Stoneshard

I thought I'd give a positive review for the game, but unfortunately I can't.the reasons are as follows, the game is unfinished, there are a lot of bugs, Dev is very slow to work on them, and even when the new patch comes out, forget about the old save. The summary is that the game is super well conceived, but the developers are slow or poorly working on it. My advice is to buy the game only when it's finished, not before.

Разработчики должны тщательно различать сложный игровой процесс и пустую трату времени. Например, в трейлере упоминается свобода пробовать разные сборки, но нет функции «сбросить навык», из-за чего любой билд требует 20-30 часов повторяющегося труда. Кроме того, время обновления подземелий слишком велико, из-за чего темп завершения финального испытания намеренно затягивается. Игры должны продлевать свою жизнь за счет насыщенного контента и сложных боев, а не за счет ограничения удобства игрока.
Наконец, есть такая штука, как управление проектами! Погуглите! Я почти уверен, что в команде разработчиков нет должности, отвечающей за управление проектами.

Devs must carefully distinguish between challenging game difficulty and time-wasting game difficulty.
For example, the trailer mentioned that you can freely try different builds, but there is no "respec" function, which makes any bulid require 20-30 hours of repetitive labor.
In addition, the dungeon refresh time is too long, which makes the pace of completing the challenge in the endgame deliberately extended.
Games should extend their life with rich content and challenging combat, not by restricting player convenience.
Finally, there is a thing called project management! Google it! I am pretty sure there is no people responsible for project management in the development team.

It's a cool idea, but not really a fun game.

The game feels like a slog and a grind(not the good kind). Locking out so many ability trees, really takes a lot of the fun out of the game for me. Not being able to create your own character in the early access is a mistake, it really should be one of the top priorities for a game like this that is so slow and punishing.

The movement control system in combat is frustrating because one misclick can be the difference between life and death, making permadeath unplayable. And personally I feel like this game should be designed around permadeath, when realism is the goal.

My suggestions:
-Make permadeath the default
-Make the game less punishing
-Add more wildlife to the squares, there is no reason for so many squares to be so barren and have to spend so long travelling to find anything
-Prioritize 'Create your own character'
-Don't make it so hard to sell things you loot, there is nothing worse than having a tough battle against 3 bandits and having nothing worth selling or no one who wants to buy them. Don't know who would have thought that was a fun mechanic.

This game is a low fantasy indulgence into RPG gaming. The attention to detail and flavor takes center stage here. The world they have crafted was created with careful intention, and you can tell they take joy in inviting others to explore this amazing place they have made. Worth.

The game is not released yet, but it is already a great game as it is right now.
One of the best indie games.

Ovreall:
From the very early stages of developemnt the game it was good.
The core gameplay loop of being no-name mercenary, that suppose to die on the job, feels on-point.
Survival is not simulated, unlike in a lot of other games, your every descision in preparation for your journey matters and you rarely able to scrounge someting up, if you find yourself lacking the food, water, medicine or gear.
Enemies are, albeit simple in their behaviour have the same skills as the players, have numbers advntage, and if caught in unfavorable position, can kill even the high-level character with relative ease.
Fights are rarely prolonged, usually ending swiftly and very brutally.
The punchy and perfectly fitting soundtrack elevates every location.
The coziness of the taverns and villages perfectly juxtaposes hostile environemnt of the plague-ravaged, war-torn and famine-sticken low-fantasy medieval country. Every settlement, every item description, every local recipe or a gossip paints the deep and rich world.

At it's worst:
Combat can be a little D&D-ish and swingy, with bad luck being a quick and painfull death sentence in a crucial moment, which can lead players to risk-free, but boring strategies.



Due to small team, development goes slow, but in a steady rythm. Devs work tirelesly on the bugs, imbalances and new content. With me seeing at least 2 overhauls of the gameplay.

TL;DR
STALKER's and Witcher's illigitimate turn-based top-down child.
Highly recommend.

This one shows so much promise. The development has been steady progress for QoL and expanding the mechanics of the game.

I've played this game early in it's development and realised it was far from a complete game. Now, four or five years later I thought I'd give it another shot to see how much it's progressed. Sadly, I've returned to many things the same they were half a decade ago.

Firstly though, I want to say this game looks absolutely gorgerous and I can clearly see how much love went into the art. I also I feel like the combat is very well thought out - even if somewhat on the punishing side - and rewards tactical play really well.

It is such a promising game and I want to see it succeed so badly, but rarely have I seen this many infuriating mechanics in a game at once without being addressed. And the worst thing is, they're mostly things that are only infuriating the first time you encounter them. So they could be addressed with some work into better introductions to the mechanics or clearer warnings about how things are used.

Just spent an hour clearing a dungeon but don't have any lockpicks to get to the loot? No worries, let's just go back to town to buy some and come back later. Wrong! You return to the dungeon after spending 15 minutes walking back and forth to find the entrance has randomly collapsed and won't let you in any longer.

Some repair kits will for some reason only work on gear that is only slightly damaged. Get ready to waste a couple hundred gold before realising this.

The save mechanic is either walk back to town to save or lose the last day of progress.

Prepare to be locked into corners by citizens that are blocked from going to sleep by you but won't let you through because they must sleep now. I just had to kill an innocent farmer just so I wouldn't starve in a corner.

Want to fight someone above or below you? Don't even bother, approach them from the side because the game is locked to cinematic widescreen mode for no reason.

I will revisit the game whenever it is fully released and hopefully then will I be able to change my review to a positive one.

This game needs a "normal" save game system. The current system is anti fun. You have to sleep to save and only the two last saves are kept.
This only leads to repetitive boring game play because you have to redo the same 10 minute travel to the next dungeon again and again.
You run accidentally into a trap (due to the janky movement system) and die? -> repeat 10 min of game play
You want to test a new skill in an fight against an enemy? Find a bed, sleep, go to the dungeon and test the skill. Want to test again or a different skill? -> repeat 10 min of boring game play.
...

I don't see any benefit in this save system. There is no situation where it is more fun than letting the player decide when and how often to save.

This game been in early access for yeas. It feels like one of those never ending projects. Developers don't have clear vision and keep tweaking with unimportant stat changes instead of focusing on finishing the game. Give us the game and then start tweaking the skill tree. Please.

This game is very time wasteful second of all it's not that much intuitive, a lot of aspects of the game like fights & so on feel a bit unclear, you need manually to click each character to see which of them is injured or not. It's not bad, but visually not so much immersive.

I mean it was a nice idea of the game long time ago, but definetely not now, game misses a lot of QOL features like being able to travel fast-forward like able to set up destination and speed up time or something, on top of that characters could have visualisation of damange taken or debuffs or if not then some kind of UI representation like healthbar should be introduced... As right now it's very mehh game, plus it still doesnt have character creation & overall economy feels very mehh as you cannot do much besides looting, hunting, harvesting plants. I would say if they made this as random gen map game with economy and all characters able to be killed then I would say it would be something interesting closer towards CDDA, but now it's so bad that I would rather go & memorise entire keyboard of CDDA complex keys rather than playing this.

