The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike: Where manga panels shape strategy.
In The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike, the fast-paced, exciting action of a popular manga series is mixed with the strategic depth of a roguelike deck-building game in a way that is both unique and interesting. The game is out on Steam and Nintendo Switch. It was made by the independent company MONO ENTERTAINMENT and published by Kodansha.
The title is derived from Katsuhisa Minami’s famous manga series, The Fable, which has sold over 28 million copies of manga worldwide. MONO ENTERTAINMENT chose to translate the manga directly into gameplay, rather than using traditional cutscenes to retell the story. Each action is shown as a manga panel, which makes players feel like they are adding to their own manga page during every fight. The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike sounds like a lot of words at first, but it’s really easy to understand once you see it in action.
This isn’t a usual sequel; it’s a bold new take on the story. It takes the main ideas of the manga—assassins, careful planning, and beautiful fighting—and puts them into a roguelike game. Panels, puzzle-like battles, and character-specific rules make it possible to play for fun or to try out new strategies in a deeper way.
As someone new to The Fable comics, I think the story of this game is less important than how it functions. You can choose to play as one of three killers: Akira, Yoko, or Suzuki. Each has their own goals and way of fighting. Akira is a hybrid fighter who uses both guns and swords. His sister Yoko focuses on strikes that use speed and movement, and Suzuki is an expert at using traps and bullets.
Main plots don’t get a lot of attention in the game.
It’s assumed that you know something about the world of manga, but you don’t have to in order to enjoy the game. Lore fragments show up now and then, but the story is mostly told through the game’s mechanics: beating enemies, solving puzzles, and moving through Battle Mode nodes. The story slowly comes out as you play, similar to the main tension in the manga: assassins doing exact, deadly actions in a planned order.
This may be frustrating for players who were hoping for a deeper story, but it helps the game stay true to its roots as a strategy puzzler. The focus is on how to fight and plan, rather than telling a story in a straight line. For manga fans, this will feel like an interactive extension of the series. For people who haven’t read the manga yet, it’s a strategic task with a storyline.
The story’s heart: The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike is a unique mix of grid-based placement, deck-building, and turn-based strategy games. In most deck-building games, cards represent attacks or magic. In this game, however, each “card” is a manga panel. Panels come in different sizes and shapes; some take up more than one grid square, while others only take up one. Each panel shows an action that your character takes.
At the start of each fight, each player draws a deck of cards at random.
The battlefield is made up of 11 tiles laid out in a straight line. Your character is in the middle, and enemies are on both sides. To do your moves, you have to put your panels on a 12-tile “manga page” in the right order, from top left to bottom right, just like when you read a manga.
Attacks, movements, and status changes happen one after the other, so the order in which they are placed is very important. Panel types change based on the character: Akira fights with her hands and guns, and she has to keep track of her ammo. Yoko is good at moving and avoiding enemies, and she uses her panels to do this.
Suzuki uses guns, knives, and bombs that have effects that only affect certain areas and status effects like bleeding. Strategic location can change where enemies are, deal more damage, or set up combos that kill them. The fact that characters don’t really die is one of the strange things about the game.
Instead, you fail if you can’t beat all of the enemies in a certain number of turns, which is five on Normal and fewer on Pro. When enemies do damage, it changes the layout of your panels and “breaks” some of them temporarily. This limits your choices and makes planning even more important. Panels can be fixed with tape, but there is only so much of it, so players have to carefully choose which panels to use each time.
You are always trying to figure out where to put your panels so that they do the most damage, stop the enemies from moving, and let you stay alive until the end of the turn. The horizontal battlefield makes you think about space, while the linear panel execution makes you think ahead.
When mastered, this method is very rewarding. A rewarding “aha!” moment happens when you successfully coordinate combos and use character-specific mechanics.
The fact that Yoko can slide through enemy lines and Suzuki can use bombs and movement panels together to kill multiple enemies in one turn shows how clever the game can be. You can see how the panel effects will look before you commit, which makes trial-and-error less frustrating.
But the method does have some flaws. The random panel draws can sometimes make planning useless, and the limited Battle Mode (only three bosses and a few nodes per run) makes the puzzles feel like they’ve been done before. Puzzle Mode and mini-games add variety, but the main battle loop might not keep all players interested for very long.
Getting new panels, improving old ones, and getting rid of weak or unnecessary panels from your deck is how you move forward in The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike. Upgrading panels can increase their damage or usefulness, and removing them in a smart way can make your draws more consistent and cut down on useless turns.
When a player wins a battle, they get “tapes” to fix broken panels and money to buy new panels at shop nodes. You can also unlock special effects after beating bosses. These effects give you bonuses at the end of each page, like more attack power or defense shields. Because carefully chosen decks greatly increase your chances of finishing harder runs, this progression system encourages you to try new things and get better.
You can get new panels or prizes in different ways by playing mini-games like time trials, memory games, or even a drinking contest. Even though they’re strange, they add variety and a fun tone to the serious fights in panels.
The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike has a lot of different looks.
The menus, interface elements, and manga panels are all beautifully made and look like they belong in the original series. The game does a good job of making players feel like they are reading a manga page.
Character sprites and backgrounds, on the other hand, are made in a simple pixel art style that makes me think of old NES or SNES games. Even though they fit with the game’s theme, they aren’t as polished or detailed as the manga art. This might be disappointing for players who like modern graphics, but it doesn’t take away from the strategic draw of the mechanics.
The sound design does its job, but it’s not particularly memorable. During fights and menus, music always plays, but the tracks are usually simple and repetitive. Voice acting is pretty minimal—just a few lines in the drinking mini-game—which makes the game seem a little off. Even though better sound quality would have made the experience more immersive, the soundscape is good enough to help players through fights and add to the manga-inspired look.
Manga and the actual gameplay of The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike are all mixed together in Roguelike, which is an interesting experiment. The panel-placement system, character-specific mechanics, and smart use of the manga style in the gameplay are what make it great. Battles are planned, strategic, and sometimes mind-bending, so you need to be able to think ahead and change your mind quickly.
But the short length, lack of repeat value, simple graphics, and repetitive music keep the game from being truly great. Fans of puzzle games and manga will enjoy this game a lot. Newcomers may like the novelty but think the development loop is too short.
In the end, The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike does a great job of turning a manga story into an interactive medium, something that not many games have been able to do. It’s a short but high-quality independent game that puts strategy and imagination over story depth. It’s a memorable, if slightly niche, roguelike experience.
