Runestone Keeper

I would highly recommend a game like Desktop Dungeons any day of the week over this game. Unfortunately, this game is all about the grind, and an unfair amount of random chance with little to no variation.

Yes, I know, Roguelike games are supposed to be full of all kinds of random chance, they are supposed to be unfair, and yes there is a charm and a fun in that. This game takes it to a level where, when combined with the grind, it is just not fun. It becomes monotonous, and then annoying.

The game kind of plays like Minesweeper, you click on a pitch black game board to reveal random tiles. Sometimes there is nothing and you get a single soul point (to activate items you find), sometimes you find usable items, and sometimes you step on several spike traps all in a row completely destroying your armour and lowering your health before you even find an enemy to fight. When you do reveal an enemy it is random, which can give massive buffs to any other revealed enemies on the board. So of course, you would want to take it slowly and fight an enemy one at a time right? Wrong, the character you start with and will play with forever, has only one single ability that uses mana, and that ability removes enemy damage based on how many squares are currently blocked off by revealed enemies. So to make any use of your ability, you have to gamble.

Maybe some people might find that a fun prospect, but I don't. Especially when you combine that with the fact that you have a chance to hit around 75%. Are you sure you are going to be able to kill that vampire in that hit, or is he going to take three more when you miss, he hits you back, and regains a ton of his health? It goes that way with every enemy. You can calculate all of your moves on the revealed game board perfectly, and still lose due to the random chance of you missing. Then add in the fact that enemies have a dodge chance on top of this! So even if you collect weapons, armour, and level up your hit chance, you can still miss. So much fun...

Then you can add in the ranged enemies, who will shoot at your from across the map in squares you haven't revealed yet and often times cannot get to. My favourite floor was the one with several archers and mages who killed me in just three turns as I tried to make my way over to them. Yes, you can find a bow and arrow weapon in this game to be able to attack these enemies back at range, but good luck finding one.

Do you want to unlock a different character? What about improve how much health you collect when you find a healing heart? Well, you better enjoy playing this game over and over and over again, grinding out thousands and thousands of gold, when a gold drop is generally less than 10 gold, with (if you are lucky) around 3 or so on a floor. I can't really comprehend this choice, especially considering you can buy items and equipment before and during the run, and they also cost hundreds of gold, but do not persist through runs. It is kind of insane.

I love Roguelike games. Play literally any other Roguelike game than this. Play Caves of Qud, Slay The Spire, Desktop Dungeons, Rinf of Pain, anything that isn't this brutal, unenjoyable, luck based grindfest. Don't buy this game.

Had a good time. This game is not chill. It is mechanically challenging and requires every step of planning.

The problem with this game is that it is not very balanced:
mage feels more op than warriors
some gods are way better than others
some items are necessities with low cost while others are useless in most situation but costs a lot.

I think the RNG problem is, at its core, the balance issue. But if you prepare well, RNG should not be a huge obstacle.

Way better than Witcher 3

The game in a nutshell: It's basically Minesweeper with RPG elements.

It's actually pretty enjoyable though, it gives one the initial impression of being a very simple game until you actually try to master it.

Рогалик практически на чистом "рандоме". Серьезно.
Я играл всякое-разное, но тут твой забег попросту зависит от удачно сложившего ролла. Ты можешь найти "идеальный" билд для себя, но это не будет иметь значение, так как на новом забеге игра выдаст тебе ужасный лут, косоглазие атак персонажа, сверхточных врагов, ядовитые ловушки с самого начала и тд. За кучу забегов я только один раз добрался до финального этажа и там отхватил от босса и полетел обратно в хаб.

В целом, минус так как суровый рандом убивает напрочь мотивацию.

P. S. Апгрейды покупаем за монеты, но даже тут игра нас карает: Все нафармленные коины у нас забирают и оставлют примерно 10%. Эти же монеты не отдельный ресурс. Они берутся в забег и в магазе торговца легко слить на разовый предмет больше, чем заработал за 2-3 забега.

This one was a journey. I thought the RNG was going to be merciless but it was very fair in the end.

Runestone keeper is an old game, almost a decade old now but I feel it still holds up on ym favorite genre of turn-based perma-death dungeon crawling. Although the perma-death is used very loosely here as a run can be as quick as 20 minutes or so if you rush it or as long as 3 hours if you go slow.