So far very bad, it has a lot of content, but it's repetitive & overall almost abandoned with only minor updates and adjustements, I would highly recommend skipping this one...

A darn Gem, just get it already. Its some heretical amalgamation of Battle Brothers and Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode. Its like playing the previous story of a new hire in BB. You are NOT the hero, and the 3 bandits over there are gonna show you precisely that, by caving your skull in with actual sticks n stones.

Were talking about a rogue-like with a firm story driven core, that gives you the freedom to do whatever you want after a certain amount of progression. Means that you got like 6 cities that are always at the same point but the surrounding lands are procedurally generated on game start. This paired with the 100+ skills and even more build options leads to a sht ton of replayability, even now in its unfinished state.

This game is hard and it retains the challenges it presents you early throughout the game, in ever so slightly different ways. If you wanna live out power fantasies this aint a game for you. In the very lategame you might be able to just do whatever you want but that comes at a point where the game shows that its not finished yet. It might be pretty fckng annoying to get into the game at first but once you get a hang of it itll be a lot of fun.

The graphics are simply amazing, effects and details go through the roof at times. Ive been playing this game on and off over the years, checking out new content updates as they released and now we received one with another set of 60+ items and 3 new characters, all for free. Before the caravan Update is was kinda meh but over the years I really noticed that the devs of this game got a vision for it and most importantly they put heart and soul into it.

What bugs me most about this game is the music... its just... half the stuff fits straight into The Witcher 3 and the other half, the more chill songs could be put into Skyrim without anybody noticing that they belong to another game, its Midnight Tundra all over again, my god is it good. Having these songs play dynamically midfight is simply amazing.

It somewhat reminds me of Wartales and I could really see it become similar in scope.

Quite literally the game that hates you.

Nothing feels worse than doing an entire dungeon just to die by bandits on your way and losing one hour of progress.
You'll get experience and feel like nothing can stop you... until you meet an enemy that's one rank higher than you. Most likely he'll drink his victory wine from your skull.

The lows you'll reach are mentally underground but it feels so refreshingly good to defeat an overwhelmingly stronger enemy, especially when it takes multiple attempts and you keep on making small improvements to your strategy.

The first time I defeated the Ancient Troll, I was dead set on wearing heavy armor. It took me a lot of attempts to figure out his attacks and which items I owned could be effective against it. The winning strategy came together like a puzzle and I managed to win that fight with nothing but a bow, a spear, the random potions I found while completing contracts, and a bunch of Deathstinger Jars I could buy from Alda.
The fight was extremely hard since I undertook that challenge without using any guide or having any strategy in mind. I didn't even know what skills the boss had but I felt like a genius after I understood its patterns and manged to take that beast down with my own strategy.

At the end of the day, this game is a puzzle. A collection of rules you need to play by an tools you can use.
I find it fun. I hope more people that like this genre will find this gem.

Edit: I forgot to mention. The amount of interactions between each of this game's systems and rules will amaze you. Even after playing for this long, I still discover new "bad" decisions, "useful" interactions, and "unfortunate" events. Depending on what your build is and what you're fighting, certain conditions can be beneficial to you (i.e. Sadism)

At this stage, the game is challenging and amazing. Some elements, like the need to walk back to the city on empty maps, are still exhausting and unnecessary. However, there is a lot of amazing content that makes up for it. The game is designed for a specific type of player—something between Battle Brothers and Baldur's Gate. It's not for everyone, but if you fall into this category, it will be an amazing experience for you.

I believe the current low rating of this game is due to two factors: slow development and the fact that developers don’t listen to the community, creating updates with mechanics that nobody uses, while neglecting those that would improve the experience for early adopters. The developers' lack of business skills does not mean the game is weak. On the contrary, at this stage, it is amazing.

Highly recommended for hardcore gamers.

Beautiful pixel art and game design on one side, and brutal, unforgiving combat on the other, this is a near perfect roguelite open world RPG. Music is also very very good and sets a mood unique to this game. Over 100 hours in and I haven't finished exploring everything.

A neat little game which is unfortunately extraordinarily lopsided in its current implementation. The save system, combined with some peculiar choices about the strength/potency of wildlife and the size of the map, leave it wanting. The game tends toward unfairness not in an interesting/tactical sense (though position in combat is extraordinarily important), but more randomly.

By the time you can cut through bandits with ease, wolves/boars still present a threat to such a degree that it's not worth bothering: skinning requires a skillpoint investment (of which you only get one per level) and you're likely to die, lose progress, and have to walk 3-5 minutes back to try again. ...And by the time you can confidently deal with boars/wolves, you won't need the money from their pelts anyways.

There is also the rather peculiar inclusion of caves. These are not implemented, but they still show up on your map as something to explore! ...Which causes you to trek out into the wilderness (possibly several times if you accidentally stumble into some wolves) to observe unimplemented content you can't access.

Most of this would be almost entirely resolved by implementing a standard save system: there's already a reason to rest (vigor buffs), so gating it behind bed spots doesn't really achieve anything other than frustrating the player. Likely, at one stage (given the timeline of the game's development), the game was geared toward a more roguelike experience where the save-gating system makes 'sense' because you'd try out different tactics on different runs.

As for the overworld... While this feature is 'cool,' I think it's drawn the direction of the game away from rewarding/interesting exploration, questing, and dungeon delving, to a game of chance in a mostly empty environment. Stoneshard would be a far more cohesive experience if the design was structured better, which is difficult to do with its current overworld: the randomness doesn't really add replayability or intrigue to a game which requires 20-30 hours to see a character past level 15 anyways. While the setpieces are 'fixed' and the art is beautiful, there's not really much of a reason to trek into the wilderness.

This, quite plainly, doesn't work well in a character-focused RPG where you're playing a long-game with levels, attributes, and skills.

More puzzling is the lack of custom characters. This has been a planned feature for, I believe, 3-4 years now? Given that none of the character choices have any story relevance (they just have a few battle call-outs/starting skills/quirks) and this is a 'level-your-character' style game, the lack of prioritization on a feature that's the bread and butter of RPGs in this genre is baffling.

tl;dr a neat game that I would recommend if it was more cohesive. Right now it struggles with: too large a map with few reasons to explore, a needless 'gated' save system, and non-broadcasted difficulty spikes (a single boar shouldn't be more of a threat than 5 armed bandits, but it definitely is).

This game is amazing. Already spent more time on this than Baldur's Gate and this game isn't even finished yet. It's challenging, but not so challenging that you give up. Plus I love this style of turn-based RPG.

Too long in early access. 1 year turned into 5+ and no deadline for completion. Save files incompatible with updates.

I actually really like the game but I am going to leave a negative review because of two things.
It does not respect your time and the save system just doesn't work.

Until the developers fixes the save system and balance the amount of enemies in certain areas and make so they don't group all the time this review is going to stay negative.

