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The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike
The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike combines manga, tactical puzzles, and roguelike gameplay into one thrilling experience. Enjoy stylish pixel-art action while t…
The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike launched today on PC (Steam) and Nintendo Switch in North America for $9.99, with a 20% launch discount through November 18. Europe gets the Switch version on November 12. What caught my attention isn’t just the price point (bless the devs keeping it under a tenner), but the pitch: the long-running assassin manga turns its panels into cards, and you win runs without killing anyone. It’s a turn-based roguelike deckbuilder where the legendary hitman Akira “The Fable” Sato has to outthink goons while obeying a strict “no kills for one year” rule. That twist alone makes it more interesting than yet another Slay the Spire clone with swords.
Developed by MONO ENTERTAINMENT and published by Kodansha, The Fable adapts a 28-million-copies-in-circulation manga that even landed a film starring Jun’ichi Okada. In-game, you lay down Attack, Defense, and Move panels onto a blank “page” to build a turn-by-turn montage. It’s a slick thematic fit: the board is a comic, the moves are panels, and if you mess up, you don’t just lose HP – the page rips and holes pop out to show the damage. That kind of visual feedback can be the difference between another numbers soup and a tactics game you remember.
You control Akira alongside Yoko and Suzuki, who bring stealth, traps, and debuffs to the table. Because you can’t kill, the game leans into knockouts, disarms, and positioning – more cat-and-mouse than carnage. There’s also a Puzzle Mode offering one-page fights that sound like bite-sized brainteasers, plus a grab bag of mini-games (smoking fish, shooting a bear, and a drinking duel featuring Playboy Kawai) as fan service for readers. The team says community feedback from Steam Next Fest helped push them to a “Very Positive” rating, which bodes well for the 1.0 balance.
The deckbuilder scene is stacked: Slay the Spire set the template, Inscryption got weird, Wildfrost punished mistakes, and Dicey Dungeons made randomness the star. Where The Fable looks fresh is the non-lethal constraint and the page-as-health gimmick. That pushes you toward route planning and counterplay instead of brute force. If the panel system rewards foresight – think Into the Breach-style anticipation rather than top-deck luck — it could carve out a space.
The risk? Licensed games often lean on the IP and leave the systems shallow. If “Attack/Defense/Move” panels don’t evolve into meaningful synergies — stealth chains with Yoko, trap setups into stun windows with Suzuki, counter-heavy montages with Akira — runs could blur together. The $9.99 price suggests a tighter scope, which I’m fine with, as long as it’s tuned to deliver smart decision density rather than padding.
Adapting The Fable as a musou brawler would’ve been the easy, boring route. Turning it into a turn-based roguelike is smarter: the series is about an absurdly competent assassin forced to think before he acts. The puzzle-y structure and the non-lethal rule match the character. The mini-games feel like a wink to fans, though they’ll need to be genuinely playful, not repetitive time-fillers. This isn’t a narrative adventure, so don’t expect deep story beats — but using panels as both mechanics and theme is a neat hat trick.
On PC, you’ll get sharper text and likely faster loads; on Switch, the handheld form factor suits one-page puzzles and short runs. The real question is UI readability in portable mode — tiny fonts can ruin tactics games on Switch. We’ll also have to see if the page-tear effects and panel animations stay smooth docked and handheld. Language-wise, English and Japanese support is here at launch, which is exactly what you want for a manga-first audience.
There’s no mention of microtransactions or gacha, and at $9.99 that tracks. The unknowns: How long is a run? Is there meta progression (unlocks, panel pools, character augments) to keep you chasing “one more try”? Are there daily challenges or higher-difficulty modifiers to stretch the skill ceiling? Those systems will decide whether this is a weekend fling or a regular in your rotation.
We’re in a moment where licensed games are either gigantic open worlds or mobile monetization funnels. A focused, $10 roguelike from a small Tokyo studio — led by an NYU Game Design grad with prior indie credits like IGNISTONE and Clock Rogue — signals a different path. If The Fable nails clarity, bite-sized challenges, and a few “I’m a genius” combo moments, it could be the kind of word-of-mouth deckbuilder that punches above its budget.
Bottom line: the premise is strong, the mechanics sound promising, and the price is right. Now it just has to prove it has the depth to match the style.
The Fable turns its manga DNA into a clean, non-lethal roguelike deckbuilder and launches today on PC and Switch (NOA) for $9.99, with a 20% discount until Nov. 18 and NOE’s Switch release on Nov. 12. If the panel system delivers real tactical depth and the puzzles land, this could be a smart, compact addition to your deckbuilder library.
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