Banners Of Ruin, now in Early Access on Steam, is the latest game from Montebearo, an independent British developer. Set in a medieval city populated by anthropomorphic woodland animals, the game tasks the players with infiltrating and destabilizing the city’s defenses, slaying troops, and eventually the captain of the city guard.
To do this, players build a deck of cards that represent the various skills and armaments of their own little animal army. Most cards can be played by any character; a few are talents or weapons specific to the critter in question. On their adventure, players will face periodic choices about which street or back alley to sneak down; some lead to benefits like healing or fresh recruits, while others (most, really) lead to combat.
It is yet another deck-building roguelike - so far, so Slay The Spire. Banners Of Ruin sets itself apart, though, in a number of ways.
Slay The City
Most obvious of its differences is the art style. Set in a medieval city populated by anthropomorphic woodland animals, the art style is grim and somber. The browns and greys suit the mood well; they’re the colors of animal pelts, of grit.
There are key strategic differences, as well. In Banners, the player controls multiple characters, each of which with their own energy to spend and hit points to lose. This means individual characters may die in battle, but the team of armored animals lives on to fight another day.
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There are also different ranks characters can occupy in combat - either side may have fighters in the front or in the back, which affects some (too few) cards and abilities. In the opponents’ case, each rank alternates actions, meaning enemies in the front rank only attack every other turn (assuming there is a back rank). I’m hoping that future updates to the game allow more play with this; cards that behave differently based on which rank a given character occupies, or even which rank they are targeting.
Not So Spoiled For Choice
There are, apparently, tensions between the numerous species that make up the ranks of Ender soldiers, and some cards take advantage of that fact. Cards like ‘Persecuted,’ above, might be powerful area-of-effect attacks or might be relatively weak single-target attacks. My main issue is with the use of the word “race” at a time when many RPGs are moving away from the terminology, opting for words like “species,” “ancestry,” or “heritage.” It may add to the darkness and grittiness of the setting, but it also might make playing the game uncomfortable to some.
Between every encounter the player is offered their choice of three options, though often the three choices are simply “Combat” or “Combat” or “Combat.” Here is where I’d love to see more information about the different combats - does one feature archers, and another feature bruisers? Is my squad better equipped to take on one challenge than another?
Combat itself could move much faster, especially once a bevy of status effects have been applied to characters. Once a player has grasped the basics of the game, a fast-forward button would be much appreciated. That said, the game has released a quality-of-life update since I started writing this, which may have alleviated my issue.
Overall, though, Banners Of Ruin offers a new take on the deck-building roguelike genre. Its paper-doll art style is compelling; there’s a dark humor that runs through it (or maybe it’s just me that finds mice holding greatswords funny). There’s a lot of depth to its strategy, too, that I know I’ve yet to master.
Future updates haven’t been detailed, but I’m hoping for more distinct animal species, more meaningful choices between encounters, more cards that take advantage of what makes Banners unique.
Though it’s still as ponderous as a bear in full plate armor, it’s admittedly got its teeth sunk in me and I’m excited to see where future updates take the game.
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