Seriously the game is good and i want to like it more than i do but as it is now it's just to frustrating with not having a proper save system, limited saves can work but this ain't it.

A very solid rogue-like that is forgiving enough to not feel like utter defeat, but challenging enough to make victories enjoyable. The tutorial, if I remember is a bit difficult, but the post-tutorial gameplay allows much more freedom.

It contains a good variety of starter classes, with custom classes coming somewhere down the line.

I love the art style, and the light survival elements, such as food, water, bleeding, etc, and how they are handled as something to be managed versus something to constantly worry over and never feels particularly cumbersome.

I highly recommend, even in early access, as you will likely get many hours of gameplay with additional updates in the future. Keep in mind that it is early access, so it may be a while until the story is wrapped, but in the mean time it has plenty to engage with.

A few tips and warnings;
1. This is not fast-paced gameplay; advancing on enemies and spamming attacks will get you killed. If you spot enemies, always consider retreat. Distance, cover, and singling out enemies is key.
2. Gather gold and make sure you always have the best equipment.
3. Read the skill descriptions and focus on what you will use. There is no respec, and skill points are few and far between.
4. Travel in the day and always return to town after a victory to save, restock and sleep.
5. Pay attention to enemies and what they can do. If you don't know a two handed enemy can pull you near to them, or that a dagger wielder can swap positions with you, you will be in for some nasty surprises.
6. Always carry liquor. When things are rough, and you are bloody and broken after a fight, make sure to drink. Do not let the pain drive you mad.
7. Always have salves, bandages and 1 splint on you, otherwise you will likely fail your objective due to time constraints.
8. Always search for traps, it is a default ability and surprisingly easy to overlook.
9. Not all difficulties (noted by the skulls beside each quest) are equal, be afraid of cultists, be very afraid.
10. The most important (to reiterate): Patience. If you rush, you will die. Only take fights you know you can reasonably win. If an enemy is adjacent to you, retreat is no longer an option.

Gets you sucked in for the first 2 hours because it feels well tested, then the game shows its flaws by being terrible and impossible to progress past that point. really wanted to love this game

Edit: Yes I made this rant on a crash out. No, my review isnt changing until release, or if the game has made the changes needed to make me want to change it. The TLDR is: This game has all the realism and punishing difficulty I love from it's niche Genre (games like Quasimorph, Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, ETC.) None of the rewarding pay off. You feel no sense of accomplishment or reward for learning the game ever. (Maybe with a fully realized story that is all the game will need.). Sorry to any of the devs if my review comes off as hostile, but believe me it is tough love. I love your game. But also fuck your game.

This is the best yet shittiest game ever made.I both love and loath this game to tiresome degrees, but I cant recommend it to anyone. Behold my mega bitch rant, and likely the longest review I will ever make: The developers are literally asking you to pay them to shit all over your face and punish you for having the audacity to wanna play their game. Absolute masochistic a holes. I have put way too many hours into this game for this review to not be taken seriously: Unless you did your research into this game and know what you are getting into; DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS HORRID PIECE OF SHIT! It is NOT worth your time, your money, or your sanity. I have put so many hours into this travesty of a video game and never once, not once, not one fucking time have I ever felt accomplished for the effort I put into it. At no time. The moment you kill a Boar for the first time (Or anything that would solo you in the beginning for that matter) that joy you feel will be hollow and escape you just as quickly as it came with an indignant "Whatever." Because by the time you can fight something it's a chump. And if something is a challenge to fight, well you are probably just dead. I love Dark Souls, Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, Quasimorph so far. But any love I have for Stoneshard is being put on hold to be real about it all, if it stays this way on full release it can rot in the bowels of hell and it's developers go into obscurity because the game as it is does not respect your time and tells me all I need to know about it. And believe me it probably wont be any different in a finished state sad to say, given the developers are more concerned with a "Punishing and realistic experiance" To the detriment of any actual fun. You will never feel accomplished, you will never earn your way into being powerful by mastering it's mechanics and sticking with it long enough to earn the best gear, you will achieve nothing, and the game will hate you for playing it. "Fuck you for giving us money." Is what I imagine the developers think every time a copy is purchased. No, this is not a "The game isn't for everybody" type of review. This game is on the surface right up my alley after all. No no, don't be confused. THIS GAME IS FOR NO ONE! In it's current state. The overall positive outlook is from people too blind from what they want the game to be to see it for what it is and probably always will be. A game that hates you for owning it, buying it, or having the gall to enjoy it at any moment. Fear and hunger is kind in comparison, because at least fear and hunger does not cosplay as a Dark Fantasy Role playing game where you make your own story and fight tooth and nail to be a bad ass. Fear and Hunger tells you from the get go this game isn't for everyone and if you stick it out you may feel achieved in accomplishing what the developer asks of you. Stone shard? Treats you like you are a vile vermin who should just go sulk in the corner for ever wanting to play it, and like a narcissistic lover insists you are the problem and that it is totally what it presents it'self as. If I can refund this game, I would. Fuck the developers, Fuck their game, and if you buy Stone Shard fuck you to, because the developers certainly want to say it for themselves. Go lose your mind to the 100th time you accidentally aggravate a boar and die to it like a chump after killing a crypt full of vampires like a operator, because that sure makes sense right? A wild animal being more deadly then fiends and wraiths. Feel that hollow feeling when you go to get revenge on wolves and they just die like chumps because there is no in between, things just kill you or they are chumps 90 percent of the time. Buy this game and I hope you run into boars or bandit Ringleaders every single map you enter, you deserve it for having the audacity to want to buy and enjoy this game. Not because I think you deserve it, but the developers do. It hates you for playing it, but pretends it's worth the effort. It's not. And it never will be. And if you think im wrong, play it yourself and remember stupid, the developers intended for you to play with Permadeath ON not off, but turn it off. You wont make any progress otherwise in a never ending restart loop. TLDR: It's a game like CDDA, but you have to turn permadeath off to get anywhere and will accomplish nothing, ever. Will I keep playing it? Of coarse, especially when it is fully released, my morbid curiosity tells me to see the rest of this travesty with the hopes my review may change. I aint holding my breath though and neither should you. Does this mean I will stop playing it until it is released? No, it has it's charms but trust me if you buy it make damned sure you know what you are getting yourself into. Edit: I dont wanna come off as an a hole myself so let me say this much. It's a labor of love for sure, but one for sadists. It's a game I want to love, but the game does it's best to make me hate. I know im not alone in this. Hopefully it gets better on release and all the efforts I put into learning this game becomes worth it but as I said, in it's current state you will never feel accomplished or rewarded for your efforts, just constant anxiety off the back foot of ever increasing difficulty all topped with a tinge of too much realism at the cost of fun. Do I enjoy patching up my characters realistically? Of coarse! But I also enjoy turning my CDDA characters into nigh unstoppable cyborgs by the end of a long arduous journey to get the character there. Stone Shard is all the realism of it's niche genre, with none of the bad ass pay off. But pretends it has that pay off in it's promotionals.