The game mechanics will take a couple of hours to learn but from there the fun begins as you start unlocking new characters and start debating what playstyle fits you best, two handed swords with chain effects, armor piercing ranged weapons, magic based freezing wands, damage reflective tank armor build, etc. In the end, you'll have around 10 characters to choose from each with its own unique spells and preferred builds, some very specific and others very versatile.

On top of that, you have Gods you can worship that give you cool effects to strengthen your specific build even further and even if you keep dying, you'll keep your gold to unlock upgrades that will help you slightly in future runs.

As far as achievements go, you can 100% in around 50 to 70 hours with some luck since some achievements are tied to RNG (finding events or god statues), others require skills (surviving with heavy debuff effects) and others will test your troubleshooting as they impose challenges during your entire run. I found it very balanced.

Music was very limited, maybe 3 or 4 tracks in the whole game but the devs were a small team so I understand, graphics were ok but the game fun comes from the challenge of its game's mechanics.
There is almost zero story here.

I did enjoy the week or so I spent on the game, in the end, the gridn had me doing runs while listening to audiobooks until the RNG graced me with the things I needed.

All in all, Runestone keeper gets 3 overlord enemies with ATK equal to my current health which oneshot me because I wasnt paying attention out of 5 times I died because I clicked on the wrong event answer and the decrease in stats made me unable to wield my main weapon leaving me only with my stupid fist damage. Nice game!

Interesting idea, but it could really use some more polish and depth before I recommend it. The audio and visuals are great, but my issues are with the gameplay. Fine if you want a low-focus game to play while watching something or waiting in a queue in a different game, but doesn't really hold up when compared to other similar games.

Tile picking is the main game mechanic, and it is way too reliant on RNG (even for a roguelike). There are some items/interactions that help scout tiles before clicking, but for the most part you are playing blind minesweeper. In most roguelikes there is at least some chance of winning through skill, but that is not the case in this game. You can get oneshot or entirely countered by one monster, and the ability to scout to avoid them
is limited.

I also have some issues with how information is displayed in the game - info on monster stats/abilities are mostly in their own window which you have to right-click to access. Same goes for items and equipment. This game could benefit greatly from a tooltip or ability icon system to make decision making smoother and require fewer clicks.

There's definitely potential, but it isn't quite there.

This is a true hidden gem. It's pretty addictive with its simple gameplay mechanics, awesome buy/trade system, multitude of equipment combinations and a handful of characters to choose from. One thing to note is that this game is not for everyone. If you're looking for top notch graphics or enourmous tree upgrades this is not your alley. Many of the reviews that I've seen talk about the randomness of winning and getting gold... but to be honest there's a deep sense of strategy you need to have in mind in order to go deeper in the more challenging levels. It's a fun game... and the soundtrack is sublime, I love it.

Runestone Keeper is a tile-revealing rouge-like, with some RPG elements. There are multiple characters in the game, each of which has a unique power (I only ever played the starting character as the others didn't pique my interest) and a unique starting spell. Each level is comprised of a rectangular grid of tiles. Under each tile there could be nothing, a monster, an item, an event, or a variety of other things. Battle consists of clicking on revealed monsters, possibly in conjunction with using one of your acquired one-use items (spending soul points) or spells (spending mana). Defeating a monster yields experience and perhaps a piece of equipment. After finding the exit, you may proceed to the next floor/level. After a set number of levels you fight the boss. You may also acquire gold, which persists from run-to-run and may be used to purchase items or equipment or may be saved to spend outside of the run on permanent unlockable power boosts to all characters. You may also encounter one of an assortment of gods. Worshiping one of these gods grants ingame effects, typically a moderate positive effect and minor/moderate negative effect. You may switch gods (losing the ingame effects of the previous god) during the run, though there is usually a penalty for doing so. The real benefit of gods is that each allows you to gain up to three unique tattoos. Tattos provide powers unqiue to the god and are retained even if you switch gods (switching gods at least once greatly increases your chances of victory). However, the tattoos cost runes. Runes are fairly rare and are accrued and saved across runs.

Pros:

• The overall game mechanics are really well done.
  
• The equipment is exciting to find.
  
• The items provide a wide range of effects and add a lot of decision making.
  
• Fairly nice range of enemies.
  
• Game is cheap ($$) on sale.
  
• Runs are short (though sometimes too short once you lose).
  

• The game contains choose-your-adventure scripted events which you find randomly. Until you memorize all the events and their options, you are forced to either tediously go to the internet or risk having your run ruined. I really dislike these events in games, and really wish devs would include an option to display the outcome of the events within the response choices. I play these games for strategy and tactics, not to guess at what the dev wants me to say.
  
