Game: Rogue Reigns
Developer: Venn Studios (São Paulo)
Genre: Party-Based Dark Fantasy Deckbuilder
Release Date: October 28, 2026
Playtest: August 27 – September 3
Platforms: PC · PS5 · Xbox Series · Switch 2 · Mobile
Engine: Proprietary “Wildcard”
Party Size: Three heroes, three decks
⏰ The Playtest Opens Today — and Closes September 3
Venn Studios have opened a one-week Steam playtest for Rogue Reigns, running August 27 through September 3. That’s a seven-day window, and sign-ups go through the game’s Steam page.
The build covers the core party-based deckbuilding systems — strategic combat, character synergies, party composition and the run-shaping decisions built around them. Venn are explicitly asking players to experiment with different heroes, decks and strategies and send feedback back.
Something is hunting your party across the map. The world reacts before you see it.
Rogue Reigns is a party-based dark fantasy deckbuilder from São Paulo’s Venn Studios, and it now has a date: October 28, 2026, across PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and mobile.
Alongside the date comes a new gameplay trailer showing off the combat, party management, synergies and procedural worlds — and a playtest you can join right now.
Three Decks Running at Once
🃏 The Structural Difference
Most deckbuilders give you one character and one deck. Rogue Reigns gives you three heroes controlled simultaneously, each with their own deck, abilities and role.
That changes the fundamental problem you’re solving. A single-deck roguelike asks “what’s the best card to add right now.” A three-deck party asks that and “which of my three heroes should get it, and what does that do to the other two.” You’re managing strengths and relationships across the party rather than optimising one pile of cards.
It’s essentially a party RPG’s composition problem grafted onto deckbuilding — and combined with limited rewards, which force you to actually choose rather than take everything, that’s a meaningfully different shape to a run.
Venn are promising 10-plus party compositions at launch, with a synergy system built so character interactions produce layered, emergent strategies rather than fixed combos. Given that party composition is the central decision, that variety is the number that matters most.
👁️ The Stalker
The single most intriguing line in the announcement, and it gets its own feature bullet: “Something hunts your party across the map. The world reacts before you see it.”
A pursuing threat is a different kind of pressure to a turn counter. It gives the map layer a reason to be tense rather than just a route selection screen — and the detail about the world reacting first is the interesting half. Environmental foreshadowing means the game can build dread before anything actually appears.
Deckbuilders rarely do dread. This is the feature we’d most want to see working in the playtest.
A Studio Built From a Deckbuilder YouTube Channel
📺 108,000 Subscribers of Analysing the Genre First
This is a genuinely unusual origin story. Before Venn Studios was a game studio, it was a YouTube channel about deckbuilders — now over 108,000 subscribers — where the São Paulo team spent years publishing analysis of the genre, its design philosophy and the systems that make these games work.
Plenty of developers claim to understand the genre they’re entering. Very few have a public, documented body of criticism about it that anyone can go and check.
Whether that translates into a good game is a separate question — knowing why something works and being able to build it are different skills — but it’s a more credible foundation than most debut pitches offer, and it explains the heavy emphasis on community playtesting throughout development.
We’ve spent years studying what makes deckbuilders compelling and listening closely to the community around the genre. With Rogue Reigns, we wanted to build an experience where the entire party matters, every decision can change the course of a run, and players are constantly discovering new combinations and strategies.
— Hugo Neri, CEO, Venn Studios
3D Is Rare in This Genre
🎨 Hand-Drawn Heroes
Expressive hand-drawn character art sits against the generated environments.
🌍 Reactive 3D Worlds
Procedurally generated 3D environments that react to combat rather than sitting behind it.
⚙️ The Wildcard Engine
A proprietary engine built from the ground up for systemic gameplay and visual fidelity.
🔗 Synergy System
Character interactions designed to produce emergent strategies across 10+ party builds.
Venn describe their 3D visual style as “a rare aesthetic in the genre,” and they’re not wrong — deckbuilders overwhelmingly live in 2D, and the ones that don’t usually treat 3D as a backdrop. Environments that visibly react to combat is a more ambitious use of it, and building a proprietary engine to get there is a considerable commitment for a debut.
🎪 Playable at Gamescom — Indie Castle, Hall 10.2
If you’re at the show rather than at a keyboard, Rogue Reigns is playable at the Indie Castle community booth in Hall 10.2, within the Indie Area.
📍 Hall 10.2 — Indie Area
🏰 Indie Castle Booth
🕹️ Playable build
Five Platforms, Including Mobile
🖥️ PC (Steam)
🎮 PlayStation 5
🟩 Xbox Series X|S
🔴 Switch 2
📱 iOS / Android
Launching on mobile alongside consoles and PC on day one is the notable part. Deckbuilders are one of the few genres that translate to a phone without compromise — turn-based, tap-driven, session-friendly — and yet most arrive on mobile months or years later, if at all. Doing it simultaneously suggests the interface was designed with it in mind rather than ported afterwards.
🃏 Deckbuilder
🎲 Roguelike
⚔️ Party-Based
🌑 Dark Fantasy
🎨 3D Visuals
🎯 Single-Player
Who’s Making It
🇧🇷 Venn Studios
An independent studio based in São Paulo, Brazil, founded by genre enthusiasts and focused on systems-driven experiences. Rogue Reigns is their debut, built on their own Wildcard engine and shaped through repeated playtests with a global player community.
Rogue Reigns launches October 28. The playtest is live now and runs until September 3 — one week, and then it’s gone.
Hi there! I’m Marie, also known as CtrlQueen. I’m passionate about keeping up with the latest in gaming news and sharing my insights. RPGs steal my heart with their rich narratives and immersive worlds, but I also love unwinding with fun, casual games. Whether you’re here for deep dives into game mechanics or just to chat about your favorite casual game, you’ve found the right place! Let’s game and explore together.
