Review: Ruff Ghanor, The Challenging Deckbuilder created by Jovem Nerd!

Created by Alexandre Ottoni (@jovemnerd) and Deive Pazos (@azaghal), Jovem Nerd initially started as a personal blog to discuss Star Wars. Throughout the years, it became a gigantic portal which covers the most various themes in nerd culture. Nerdcast (the weekly podcast) became one of the biggest podcasts in Brazil, and received a lot of praise for its specials; among them, the RPG specials.

In one of these RPG specials, we were introduced to Ruff Ghanor, which was incredibly popular among fans of this portal. Thanks to its repercussion, what originally was an RPG game between friends became a book, and recently became a game available on several gaming platforms.

Ruff Ghanor surprised me quite positively because it is an excellent deckbuilder, and is not far from other games in this genre which are popular in the gaming market. Its initial difficulty may scare players who aren't used to this genre, but, thanks to its farming system in act 2, the fact we can edit our entire deck right away at the first game encounter, and the extra resources we can obtain at the Forge, it is extremely satisfying, fun, challenging, and entertaining. At each new card we unlock, each time we progress in our campaign, and each run we complete, the game becomes more and more fun.

This game also has incredible artwork, as well as an astonishing voice acting team, which stands out in the cinematics. We can even highlight extremely iconic voices in the Brazilian voice acting industry, such as Guilherme Briggs, which voices Ruff Ghanor himself.

The original soundtrack is pleasant and doesn't feel tiresome after a while. The status system is well-implemented and balanced, and forces the player to pay attention to enemy plays, their deck itself, and other elements. The game is also not very linear, and, instead, is always dynamic and has an incredibly satisfying gameplay loop.

To finish the game for the first time, each player will spend around 7 to 11 hours, depending on their skill. For those who want to hit 100% completion on this game, it can take over 17 hours.

I give Ruff Ghanor an 8.5/10, considering it has already become one of the best Brazilian games ever released, and it is an excellent deckbuilder.

Did you know Jovem Nerd and Ruff Ghanor? What do you expect from future DLCs? Which other original universes from Jovem Nerd should get their own gaming titles? (Please, create something related to Bluehand Protocol!).

Please check out more of our board game reviews as well! We recently reviewed Dominion, an excellent board game which is now available on Steam!