Usually I dont write reviews for early access games, but this is worth an exception. The pixel art is just amazingly done! Stone Shard has that tabletop feeling, the same feel when you are playing D&D with a very competent but harsh dungeon master.

I really enjoy this game, it has a lot of old school touches. And is a lot of fun to play.
The things I would like to see some changes in is
1. Paid respecs
2. Controller support
3. An evil faction, the ability to have a dark play though.
All that poorly said, I think the game is well worth the price

I really enjoy it. It's not going to be a game you play forever, there's only so much content. The game is punishing, especially early on, and you die a lot - sometimes in really frustrating circumstances. But that's the nature of the game. It isn't for everyone, but I appreciate that it's not trying to be for everyone.

Some people might get frustrated by the length of time between updates as they add new content, but it is still being actively worked on and the updates are usually fairly substantial.

For the price, probably worth it, if you're unsure - wait for a sale.

Really enjoyable single player game with a lot of replayability through different combat styles and quests with different outcomes, especially now with rags to riches! Love it ^_^

as much as id like to give this game a positive review i have to echo what other reviewers have said; this is a game that is quite literally designed to waste your time, sometimes in totally rng manner out of your control. where long walks back and forth are a basic part of gameplay but it only allows you to save when resting at inns/your caravan or by wasting extremely limited inventory space on consumable bedrolls(which can still get you killed). it feels extremely barebones for a game that is 5 years old since release and makes me think what another reviewer said must be true; this must be a side hustle while they work another full time job. i truly find it hard to believe a team of devs are working on this full time and this is all they have to show after 5+ whole years because from what i understand alot of the features are already multiple years old and updates are few and far between.

it seems like a pretty big world at first but then you realize each town only has like 3-4 one time quests at most, virtually all of which are just fetch quests for specific items that you'll find randomly in dungeons or from some specific mobs you will be too weak to fight for dozens of hours and even 50 hours later i havent completed some of the quests i got in my first few hours of playing. theres lots of random "points of interest" locations out in the world but they feel like a total waste of time from my experience as virtually every single one i went to will get you killed until much later in the game AND have virtually no reward for even exploring them. 2 of the 4 towns arent even really towns as one is just an inn of thieves and the other a destroyed ruin with a few guards/1 merchant and by the time you've left the first town and begun the main quest to open the caravan you've already seen most of what the game has to offer. there is a very barebones story but after 55 hours of play i could not tell you what the story is about, what a stoneshard is or anything thats going on at all beyond the fact that im after some guy that betrayed another guy im supposedly indebted to but the game wont say why im indebted to him or why im risking my life hundreds of times in often very dangerous circumstances for this dude who has hardly anything to say to me. in fact, id say the games hourish long tutorial has more story than the actual game so far and most of the game cycle just involves grinding the same 3 procedurally generated dungeons over and over until you're high enough lvl to go to the next tier where you repeat the cycle again with stronger humans/skeletons etc. it feels like most of the tedium is just there as a time sink so you don't complete the game in 20-30 hours or whatever as theres not really much content to be found in the game beyond grinding randomly made dungeons repeatedly. they made this entire huge "endgame city" thats bigger than all the other cities combined but feels utterly pointless as it has next to no quests or anything to really do in it and even using the proper vendors there requires quest unlocks and rep that you have to grind out at other cities; to say this city feels incomplete is an understatement considering how big it and the fact its got more npcs than all the other cities combined but how utterly empty of purpose of it. the worst part is that its already been in the game for 3+ years at least based on my google searches so they've done basically nothing with it for 60%+ of the games dev time.

i can tell you that my tolerance for the games systems are basically at an end and ive lost interest beyond playing a few hours a week at most maybe and the moment i die at the end of a dungeon and get an hour+ of progress reset i just close the game and im done for the session and unfortunately this is something thats going to happen to you multiple times most likely. for those who have played battle brothers, its very much like a solo run of that but designed in a way to waste hours and hours of your time on reloads and walks of shame; like imagine if you could only save at town but every location you had to go to was 5+ days of travel away, that would be my comparison. if you believe the devs, alot of the games tedious nuisance things were "solved" by the addition of the caravan but it makes me wonder why it took them nearly 5 years to reach that point and i can only imagine how absolutely cancerous the game must have been prior to the addition of it because its really just a bandaid fix for a larger problem and theres still ALOT of tedium involved in using it when you factor in your limited inventory space and the multiple walks back and forth moving loot from dungeons; it makes it even worse when you realize this is basically a brand new feature and didnt exist for 90% of the games lifetime as it feels like something that should have been in the game from launch and the basic intro story seems to be intertwined with it. eventually you'll realize that the best way to loot a dungeon is to drop all the stuff you're picking up in there outside at the entrance, which means repeatedly going back and forth in the dungeon transporting loot drops to the surface since the dungeon locks after you turn the quest in meaning you MUST get the loot out before you turn in the quest and it also means multiple trips back and forth between town/dungeon/caravan just turning in your drops from any dungeon delve or even worse, sometimes to an entirely different town as the one you're at cant even afford to pay you properly. simultaneously, the contracts are also on a timer so you cant really linger and must be efficient in all aspects so there's no resting repeatedly and taking your time to clear a dungeon or you could fail it and not get a reward and then you'll be lucky if the loot covers your repairs and consumable costs. its totally possible to die 3-4 times on the same quest and then breeze through it on the next try with no issues, such is the rng system they've designed with massively punishing bleeds, injuries and various status effects that require items to deal with and due to this nature about half your extremely limited inventory space will always be going toward consumables.

there are tons of other things that can be nitpicked that i didnt bother to get into that you can read in other reviews and i feel like ive said enough; it just feels like this is a really incomplete game after 5 years honestly. there are 1 man amateur free games that only subsist on patreon that get far more consistent updates with more dense content. its just a shame as it has the potential to be a good game as the core combat is decent but it feels really held back by some dumb/stubborn design choices and how hollow it feels. maybe in another 5 years you'll have a decent game here but with how few and far between updates are it might not be ready then either. i bought this at full price and regret not waiting for a sale, ive paid half the price for games ive put 10x the amount of time into that im still not done with.

Can't really recommend this game honestly. Melee combat is 99% luck. Ranged combat is 99% luck. Walking from Point A to Point B is 99% luck cause if you encounter a single enemy, you're either not gonna be able to run away or the enemy is gonna rinse your health. That 1% of the time you get lucky and you don't have to deal with the BS of this game's gameplay loop, its pretty alright.

I have easily sunk almost a hundred hours in. Not just because its fun but also a huge pain in the arse. The good aspects of the game? The art-style is definitely top tier and comfortable to the eye, music is ok and the voiceover, though minimal are good as well. Story is there if you want it and it mostly orients around the ex-mercenary head guy but its fine. But as you dig deeper into the game, things are not as reasonable as it seems.