• I really like the meta-game progression in games like this (i.e., spending gold between runs to provide permanent boosts). This provides an objective feeling of progression while you simultaneously gain experience with the game. However, the final unlockables in this game come at a very steep price. At some point, you feel like the game's difficulty has been calibrated with these in mind, and failure to have unlocked these really is just a mechanic for pointless grinding.
  
• While the game has multiple classes, I didn't really find the other characters interesting. Perhaps I just didn't give them a fair shot.
  

• The game is too hard and victory is far too dependent on luck (finding the right equipment, gods, items). Once I am an end-game player, I expect to win games like this at least 25% of the time. I have beaten the game exactly once at this time of this review, out of at least 50 plays (maybe 100?).
  
• To win, you really need to have tattoos. However, these cost runes which are acquired and kept from run-to-run. Given their drop rate, this means you need to decide on a given run, if this is a "winning-run" or a "farming-run". It feels bad to go all in, spending runes acquired over multiple runs, to lose. It also feels frustrating to know that you can't win a run and are just playing to collect runes/gold.
  
[*] There is a level-cap at 10, which you will likely reach well before the final floor. I realize this cap is present for balance reasons, but once I stop leveling up I start to get bored.

Pretty fun, be careful of the chance scrolls that give you options. It's a lazy excuse for "content" and they will definitely ruin your run.

I'd give this a positive review but you had a scroll that killed me instantly. Fair is fair!

If you don't really care much about tight game design and just want some fantasy-themed buttons to press for a few hours, then you'll probably get some enjoyment out of Runestone Keeper. Visually the game is very nice, and it manages to scratch a lot of roguelike dungeon crawling itches with its core concept and presentation. For the first couple of hours I was genuinely enjoying myself, but it quickly becomes apparent that player skill has little bearing on the outcome of any given run. At that point it largely becomes a slot machine game, where you hope for big numbers in some places and small ones in others.

To give the game its credit, there are ways in which you can turn the odds in your favour. Any roguelike experience is an exercise in leveraging skill over the random number generator until you can reliably progress up to a certain point. Runestone Keeper, unfortunately, feels like 10% skill and 90% luck. You can play smart, manage your resources effectively, mitigate every risk, and yet still run into floors that are mechanically unwinnable.

This might have been more acceptable had the roguelite progression system been quicker and more impactful, but grinding gold for incredibly minor benefits takes an excrutiating amount of time. For me, the permanent upgrades felt like a time sink intended to keep me pulling the slot machine lever for as long as possible rather than a meaningful way to mitigate the game's randomness over time.

For some people this experience will be enjoyable -- if you like games of chance and don't care much about being rewarded for mastering mechanics, then you could potentially have a lot of fun with Runestone Keeper. It's a competent little time waster. Had it only cost me a dollarydoo or two I'd probably have been content to give it a thumbs up for filling that simple niche, but for the asking price I was expecting a more robustly designed game.

Somelike like Desktop Dungeons minus everything that is great about DD.

Runestone Keeper could have been a good game and at times it is good. Unfortunately its many flaws hold it back.

The tutorial is next to useless, most things aren't explained to you. I know some people like this feature, I prefer my challenge to come from carefully balanced gameplay.

The game destroying flaw is the game balance, which is terrible. I realize that many attempts in rogue-like games are going to end in failure, but this game is ridiculous. I can carefully make my way down 15 dungeon levels only to meet a monster that can kill me no matter what I do. Not fun.

If you haven't played Desktop Dungeons, buy it instead.

Playing this game feels very basic. There's a decent variety of enemies and items and content, but there aren't enough meaningful decisions for you to make along the way during a given run.

Meta-game advancement requires the same currency (gold) that you would use to buy items during a run, so you're strongly incentivized against buying items during a run unless they're either extremely cheap or desperately needed, which only exacerbates the extent to which RNG controls whether you receive the tools you need to succeed. Furthermore, that meta-game advancement is quite grindy; some incremental upgrades take as much gold as you would accumulate during a whole good run, so it will take many hours before you feel free to spend gold on things that would help you during a run.

Randomness has always been a central piece of the roguelike genre, but good roguelikes balance it by giving players the ability to anticipate and adapt to the otherwise-unwinnable challenges they will face. This game has too much random determination without enough opportunity for the player to mitigate it.

There is almost an okay game here, but it's crippled by a few unsatisfying design decisions.

A lot of the mechanics in the game are novel and fit together nicely, but at the end of the day there's just not enough depth.

