Runestone Keeper Demo

Runestone Keeper is a wonderful little dungeon crawler that blends in RPG, roguelike elements and a bit of turn-based strategy. Each dungeon you enter in is randomly filled with monsters, traps, treasures and plenty of other helpful items.

The moment you start Runestone Keeper you are greeted with a short and explicit tutorial on how most of the things work, you know, the basic stuff. Since the game combines multiple features from different genres, you will have combat, exploration, a leveling up system, special abilities to use, shops to visit and of course, the cherry on top, permadeath.

Runestone Keeper’s graphics are simple, pixel art style, and they give it a bit of a retro look. Everything is done by clicking, you dictate the pace of the game and at times, a random event occurs where you are presented with a scenario and are left to choose between several courses of action. Each one resulting in a different favorable, neutral or unfavorable consequence.

In Runestone Keeper, each dungeon has the same structure, a 7 by 7 mesh of square tiles and each one is randomized when you enter. There is permadeath, meaning that if you die 10 dungeons in, you have to start all over again from level 1. The latter happens quite a lot, the game is not that simple, but since each level will always be different, replayability is there and so is the challenge.

Moreover, you also get to keep the gold that you collect from defeating monsters, finding treasures and obtaining bonuses. That really cuts the frustration factor to a minimum. Runestone Keeper actually has a cleverly thought out core of features that compliment each other.

Monsters are displayed with their damage potential and life points just like in card games but additional more detailed information about them can be accessed. In each dungeon, you get to explore the dungeon one tile at a time, discover enemies, shrines, traps, passages and a lot more. When attacking, you and your target strike at the same time, and like in TBS games, each combatant has a chance to miss, do extra damage, parry and so on.

On a closing note Runestone Keeper is a well polished game even though it’s still in the works. Variety is there, gameplay is relaxing and challenging at the same time, the soundtrack could use a bit of diversity but that’s purely subjective.

All-in-all, Runestone Keeper is worth taking a look at, and undoubtedly, after a few hours of gameplay you will add it to your wishlist.