Like many of the reviews have said the idea of equipment not selling a good price is ridiculous. To make things worse, the only thing you can dissemble is defensive equipment (Like helmets, shoes, capes etc... and needs to be identified). However the parts that you get for doing so can only be used to repair armors, so now you get the gist of it? Weapons especially low tiered ones are complete JUNK, they are mostly broken and takes up a lot of space in your inventory and their stats are abysmal. The only two ways of repairing weapons are either you spend exorbitant amount of money at blacksmith or buy repair kit from them, which doesn't make sense since who still wants to repair at blacksmith since you can repair it yourself?

Next on, since most of the weapons you picked up are junk. The only feasible way to get good weapons/equipment is to buy them overpriced at some blacksmiths/merchant whatever. But the weapons sold are hugely overpriced and even with max out reputation the price is like maybe 10 percent discount??? You don't even have enough money to buy food at the very beginning and you cannot even get usable weapons from the dungeons? This only stuck new players in the progressing curve with no idea what would make the situation better, with options like buy a new weapon and starve to death halfway in dungeon or buy food and die due to poorly equipped in dungeons.

You might think that oh its low tier dungeons of course the weapons gonna suck, but even at tier 3/4 dungeons there are barely even any notable equipment or loot. The so called 'unique' weapons are just like gimmick every sales person used to sell stuff, wow very cool backstory for those unique items but WHO CARES? Their stats are not remotely 'unique' and mostly just a refurbished weapons of a existing one, with maybe some minor improvements to their default archetype and its hilarious (Some 'unique' weapons have worse stats than of a same tiered weapon and at this point you have to convince yourself to use it or just throw it away since its worthless anyway). Especially to those who play on permadeath, like this piece of crap almost cost me the whole game?

More hilarious yet, enemies only drop low tiered weapons and most of them are broken. THEY NEVER DROP ARMORS AND HOODS/CLOAKS whatever, well so much for looting from enemies. You need to waste a skill point to just make enemies drop repair parts and its hugely random. If you're gonna just ignore it and just fix your equipment every time back from dungeon you are going to be BROKE because the repair often cost even more than the contract rewards if you wear higher tier items.

Lastly about the equipment, a serious lack of physical, magical defensive rings/ amulet and belt. Most of them are magic build oriented, the ones that does provide defensive stats, if any at all, are rare and just not as effective as it seems. Imagine wearing a full set of tier 5 knight or noble heavy class armor, oh and heavy helmets often obstructs your vision, and still get smacked once and crippled your head by an enemy with a tier 2 dagger. Surprised? not...

Now for the skill tree, its way too much branched. Like maces separated into one-handed and two-handed, one-handed swords and two handed swords, and daggers is a different branch of skill tree. With NO WAY TO RESPEC, and every damn thing is skill point dependent, like you could not master a weapon based on how often you use it and instead sudden enlightenment from reading a book and spending a point LOL yeah right... (Since the devs responded on one of the reviews about skinning an animal being a 'challenging' skill, maybe make it a practice based skill then, not from books like every other damn skill.)
Shields have one skill tree dedicated, and armor skills, survival, maneuver etc... Like I said, way too branched and you only have so much skill points to spend. Most of the passive or some active can be combined into one singular skill because the effects are too specific. It's obvious they do so just for the sake of 'balancing'. Also, the skill multipliers are horrendous if it cost me stamina and skill point at least act like its a skill not just swinging randomly and hope that it hits, with lower damage? It makes no sense at all.

The game is slanted heavily to magic builds, now you might think this is skill issue. But I assure you using physical builds and magical builds make the game totally different. With physical build its a roll the dice kind of game where you bet on either your enemy hits you and crit, or you hit your enemy and crit and thats basically it. EVERY DAMN MOVE is a roll of dice and RNG stats no more. But with magic build, your spells are almost guarantee to hit enemy, you might say hey you could miscast and hurt yourself, well yeah if you do it naked, but later on the miscast is just occasional hiccups and it won't affect you to one shot your enemy with lightning bolts. The magic enhancement spells even infuse your attacks with additional elemental damage depending on what element spell you chant, which is probably the only effective way to boost damage in game. Not very fair if you ask me as I would really wanna just play full physical build but ahh the cold reality.

Now even using magic build, the different schools are vastly different. Electric is versatile, perhaps too versatile you could speed run the game just with it and provide best function per skill point than all other skills (With only 3 schools of magic for a game like 5 years in development...its kinda awkward tbh).
The fire spells? Well it only works mostly on undead enemies, because unsurprisingly for the sake of 'balancing' the initial spells could not effectively ignite the enemies (Even high tier spells struggle to provide a stable ignition chance) , which is like the whole point of the magic build. You could buy bottles of oil and throw them at enemies but its funny how it should be magic based? While electric magic DOES NOT specify you to make enemies wet to zap them. The fire spells in general is cool looking but not very stable and reliable, as only undead enemies will walk straight to burning tiles you prepared (Ghosts does not get ignited over burning tiles they just hover over it).
Earth magic is balanced and can combine with melee attacks and kinda fun but really lacks attraction to me. Because for a magic build it looked more like what an actual fun melee physical build should be like (Minus the spikes and boulders of course).

Ranged weapons like bows and crossbows are hugely debuffed since the beginning and only feasible if you grind points and spend them on their skill trees, by not using them at start like what?? Note that the devs only started to address the ranged weapons being half arsed recently by adding related improvement to ranged skills based on your character stats, I thought that should be done in the first place?

All in all, this game is fun for the first maybe 30-40 hours and then everything is rinse and repeat with harder enemies (Read: enemies with better stats and still drops trash items) game with lackluster reason to further explore the empty wilderness, for obvious reasons accounted by many other reviews. For melee build its a one on hundred kind of game, for magic build its a I can launch electric ballistics missiles to you kind of game, and for bow/crossbow ranged its spray and pray kind of game. I really hope the devs try and play the game using melee build then try playing magic build and then tell me the game is 'balanced'.

READ THIS BEFORE JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS

Most negative reviews of this game focus on slow development, which seems unfair. A review should reflect the current state of the game, not the pace of updates—especially considering the developers' situation amid the war in Ukraine. That said, as of 2025, there's been a massive increase in updates and changelogs So why are people still complaining????

It feels like many negative reviews come from people who haven’t truly given the game a chance. the most upvoted review has only three hours of playtime - criticizing mechanics that are staples in RPGs. Meanwhile, there's a dude with 1,000 hours leaving a negative review. How do you sink that much time into a game and ONLY THEN decide it’s bad?? Does he enjoy continually playing bad games or what? Either they secretly love it or just enjoy complaining.

I don't want this to be too lengthy so here the review - GAMEPLAY WISE:

If you love detailed pixel art, you’ll love this game. The dungeon environments are stunning, with incredible animations and charming, friendly creatures that bring the world to life.

