Happy Wednesday, folks! How's the week treating you so far?

Aside from being SWAMPED with a few projects, I've spent a good chunk of my free time battling monsters and rolling dice, hehe.

I've played Roll Breakers a few times now, and it's been quite fun! Between forming poker hands, developing character skills, and taking on increasingly difficult enemies, I've had a pretty good time so far. I'll be playing it a bit more before sharing my full thoughts on what looks to be a fun little roll-and-write.

As I mentioned in my Print Day issue for Roll Breakers, this is my first time trying a game created by Alexz. And what made me equal parts excited was getting to know the journey behind its creation!

So here we are, with the 16th Behind the Scenes issue, featuring the story behind Roll Breakers by Alexz Martinez:

The idea came to me in early 2025 while developing my other game, Towers of Evil. Until then, all my games had to fit the same mold: they needed to be playable solo and with multiple players. I had never explored designing a game exclusively for one player. I always had my doubts. Would it be too niche? Would it sell poorly?

That year, I returned to my original hobby: video games. Thanks to a Steam Deck, I got to try many independent titles. Among them was a game nobody expected to become so popular: Balatro.

I already had plenty of experience with roguelikes and deck-building games. Slay the Spire was one of the best examples of both. But the way Balatro hooked me was absurd. I spent hours, days, weeks, (even months!) playing it, beating every difficulty level with every available deck. Those were some of the best 200 hours I've ever invested as a gamer.

Naturally, I started wondering: Is there a board game similar to Balatro? In the Print and Play space, few games explored this idea, and none quite captured what I was looking for. So I decided: If the game I want to play doesn't exist, I have to make it myself.

Of course, that idea wasn't original. Thousands of designers had already thought of something similar. But I wanted a unique board game, a spiritual successor to Balatro that offered something new. Something I would enjoy playing, without being too complicated. A game for beginners and experienced players alike, with the best qualities of a roguelike: addictive gameplay and replayability. I didn't want another cheap copy.

After some experiments, the differences began to emerge. While Balatro takes players through 24 levels with increasingly demanding score requirements, Roll Breakers has only 10 levels, each featuring a different enemy. These enemies damage the player depending on how long it takes to defeat them, allowing players to build strategies focused on speed or take a slower approach.

Unlike the video game, Roll Breakers revolves around three resources: gold, health, and runes. Managing them creates an addictive loop: spend gold and runes to preserve health, win the battle, earn more gold and runes, repeat. This tabletop version also introduces a key difference: there's a lot of risk, but there's also a lot of reward.

Players acquire skills, Roll Breakers' equivalent of Balatro's jokers. But simply turning jokers into cards would have been boring. No. One of my clearest goals was to eliminate cards entirely. I wanted to use only sheets of paper, keeping components to a minimum and letting players jump back in without printing and cutting cards. The skills aren't one-to-one translations from the video game, either. Each is unique and designed to support different builds.

This led to six playable characters, each with 36 different skills. Every character has unique powers that complement their skills. Since players can only learn a handful of skills per run, they're encouraged to keep exploring each character's possibilities.

As the game took shape, I refined the battle sheet, where players record damage dealt to enemies. Since calculations were inevitable, I kept the numbers small at first. The first enemy has only 50 health points, while the final one has 1,000. This makes progression tangible as players grow more powerful.

Roll Breakers was initially meant to be a small game. But as I worked on it, I began to see its potential and realized just how addictive it could be. The game kept calling me back: “Play me!” After a year and a half of work, I wrapped it in a medieval fantasy setting where the Goddess of Luck grants our heroes their skills. I refined the terminology and polished the remaining details until the game was ready to see the light of day.

Perhaps the hardest part was writing the rulebook. Balatro players would have little trouble understanding the game, but those unfamiliar with roguelikes would need more guidance. The rulebook ended up longer than expected, but it was necessary to explain every mechanic and leave no questions unanswered (I hope so).

Roll Breakers is the roguelike board game I've always wanted to play. Yes, it's a solo game in a niche within another niche: Print and Play. Its success is uncertain, but the satisfaction of bringing it to life has been immense. It's another milestone in the design challenges I set for myself year after year.

I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I did!

16 interviews in, and it's been one fun ride discovering what inspires different game designers and how much their processes vary. A big thanks to Alexz for sharing his journey behind Roll Breakers!

If the game has caught your attention, be sure to check out its Kickstarter campaign, which is launching in less than a week!

- Tas.

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