Jan 11

Jan 11 Review | Lone Ruin - New Year, New Me, New Roguelike

Game developers Cuddle Monster Games has managed to create a game that not only forces you to be competitive with yourself (as well as others) but a game that seamlessly blends a nostalgic art style with modern gaming desires. Lone Ruin is a twin-stick shooter that combines spells, replayability, and monsters twisted by dark magic into a title that’s very hard to put down. You can pick your starting weapon /spell, then pick up new ones or upgrades as you progress through each level by choosing which rooms to enter next, similar to Hades. However, to do this, you must survive the hordes of monsters being thrown your way and stay alive. If you make it through, you’ll face bosses that put all of your skills to the test and if you die at any point in any level, you’re catapulted back to the beginning to start all over again. This game is less of a roguelite power fantasy where you get stronger and stronger, and instead is a roguelike where you only survive longer if you get better as a player.

Put this on a t-shirt and submit to that “shirts that go hard twitter page.”

At first, I admit, I was slightly daunted at the concept of this title - once I’ve passed a level, I like to put it behind me and move on, forgetting any of the stress that came with getting past that point. At least in some more lenient roguelikes, you feel like the game is slowly letting you get more powerful to make the struggles less intense. That isn’t the case in Lone Ruin, every time you die, you start fresh, and that is intimidating. However, Lone Ruin has completely changed my view of games where “losing” is part of the design. I use the term” losing” loosely because even in defeat in Lone Ruin, defeat feels less like loss and more like a gracious opportunity to learn. It feels like you’ve been granted a boon where you can start again with a new set of skills or continue to perfect your muscle memory with the same starting weapon time and time again. It may be cliche, but practice often does make perfect.

Autonomy throughout each level ensures that you get a say in how you experience the title and that’s where Lone Ruin shines - the element and freedom of controlled choices. When you enter a level, you can choose which upgrade or item you will be rewarded with if you make it through to the end. This happens with each level, minus the big bosses (so if you can’t make a choice, be prepared for a big fight) and by being able to choose the reward for myself, I had more of an incentive to fight as hard as I could to reach the end because I knew I would get what I wanted when the last enemy fell.

There aren’t limitless options for you to choose from in each level, but that works in Lone Ruin’s favour. Now, if you’re anything like me, having too many choices can be slightly overwhelming. Sort of like when you’re out with family or friends and trying to decide what to have for dinner, but everyone goes “ I don’t mind, what do you want?” for about half an hour. Upon first entry into Lone Ruin, I did initially worry it’d be the same thing because every weapon is available to you from the start. However, while having all of these different weapons open at once made it hard to decide where to start, things are made easier as each time you start a new run, three of the weapons will start with slight buffs. This usually helps focus down what you are going to pick while still making it feel like every option is still open to you if you really want to keep grinding away with just the one weapon.

Also, having a “shop” level allows you to pick up little extras if you’ve collected enough currency, and these items can be used to enhance your character build for that specific run. They often appear just when you need a slight break from mashing buttons, whether this is intentional by design or a coincidence, I am forever grateful for these small break-type levels.

Imagine Enter The Gungeon but instead of gungeons it was some sort of non-gun-gungeon… There has to be a word for that, right?

Onto performance now - I’ve been playing it on my Switch and the overall performance is good. However, I did notice that if the buttons are pressed in quick succession (usually when you’re trying to survive a large horde of monsters), it can take a couple of seconds for the game to pick that up, which is a long time when the game tells you your ability cooldowns to the tenth of a second. However, I do feel I should point out that this may be caused by my panicked mashing as I was pressing the buttons extremely quickly, so maybe my ageing Switch itself was struggling to keep up - not Lone Ruin. I can definitely see how this game would lend itself to a PC setup too, with button combinations you can whack much quicker on a keyboard than on shoulder and bumper buttons.

The game runs great and the 3D graphics have a slightly pixelated charm, making it look like a Sega Saturn game that was never released. Sometimes, games that try to do this pixelated art style can become blurry while your avatar moves around but Cuddle Monster Games have avoided this no matter how many monsters and particle effects filled the screen (and there can be a lot). This performance isn’t just nice from a gameplay point of view but is pretty useful for some people who suffer from motion sickness. I can, and often do, get motion sick with games using this art style, especially if they don’t run smoothly, but the way the motions of the characters flow and the way the surroundings remain crisp as you battle has prevented this thus far.

Lone Ruin isn’t chock full of lore and storytelling but it doesn’t need to be - it's a charming arcade shooter, crossed with a roguelike action game and the result is enchanting. As I went through each level, I found that I was beginning to get a rhythm that was helping me to defeat enemies and it was interesting to see how that rhythm changes/gets disrupted by choosing different upgrades each time. The charm element comes from the fact that, even though you start from scratch a lot and there isn’t a complex story, it still feels like a title that really puts you into the best bits of the game first. Each element of the game, soundtrack included, feels as though it’s putting your personal gameplay experience above everything else, while putting up few barriers between you and the action - which also makes it an easy play after a long day at the office.

Button-mashing woes aside, Lone Ruin oozes a powerful charm and is one of the few games I’d describe as pleasantly frustrating. Knowing that I had to start again did not become a burden or cause the game to become tedious, it just added to the title’s ability to maintain my attention, where I would start playing just “one more run” only to lose another hour to the enchanting gameplay. The folks at Cuddle Monster Games and Super Rare Games really have created something that can provide an entertaining kick off to your 2023.