Casual mode? Super chill and fun.
Hardcore mode? Brutally challenging - every death is a skill issue (L + ratio). You won’t die because of "bad luck"- only mistakes
Storyline? Decent and engaging.
RPG mechanics? Deep and rewarding.
World size? Massive, with endless places to explore
Turn-based combat? ABSOLUTELY fantastic- strategic like chess, where every move counts

There's so much I could glaze about this game but I would honestly rather be playing it than writing this review so here's the just:

This game is fun, beautiful, challenging, and strategic. It runs on any low-end potato PC, takes up barely any storage, and is incredibly affordable man. Just try it for an hour - if it’s not for you, refund it. Ez

I bought this game in Nov 2020 as an Early Access game. It is now Feb 2025 and it is still in early access. While I enjoyed the game while I played it, it is very frustrating that after all this time it is still not a complete game. This is one of the first games I bought in early access and is why I am very hesitant to purchase Early Access going forward. The things that were promised have not materialized and so much of the game feels the same now as it did four years ago.

Love the turnbased gameplay, difficulty curve, complexity....

That said, 5 years early access..... absolutely hate this trend of selling product and 5 years later still early access.

This game is a glorified Tamagochi as your caracter will say every five minute that he is thirsty or hungry or tired when you just want to advance in the game.

If you insist on playing: I would either recommand you to go outside and have a walk instead or absolutely use a trainer so you don't become the nanny of a growned up fighter.

The story is interesting, I feel this game could be good... but it wil never be, since it exist for many years and not going anywhere.

You will get way too late in the game the stuff that would have been useful like 15 level ago.
You will ben encourage to murder the wildlife for their skins as absolutely nothing else worth the effort of picking it up to sell it back.

You will be very lucky if the vendors have anything of interest worth buying.

***This is the very only game I played, in 37 years of gaming I have to say, where I do not ever bother picking up magic items.***
They worth nothing to pick up and, if by mistake you pick one: it will cost you money to discover how lame they are and nobody will want to buy it from you anyway. What are the designers thinking ?!

The enchanting method is save and load... lame is the name of the game.

Sorry but not sorry. I will beat the troll one last time, uninstall the game and delete it form my Steam collection.

Go outside instead of playing this parody of adventure game.

I want so much to love this game. I really do. But I cannot in good faith recommend it, because of one simple truth. The dev team committed the biggest cardinal sin in game development: intentional wasting of significant amounts of the players' time.

In life, we can always make more money, more friends, more everything material... the only thing we will never receive is more time.
Time is finite and precious. Respect for players' time is paramount for any game developer. The fact that players dedicate so much of their precious time to any game is a gift, and one that should be held in high regard. That, unfortunately, is not how this particular game works.

The art direction here is superb. I love the graphics. The voice acting (what there is) is top notch. The story is gripping, and gritty, and well written. So much was done well, and this game stands alone in its unique combination of attractors... a turn based, non-anime pixel graphic rpg with 2d tactical battles and a dark, gritty story. This should be topping the rpg charts!

The problem is that this game not only can waste your time, but it actively tries to. In large quantities. In fact, it was designed specifically to do so.

The developers seem to have a vision of how difficult a game should be, and they wanted to create something that was both immersive and also high-stakes... they want you to care about the moves you make, and the choices you make. I respect this so much... it is a good vision! But the implementation they made here was not the way. Ultimately, it causes problems because this game is designed with:
- High difficulty,
- Insidious surprises meant to kill you, and
- No way to save your progress within and up to several hours worth of game play.

The fact is the game only saves when you sleep. You can save-quit, but that file is erased when you load back up to prevent save-scumming. So if you die... you go back to where you last slept. Everything you did from there is lost. You can cart around a bed roll at high inventory cost, but even then you can only sleep outside of dungeons with it and still you can be ambushed and killed while doing so.
Traversing the map to new areas takes a very long time. So you could have spent at least 20 to 30 mins just travelling to your target area. Dungeons are lengthy, and with the difficulty of combat you often need to play very carefully and isolate enemies... so dungeons can take several hours.

One miss anywhere along the line can kill you... and you lose hours of your time. Forget to click on your "inspect area" button in the wrong spot, and you get caught by a trap? That's almost an insta-kill, never mind the bleeding. There's a ton of spots in the game where it surprises you from a quest/story progression with a sudden fight that will overwhelm you, because you had no idea it was coming. Guess what, you just lost at least an hour or more of your time.

And to be clear, this is not a problem of difficulty. Many of us welcome a difficult game. But this game, unlike every other rpg game, refuses to allow you save your own progress at times of your choosing. Other games you can save before a tough fight and try it as many times as it takes for you to get it right. Maybe you even backtrack to re-equip in town and come back and re-save before trying the fight again. That is good design, and is how difficulty is best accomplished. Most gamers welcome that challenge. But in Stoneshard, you don't have that option.
This isn't like a roguelite where you get meta-progression, nor is it a full roguelike where you may have lost everything from the previous run, but you can try a new run a different way. No, in this game you simply have to re-do everything you just did. Even if you did everything well for an hour, you get the chance to do it all over again... even if it is something as boring as walking from screen to screen. This is such an utter waste of time, and a truly poor design choice. And just imagine successfully completing a dungeon and getting ambushed on the way back to town! You quite literally lose everything you just did, and you need to do it all over again for no good reason.
Also, don't be fooled by false information. This game has a large degree of rng in it. You can, and will, be defeated at times by random rolls for things from enemy awareness, or to hit or damage rolls. There's also surprise fights buried in the story that you had no idea were coming and had no way to "prepare" for. The idea that "every death was preventable" is something that I'm sure the developers wish was true... but it just isn't true, no matter how much they pretend. And even if it were true... that's no reason to remove the ability to save from the game. It's an unnecessary punishment that goes above and beyond what is reasonable.

I've read a lot from players further along in the game who strategize how to complete higher level content. In most cases, they focus on a certain ability that lets them see monsters in the area. They isolate who they can, kill some of them, then exit the dungeon and run back to sleep somewhere. Then they come back, and move further into the dungeon. Rinse, repeat. This is utter nonsense... the fact that the game needs you to waste so much time because fear of losing it does not make this game good... it does not accomplish the vision the devs have set out. All it does is make the game tedious and unnecessarily time consuming. And if you don't play that way? You risk death and losing hours of your time for no reason.

Other players (many of them) use mods to increase inventory space, which at the very least means they can carry a bedroll without feeling like they sacrificed so much inventory. The discord is full of mod discussion around this. Why on earth is this necessary? It's silly to design a game that needs to be modded to be enjoyable, and even that has its limitations since as I said before, you cannot even sleep in a dungeon (and stand a chance to be ambushed outside of one).

I could also point out that the difficulty of the game does mean that you really aren't free to explore the abilities trees any way you like... you do have to focus on a min/max of some type. But honestly that's ok. That, in itself, is common to more challenging games. But if you don't do it? You will die, and you will lose time. Potentially a lot of it. So the choice really doesn't belong to you anymore, unless you are fine with wasted time.