That said, there IS more to it than I ever got to experience, by which I mean a bunch of playable kits locked behind a crazy intense grind. I was bored sick of the game before I had 10% of the resource I needed to unlock everything. Recommend looking at Desktop Dungeons instead.

This game...wont let you rest in peace. The moment you start playing it and "try" to leave - it will be constantly on your mind. Thoughts of "what if..." or "should I do this instead?" haunting you until you play the game and get further in or unlock something. It is obsessive until the point your luck runs out. And even then...good luck trying not to play it until you get EVERYTHING. It is so good, that it hurts (in a good way). Thank you for making this dangerously (also in a good way) game! :)))


Follow-up: Played even more of this game. Had so much fun! Always something out there to actually work towards to. Fun Time Is Always Upon Us. Woo!

Runestone Keeper The Minesweeper Dungeon Crawler is a great and innovative tactical Roguelike, very unique and addictive. Instead of controlling a character, you click on tiles to reveal what's behind the mist. Your ultimate goal is to reach the 20th floor and beat the boss, and that's a hell of a ride! Traps, bombs, monster with a variety of skills and a lot of curses awaits you, and you'll need a lot of thinking and planning to get through.

The greatest beauty of this game is that, despite everything being randomly generated, there's almost no luck involved. Your skills count more than your luck for the most part, but don't be overwhelmed, you can unlock permanent buffs (which also increases the difficulty a bit) and passive abilities especially for your next run.

Pixel art in this game is absolutely gorgeous, and the minimalist and atmospheric soundtrack helps to keep you calm and focused. There's 10 characters in total (one starting hero and nine unlockable heroes), and a lot of combinations (from monsters to runestones, abilities, gear, etc), so the replay value is awesome and the game is still intriguing after you beat it for the first time (I did it today by the way).

Last, but not least, I can't recommend this game enough, especially if you're a fan of roguelikes and/or would like to discover a new kind of minesweeper experience with a lot of features added.

Truly a fun roguelike. And I consider it unique and certainly worth it's money.

However the gameplay is stiffling.
It's not a true roguelike, as some elements carry over between runs, namely runes, gold and shop unlockables.
Main problem are the runes, any rune collected and not used carries over to the next game, they are very powerful and rare. The key to success is to use the runes wisely. Additionally, many gamemodes (look up runewords) cost runes to play (most notably the endless runeword)

after your death, you can spend your gold in the shop to get passive upgrades to make the game slightly easier.

So what you end up doing is grinding. Grinding gold and runes in order to pay your expenses in a serious run, where you may want to play with a certain runeword, have prepared runes for certain gods you intend to worship and get tatoos from, and stock gold for certain items you hope to find in shops.

So when you do have a good run, you might not want to go all in in and spend your runes on the much neded tatoos in case you mess up and loose your entire investment.

What I want to recommend is a true roguelike, where every run is a chance to play it big, where you can play all in whitout having to grind for it on countless runs in advance.
Things this game regrettably isn't.

"Runestone Keeper" sounds a little like "Minesweeper." That's because the games follow a similar format: click on tiles to reveal what's under them. In Runestone Keeper, however, those tiles can have monsters on them, or traps, bombs, helpful items, poison pits, or any number of other things to keep things interesting.

The game requires just a little thought, but not much. It's mostly just clicking, but the effects of various equipment and items picked up can be taken into consideration to turn around an unfavourable board, or just help you avoid certain tile types in order to find the exit that much easier.

It's a good game to kill some time with - made to be difficult, a single "session" is usually very short before you die and have to start over again. Gold carries on, however, and you are able to buy upgrades to make subsequent trips into the dungeon easier. Eventually you'll find yourself reaching new depths more easily.

Although the game is certainly rich both in interesting interactions as well as design flaws, it is hard not to recommend Runestone Keeper at its price point, which is set perfectly.

I will state this first: the game will repeatedly put you in positions where you are set to lose, without any possibilities of recovery. You will often look back from that point and realize that there was nothing you could have done to save yourself. It is expected that this does not frustrate you as you still "progress" by spending the collected gold on upgrades afterwards.

As it currently stands, Runestone Keeper is a very accessible rogue-lite game that offers challenging experiences ranging from 10 to 30 minutes. It is alright at everything it does, your play sessions will sway rapidly between mild fun and curiosity and slight annoyance. Its distinguishment comes from the fact that even with its current flaws, it is very close to a very polished and satisfying experience.

