Lone Ruin is a dual stick roguelite by Cuddle Monster Games and published by Super Rare Games. And you know what? I’ve enjoyed it.
As expected, story’s light, or at least from what I’ve seen. You’re some sort of mage, you go into a ruin, Uncle Death gives you the starter spell of your choice, and you pick one of two doors to start your run. Story’s not really the draw.
What is, is the gameplay. Almost all of the spells need to be aimed to some degree, and that’s where the twin stick comes in. You’ve got a dodge, a spell of your choice from 8, and your wits (I recommend starting with Chain Lightning for your first run, fyi). You dodge enemies, you shoot, you collect treasure to hopefully update your spells/dodge in the store, and you choose rooms based on reward; you’ll often have to choose between treasure, artifacts, or spell upgrades. And all of them have their fair value.
Each room has several waves of enemies. And they can get fairly oppressive if you’re either unfamiliar with your spells or bad at dodging. More importantly, though, there are occasionally be rooms that offer three rewards. These can be dangerous, as they often have a larger number of enemy waves to compensate for that reward. So, you have to ask yourself if it’s worth it.
Bosses require you to dodge, at least a little bit. The first boss, for example, has an attack that basically bullet hell’s the area around it. So you’d best be light on your feet.
Graphically the game is aggressively purple/cyan. Sometimes, this can make it a bit easy to tunnel vision and miss enemy projectiles, but once you get used to it it’s less likely. It is, for the most part, oddly dark yet pretty, but I can’t quite put my finger on the best way to describe it.
The sound absolutely pumps. There’s no other way to put it. I don’t have the means to really share it here, but take my word for it.
So overall, Lone Ruin makes for a pretty dang good pick-up-and-play game. Like with most of the roguelite genre, your runs are mostly going to end in failure. But what’s here is good, and impressive considering Cuddle Monster Games is a one man operation. So I’d definitely recommend; it’s worth the price of admission.
Lone Ruin is a pumping twin stick roguelite that will get your attention.
Pros:
+ Soundtrack goes hard
+ High replayability
+ Feels good to play
Cons:
− Is very cyan/magenta
− Some runs are a little up to chance
Final Score:
RELEASE DATE: Jan 12, 2023
DEVELOPER: Cuddle Monster Games
PUBLISHER: Super Rare Games
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