All this being said... want to fix this game? It's simple. Quicksave would be best, but even autosave would work. A single autosave executed every time you zone from map chunk to map chunk, on the world or in a dungeon. Because just having to repeat a single room, or a single floor... well that's not so bad. But the chances are that this will never happen, and you should be aware of the potential cost of sinking time into this game if you choose to play it.

In closing,
For all that this game has grown and been developed... now with caravans, and extended quest lines... for how large and spanning the story and world are... this game deserves to be enjoyed! It really does. But you are simply not allowed to do so unless you are fine with arbitrarily losing hours upon hours of your time needlessly over the course of the game.

Why on earth this is the hill that these developers have chosen to plant their flag on is beyond me.
I don't recommend paying for a product that was designed specifically to waste your time. Gift your time to games and developers who are thankful for receiving it.

Stoneshard is best represented by the state of the game's Steam Achievement "Travelling Salesman Problem" which only 0.7% of the player base have achieved it.

Stoneshard has items called "commodities" which can be bought from various traders in towns, and then sold at another trader at another town, for a profit. Many great RPG's have this merchant's route that can be 'exploited' by experienced players to fast track their economy. In Stoneshard, this is a noob trap, if you manage to buy at the cheapest possible, and sell at the most expensive, you make a pittance, a pitiful ROI with profits so small they could be easily gained through several other much more efficient methods. The reason no one has this achievement is because the very mechanic Stoneshard has to help your economy, is simply and clearly not worth the time.

There's some irony here, as for a time, commodities were mostly working fine. But for whatever reason, the developers decided to nerf it out of the meta. Commodities are not the only example of this, many great builds and game mechanics receive such heavy nerfs that they become painful to engage with. Unless you have chosen whatever happens to be the developers' favoured build of the time (usually 2H swords) and are eagerly grinding the same 3 dungeon types, you are usually going to be playing at an inherent disadvantage. Every time some discord wizard finds some new powerful strategy, the developers over-nerf it.

The game progression is at least twice as slow as it needs to be, with spread out map locations, painfully slow leveling, and arduous money grinding. This is the kind of gameplay I would expect of a subscription based MMO, not a single player RPG. There's honestly a great game hiding within Stoneshard, the exquisite pixel art, the dark fantasy setting, it comes together nicely to deliver some powerful immersion. Unfortunately this is all broken apart by the developers misguided attempts at balance.

Both telling the time and saving the game are linked to sleeping devices in a way that absolutely destroys the feeling you are in a living world. The NPC's all know exactly what time it is, and if you miss a trader or quest NPC window by even 1 turn, their entire functionality is disabled. The cost of meals compared to the cost of salt and the rate at which various food goes off makes it pointless to bother with cooking anything but the simplest meals most of the time, being much better off just buying or ignoring the fancier meals. Settlement situations are tied to dungeons, but the game can't handle it properly so you have to go clear a dungeon in another town before you can help the suffering town. Caravan upgrades cost more money than they are worth in the majority of instances. For example, for the cost of some end game items you can get extra caravan speed that has little to no effect on the game.

Overall, I will be more than happy to give a positive review if the developers ever have a change of heart. I hope they start balancing for a better average player experience, rather than being worried that some players will find 'exploits' in a single player game.

I really want to support this game, but I can’t support any game where you can do things right and still fail repeatedly.

This game is hard, and I want it to stay hard, but there’s a big difference between a game being unforgiving towards player mistakes and a game that outright punish players through storytelling and/or game mechanics that set players up to fail. Many players point to this game’s brutal death mechanics that forces a reload from the last save, usually from a town or other safe area, but the real issue is how quickly RNG can kill a character in this game due to situations that are seemingly out of the player's control.

This isn’t enjoyable. Games designed like this will never be enjoyable.

The developers should address one of these two issues: either keep the game randomly murderous with more forgiving save mechanics, or keep the save mechanics as-is and make the game less randomly murderous.

TL;DR
I methodically cleared-out a dungeon so my character could sprint to the exit after triggering the win scenario, which spawns 3 moderately dangerous mobs. My character’s class can’t standup to a 3v1 at this instance's level, but these mobs can’t follow me out of the instance, so the chase was on (btw, you do a lot of "running for your life" in this game). I get to the exit portal with half my health, and, instead of clicking on the door, I click on an item on the ground which picks the item up and takes up my turn. I immediately die to a 1-round hail of attacks from the chasing mobs. Upsetting since the game has poor item interaction mechanics, but definitely not the end of the world.

I reload to my previous save in town from an hour before, travel back to the instance and do the whole thing again: clear-out the instance, trigger the win scenario, outrun the 3 moderately dangerous mobs, and this time I made it through the exit portal. Now outside of the instance, victory is short-lived as I am greeted by 3 instance-unrelated and moderately dangerous mobs surrounding my character at the portal. I gave it my best, but nothing was going to stop these mobs from stomping my character to death, which they did.

Reload to my previous save again, rinse and repeat. This is Stoneshard.

I had a lot of fun with Stoneshard. That’s why, I played more than 400 hours and tried to give the developers constructive feedback and even crunched the numbers to improve the meta. But with each update since the introduction of the troll, the game gets less fun to play. The developer’s either doesn’t care or are unable to properly develop their game. Updates take literally years to publish and don’t take player feedback into account.

Here are the things, which make the game not fun or outright tedious to play:
- Once fun gameplay mechanics, like hunting and skinning animals for pelts, got gated behind perks.
- Choosing survival or utility perks is punishing to the player, because you will have to foregone a badly needed combat perk. Survival perks will gimp your build.
- Magic got nerfed into oblivion and is not fun to play anymore.
- Some perks and builds are much more powerful than others. Respecing is impossible, and thus the player can get permanently punished for trying new perks.
- The economy doesn’t make sense. Equipment is worthless, when you want to sell it and treasure, when you want to buy it.
- With the save system, I had no problem before. But with the expanded map, dying means hours of gameplay lost upon death.
- The most glaring fault of the game for me is the map. The game is huge and has over 1000 tiles to explore, but nothing to make exploration worth it or fun. At this point, the game is a pointless walking simulator. Even the caravan update only slightly addresses this issue. The map remains mostly empty and exploration pointless.

TLDR: The game is a walking simulator with incredibly slow development. Wait until development has finished in 10 years and then maybe pick the game up.

