Rogue Reigns' Tiago Lafer tells us why this grimdark deckbuilder is one to watch
- Upcoming roguelike deckbuilder Rogue Reigns was a highly touted project at Gamescom LatAm
- And we got to sit down with one of Venn Studios' co-founders to chat about it
- Find out what they think makes this deckbuilder stand out from the crowd!
With Gamescom LatAm 2026 having just wrapped up, I've still got plenty to talk about, having been on the ground during the event. Not least being so many interviews, like with Faith creator Airdorf or Pokémon Go's Alan Mandujano. But you may be wondering about what more devs had to say.
In which case, read on for my interview with Tiago Lafer, one of the co-founders of Venn Studios, the folks behind the upcoming roguelike deckbuilder. We got the chance to discuss what makes Rogue Reigns stand out, and the strengths of using your own custom game engine!
I guess first of all, there's a niche for roguelike deck builders, you know, Inscryption [and] Slay the Spire. I think it really captures the tension, the feeling of something that is dark. I guess it captures the emotional tension that people may enjoy.
And mechanically, what does it do differently from other roguelike deckbuilders?We really focused on the party, so there's a party of characters and pretty much like an RPG type, the Rogue, the Warrior, or the Tank. In the lore, they don't like each other, but they have to be together to save the realm. What we created is a sacrifice, a game mechanic, so you have to sacrifice your characters. And it's pretty hard because you have the full cooperation between them, and then at some point you start chopping down your best.
A bit like a game of D&D gone wrong. What stood out to me was the interesting visual style. How did you guys come up with that?So first, the characters, we have amazing artists with the vision, with the distant vision, but I would say we generated almost everything procedurally with the engine that we created ourselves. So we built the engine so we can build the game. And by doing so, it enabled us to create many levels procedurally without having to spend time, but to make it perfect for the user, for the gamer. Brilliant.
Speaking of which, you guys built your own engine for the game. Can you give an idea to those of our readership who don't know about it, why this is so significant?It's the difference between renting a house and buying a house, I would say. There's nothing wrong with Unity and Unreal, but we had to customise the engine for our purposes. So it [creating our own engine] allowed us to build things and create things that we wouldn't be able to use in Unreal the way we wanted. And it allows us to build faster, the games we can build faster because it did the engine we built.
And because you guys are bringing Rogue Reigns to all platforms this September, right?So that's a fun part of building the engine. We created the engine so we can export the game to any platform without the hassle.
So it's safe to say if you're interested in a different twist on the roguelike deckbuilder format, Rogue Reigns may be what you've been looking for. So keep an eye out for it this September. And if you want something to tide you over, why not try some of the games in our list of the best roguelikes on iOS?
