners of Ruin takes a now-familiar deck-builder roguelike structure seen in popular games such as Slay the Spire, Griftlands and Monster Train, and adds their own spin on that familiar turn-based combat system. Having been in Early Access for quite a while (with Checkpoint’s Lise having covered an earlier build last year), it is finally ready for its full release. Featuring a variety of anthropomorphic animals armed to the teeth, and a rather deep combat and upgrade system, Banners of Ruin manages to stand out and bring something new to the table in the increasingly diverse card-based roguelike genre.

In Banners of Ruin, you play as agents of the Blackfoots, a clan seeking to take down tyrannical House Ender by infiltrating the city of Dawn’s Point. Starting off with two characters, you can eventually recruit up to a party of 6. To begin with, you only have access to Mouse and Bear race options, however several more become available as you progress. As you venture deeper into the city, you often get to make choices that determine just how much more morally superior you are to House Ender; upon seeing a merchant being harassed by guards, will you stand up for them and risk a combat encounter, or steal some florens in the scuffle and leave them to their fate? While there isn’t the same level of story focus as some other roguelikes, Banners of Ruin’s strong writing and intricate character and card art designs went a long way toward immersing me in the setting, even across multiple runs.

Once you have started your run by picking the species of your two starter agents, you progress by choosing one of three encounter cards. These might be combat, a merchant or something else entirely. Unlike in Slay the Spire, you can’t see what encounters will come next, only how many more until the next boss encounter. There is a decent amount of variety and mystery to some of the encounters; some of them provide benefits with no strings attached, whereas others might ask you to give up something in return.

The encounter system in Banners of Ruin seeks to mitigate some of the frustrating randomness inherent to the roguelike genre; for instance, the set of encounters prior to the boss will always provide major benefits, like a tavern to recruit new agents, a full heal, or more equipment. Although some runs will be less successful than others, you’re not going to progress far without the game providing SOME kind of useful upgrade.

When you do enter combat, things might look pretty familiar to veterans of Monster Train and Slay the Spire, with some notable differences. You are dealt a hand of cards which include Strike, Guard, Weapon and Talent cards, among others. Each of your units has a reserve of Stamina and Will points; Stamina fully recovers each turn, whereas Will points are exhausted until the end of the encounter. Your turn lasts until you run out of cards in your hand, or your units run out of resources. You and your opponents take up two rows, and certain cards will have different properties depending on if the unit playing it is in the front or back row.

With that said, there are some complexities to the combat that don’t feel entirely necessary. The intricacies of some of the similar-sounding status effects make sense in practice (for instance, stacks of Bleeding damage impact your Vitality directly, whereas Poison damage will impact your Guard, if you have any). However, other effects like Vulnerable and Overwhelm both do the same thing, only one wears off at the end of the overall turn and the other wears off at the end of the character’s turn.

In addition, Banners of Ruin can be rather buggy at times. In particular, I experienced a persistent bug where the game would freeze if I discarded a card whose effect only triggers when discarded. Hopefully this will be ironed out following the full release of the game.

Banners of Ruin is also on the more forgiving end in terms of difficulty; while the early stages can be challenging, it generally doesn’t take long until you are powerful enough to make it through to the endgame. Some more hardcore roguelike purists may baulk at its relative easiness, but I found it enjoyable. However, a more challenging difficulty option may be desirable for some players.