Into the Restless Ruins Steam Charts & Stats

An interesting take on the card-based rogue-lite genre of indie games as of late, Into the Restless Ruins is a fun (but sometimes frustrating) romp where you build your own dungeon out, then explore it to expand until you can reach the boss chamber. It effectively has a modern take to bump combat (no "attack" key, but positioning and timing matter in your movement) and encourages you to think strategically when placing down additional rooms. The music is nice and thematic, plus it is nice to have a game themed off of Celtic and Welsh lore. Plus it is always good to support your indie devs. The game isn't flawless though. [list] [*] I've found that the bosses tend to either one-shot you or you annihilate them - with nothing in between. Seriously, I find it a bit ridiculous that the hardest part of the game is simply the horde of monsters that randomly approaches (or is triggered on unsealing a seal) and the bosses are pushovers once you see them attack [i]once[/i]. [*] The weapons don't seem balanced at all. This could just be my play style, but it seems like almost all of the melee weapons you pick up come with such a large drawback that you're better off with the sword - the exception to me is the Spear, which is the only melee weapon I bother picking up. The Axe requires you to point in a direction and attacks slower... and doesn't do significantly more damage either. I wouldn't be shocked if the DPS is identical to the sword. The Scythe hits all around you, but is so slow that any of the flying-type or fast-type enemies will just tag you before it rotates around most of the time, meaning you end up hit more often in horde situations. The Dirk has such a short range that you end up getting hit by pretty much everything that moves faster than average... and has all of the disadvantages of the Axe outside of speed. All of those are worse than the base sword. The ranged weapons have fire bombs and bombs - nice in theory but their delay in going off usually meant death to me - the brooch which doesn't do enough damage to actually help you once you're more than 10% of the way in to a run, and then "everything else" (which work just fine). [*] Hordes in the higher levels are just WAY too common. At one point in the final (as of two days before this review - they just added more content) zone I had triggered FIVE hordes at once. Either my weapons were slaughtering them all, the flying monsters would get me from behind because I couldn't see anything (and was too busy trying to dodge the projectiles coming from outside my field of view) or I'd die from bumping into five projectiles. And it kept happening, over and over again, basically locking any progress I had without just teleporting to the seals. The only way I've found to counter it is basically to be so overpowered that nothing stops me, and that's just boring. As a result, I don't like the late game much. [*] The music gets repetitive. This was far more obvious in later levels where I had a longer torch, thus was hearing the same song just repeating forever. [/list] Mind you - I still recommend the game. It is still a GOOD game, and the fact that the devs are listening (and still updating - they just updated the day I'm posting the review) is a great sign. Just... it isn't perfect. And it doesn't need to be. For references to the above, as of this review I'm PL14 and have unlocked [i]most[/i] things. I have beaten all of the normal levels, but the last normal level I've only beaten with cantrip help.

This is a really great game. I don't know if this kind of genre exists where the player builds their own labyrinth and has to navigate it, but I hope to see more games like it in the future. It's awesome! Great job! There are a few rooms that are essential like the bonfire, and you'll see fewer bonfires as you build out your labyrinth and your deck gets packed with less essential cards. I think that's kind of the game's biggest design flaw. It's a deck building game, but there isn't really much point to that. Deck building is all about combining synergistic cards to break the game. Restless Ruins doesn't really do that, so adding more rooms to a deck that ironically becomes weaker as the essential cards you start with get harder to find is kind of contrary to the game's strengths. Regardless. This is a great game, and I hope it spawns an entire "restless" genre of games like roguelikes or soulslikes where players build their own labyrinths and have to navigate them. Great job.

Having an absolute blast with Into the Restless Ruins. Thoroughly enjoying the concept of the build-run-loot-build cycle, while trying to figure out optimal routes/placements in each dungeon. it's easy to lose a chunk of time to this game and a build a "oh, one more run" mentality.

Rally nice combination of genres and great gameloop. Relaxing combat, but strategic cavebuilding and on the fly orientation exercise.