Killing demons in a couple hits, but a random boar is suddenly a raid boss which 2 shots you. Very interesting.

ugh, i genuinely love this game, but holy SH*T WHY IS EVERYTHING GETTING NERFED, for Christ sake, i wanna enjoy this painful game, not hate every second trying to progress through the story or do quests because everything kills you within 10 moves because "uh oh, your outta mana" or "uh oh, 3 enemies are attacking you all at once, or "uh oh, your character is in immense pain!" or "uh oh the necromancer just raised all the enemies you LITERALLY JUST KILLED and are now surrounded", or "uh oh, your bleeding out but you cant bandage because it takes a turn and if you do bandage, you get FU*kED by the 2 dudes in front of you and the bow dude just crit you for 10 damage, ughhhh. your weapons don't do sh*t against most enemies, unless you have skills which you need mana for, and again, its only viable against 1-2 foes, after that you completely screwed because you can no longer funnel enemies into doorways or halls...thanks for the un-needed nerf again... ive played this game for YEARS, but i always give it a break for a couple months due to how unbalanced this game is. i really wanna enjoy this hardcore game, but seriously, STOP NERFING SH*T, let people have fun with your game, i love the rags to riches changes, but i hate getting murked after walking for 5 mins trying to get to point A to point B when a single moose appears/ really any predator animal, and die, losing all that boring progress i JUST made. i hate it more after clearing 98% of a dungeon and i get sh*t on by 3 dudes because one guy used one skill on me that renders my entire build useless. please for the love of god, make combat at least a little easier, stop making the game entirely luck based, make my weapons and spells or skills do damage again, please for the love of god make the game enjoyable again. wasted 9 hours of my life on this new update. till combat gets better, via better skills or buffs to characters/ new mechanisms or tools to help the player im steering clear from this game. ive played this game since 2018 and i havnt been this disappointed in quite some time

Edit: WHY ARE THERE SO MANY FU*KEN BANDITS!? ive ran into 7 groups within 7 map chunks, each with a minimum of 3 guys per group, WHYYYYYYYYYY IIM TRYING TO DO THIS TIME SENSITIVE MISSION and theres THUGS AROUND EVERY GODDAME CORNER. i dont have the food nor the time to deal with the guys, but i dont have a choice, because they litterally hunt you down, and WHAT DO YOU KNOW!? I RAN INTO ANOTHER GROUP OF THUGS IN THE CHUNK NEXT DOOR, FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU************KKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

I've returned to the game post Rags to Riches and I think the engine and systems they've built are wonderful. That said, I do feel the juice is not worth the squeeze. The game is difficult and highly luck based.
I think I will avoid this game until the developers provide additional tools and mechanisms outside of skills that can help players change the tides of a battle.

It's not perfect, and may never be, but it sure is getting there. Each major update makes this more and more the type of game I want to play. It's like the original Baldur's Gate games had a baby with Skyrim, and then gave you real asset upgrades that facilitate the grind and make you feel like you are progressing. I've been conceptualizing a game like this in my mind for years, and they are making it. Keep it up, devs!

Good idea but the game overall suffers from incredibly terrible developer studio, extremely slow updates, and community mismanagement.
Purchase at your own risk

The game is hard, and I mean hard hard. The enemies do not hold back, the game does not hold your hand and every single mistake could mean your last.

Anybody that loves a hard RPG. This game is for you

The towns feel surprisingly lived in. The caravan system is very fun. I enjoy how gritty the survival aspects are.
There are some mechanics that are infuriating, such as the save system and some aspects of inventory management. (why can't I have a foraging backpack?)
The skill system is pretty shallow, but it is fun being able to use consumables and terrain to your advantage when facing higher level quests.
Game has been out 5 years but feels like it's still relatively early in EA, since the devs are in Ukraine the updates are slow.

Stoneshard has potential, but its saving system ruins the experience for me. Saving requires either a costly, bulky item or paying for a tavern far away from the location I would like to save in, making it frustratingly inconvenient. Combine this with frequent deaths from RNG, and the game feels more like a waste of time than a rewarding challenge.

A frustrating experience to the saving system. The game forces you to literally calculate every move and replay the same thing over and over again, or watch literal walkthroughs. It does not reward exploration at all. It punishes you for it.

Devs don't respect our time. So many people are complaining about the save system, yet they force us to play their way. That by itself would not be much of a problem if the game didn’t try to kill you every single moment. The game is creative enough to keep us busy and entertained, so you don't have to prolong that with tedious inventory management minigames and an awful save system. I've spent half the game time trying to determine which item is least worth to throw away, only to find more items half a minute later and have to do it all over again! Listen to people, devs! Look at which mods are popular—that should tell you how people feel about some aspects of your game.

This is just sad, great premise but just wastes your time with pointless mechanics and terrible save system. I don't mind hard games but this is one for the min/maxers. Whereas I enjoy a more multifaceted approach to gaming. Avoid if you actually enjoy gaming not paying to waste your time. Ah well back to battle brothers I guess... whilst I await Menace.

almost 100 hrs in and the game honestly reminds me of battle brothers.: hard, open world and many mysteries awaits for exploration on the map. However, I would not recommend this game until the developers finish it and fix all the bugs. Just over the past month I have experienced several game-play changes due to their hot fixes. There are also several game breaking bugs that prevent you from save and exit, forcing you to reload from the previous save (if you happens to clear a difficult dungeon and heading back for reward. Congrats! you get to redo it all over again! 2hrs gone for no reason!) There is also no way to reset your character so if you later regret to put a skill point into certain skill tree, brother, good luck and 20hrs gone! The game is released in 2020, while I just start to play it last month, I still believe it is absurd to have a game in early access for almost 5 years. Given the price, I do not think it is acceptable for developers to not finish the game and keep updating the game, essentially forcing players to start a new save to experience new game features. So, if you are thinking of buying the game, I recommend you wishlist the game first and buy it when it is completed.

The "feel" of the game is impressively good. It's just pleasant to play as a dungeon crawler and RPG in general, though it's light on the actual roleplay aspect of it, at least for now, given the story isn't finished. As far as build making and playstyles go, I can't think of a dungeon crawler or any roguelike which does it better. You can focus on using items, terrain, being patient, rushing, fighting crowds, fighting duels, specializing against certain enemy types or factions, armor, blocking, dodging and countering for defense, knockback, disengagement, crippling opponents, killing them outright, drawing out fights, using secondary loadouts, keeping backup knives and axes for throwing, keeping an extensive medicine kit, using medical skills instead, keeping out of enemies' way and just going for the quest at hand, etc., etc.

There's even a passive skill which makes your main-hand weapon better and better, as long as your other hand isn't occupied, so you can play as a duelist using nothing but a single one-handed sword.

The point is, if you like a fairly straightforward, but still voluminous game as far as your playstyle is concerned, this will give it to you. And it just feels good to play. It's gorgeous, and has a pleasant tactile element to the combat especially. You really feel it when you get a crit. And combat against multiple opponents can get complicated and puzzle-like real fast, so that you really have to think.

The only complaints I have are there isn't a respec mechanic (yet), and that there are no apparent plans for having multiple characters to play as at once. A game like this with a small squad of player characters would be a hell of a lot of fun, given how much potential synergy there is with all the different skills and items, and how little room you really have for all of them. You really have to choose what you take with you carefully.

Also, the beginning of the difficulty curve can be pretty rough. I don't recommend playing on hardcore mode to begin with, but getting through the first main quest until Brynn. You'll probably get reliable enough at clearing the first few dungeons after a few tries with it. Fight enemies one at a time! And examine your surroundings in dungeons every time you enter a new room! Multiple times, if you haven't seen all of it!