The main weakness is balance and polish, numbers don't seem to work well with eachother which makes a few of the in-game systems and interactions useless. Your main source of continuous progress is gold - still the game asks absurd prices for single-use items, synthetizing runes and mediocre equipment - thus rendering all three almost useless. The "gold-making" upgrades and gods are also mostly a waste, either never being able to return its own cost or taking too long to do so.

The starting class is bad when compared to the other two, still it matters not much. Most losses come from impossible scenarios - although your first deaths will most likely be to bad planning - where suddenly a "winning" run stumbles upon special rooms designed to kill you unless you meet very specific criteria, which are often simply not a possibility.

Overall it is a decent product, for a good price, and very close to being something satisfying or perhaps even great.

Retro game, retro look, absolutely fun, but the price is too high for the game. Maybe $4.99 would be more appropriate, just like the retail pirce in China.

Before you buy this game, there is one thing you need to know:

Like many rogue like dungeon games, this one is quite hard and might cause frustration.

I'm not saying that it is bad, but the difficulty is part of the game play. Actually, this is probably one of the best rogue-like dungeon games I've ever played. From the game play to art, every part of it is worth the ten dollars I spent. It is true that there are still many bugs yet to be fixed and the characters and stats need some balence to be done. But as far as I know, the developers are working hard on improving the game. If you are a fan of rogue-like and have the patient to play a hard one, this game should end up on your must-play list.

9/10 - Please fix the bugs that some upgrades don't apply to the gameplay. I'm actually quite pissed about that, since I actually saved up gold to unlock them.

p.s. valve, workshop support please, games like this will become something totally different with workshop support.

Funny little game, but since you start always on lvl 1 after dieing it's only for people who aren't afraid to start always without anything left from your last run.

(There are no "Artifacts" like in "The Enchanted Cave", the only thing are "Tattoos" but after playing it a few hours i wasn't able to find out how you get them and how powerful they really are.)

Don't misunderstand me, it's a nice game for people who like it hard and have no problems with things like "Random Traps" or other stuff that can make you fail, even when you have a lot of skill, since they are totally random. It's just luck.

I like games like this, but only with a noticable progress (You can get a little bit better, each time you visit the dungeon, like in "The Enchanted Cave" or other games.)

So the bad rating isn't for the game, it's just so players like me can recognize it and think twice before buy this game.

Pros:
+ Good loot system
+ Easy to learn
+ Multiple fun random events, without random outcomes (Each choice choosen with have the same outcome...so far)
+ Optional Unlockables- Classes, Gods to worship (Positive/Negitive perks), progressive stat bonuses
+ Leaderboards

Neg:
- Can be difficult to get rolling at times
- Additional game modes can only be unlocked by beating the first mode (Which can be difficult/time consuming)
- A few amount of text bubbles will be cut off at times, and you can not scroll
- No saving (but would someonewhat defeat the whole rogue-like aspect)


Only have just played this today, but so far you'll love this game if you like rogue-like/lite, dungeon crawler type games. I've seen a few reviews on here with negitive comments because it has perminent upgrades, the upgrades must be purchased with in-game coins, so you can choose to never upgrade. Also there is a good amount of random events and unlockables to be found, so its has great replay value.

A very interesting, unique, deceptively simple game.

Check out the game in action with my Build-A-Review

Pro:
_Nice, clean art style: Looks good with its own art style. Nice character portraits as well. Isn't really bombastic, but does look unique and coherent.
_Unique: The gameplay is something else altogether. It's hard to align this to any specific genre.
_Satisfying gameplay: It's very simple stuff, but clicking on tiles to explore them feels satisfying in the way that popping bubble wraps is satisfying, if that makes sense. It's like fapping, it's hard to explain, but try it for yourself and you'll see immediately why it's so great.
_Rogue-lite: It's a Rogue-like with persistent upgrades that effects your future runs. That was fun in Rogue Legacy, it's fun in here.
_Difficult: It's hard, but never truly feels unfair.
_Deceptively simple: It's deceptively simple, but with an underlining devilishness that is very, very rogue-like. The game isn't afraid to troll you.
_Great pacing: Short runs (Lasts about 20-30 mins on average), but you'll be playing it over and over. It's really easy to lose track of time playing this game.

Cons:
_Could use more art assets: The art is nice, but there's not enough of it... I'll be honest, I'm just nit-picking here. I can't really think of anything negative to say.

Is it worth 10 bucks? You bet your sweet ass. It's fun, unique, easy to pick up, hard to master. It's very addictive and interesting. Buy it, you won't regret it.