This new deckbuilder, based on The Fable, has you crafting manga pages for each battle

Katsuhisa Minami’s The Fable is a story of hitmen and yakuza, but it’s not getting the type of game one might expect. Instead, developer Mono Entertainment’s The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike has you constructing the perfect manga page for each battle. 

It’s not often that every facet of a game’s genre is right there in the title, but here we are. The Fable was announced as a roguelike deckbuilder in which panels from Minami’s manga are the cards (via Gematsu). When it’s time to battle, these scenes will be dealt out randomly, giving you a shot to make the perfect page for each showdown. 

It’s not just about the story the panels convey. Each panel has a specific effect, from attacking to moving and defending. The order the manga is read dictates when each panel and its respective effect activates, making thoughtful placement the key to defeating enemies. You can see how it looks in action in the announcement trailer.

The Fable follows notorious hitman Akira Sato, known in the underground as The Fable. It turns out he was a little too good at his job, so the series follows him as he’s forced to lay low and live a normal life. The main rule during his yearlong hiatus: He can’t kill anybody. He doesn’t mind it — he even gets a pet parrot and a normal job — but the yakuza aren’t keen to make it easy on him. 

While its style and subject matter are practically tailor-made for live-action — it has two films so far — an anime series from Tezuka Productions also told the tale back in April of this year. The manga is available from Kodansha, the movies are on Netflix, and the anime is on Hulu.

If The Fable: Manga Build Roguelike is anywhere near as fun to play as its source material is to read, we may have something special on our hands. We’ll find out when it hits Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam—with English, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese options—sometime in 2025.