Runestone Keeper

I picked this one up on a sale and was surprised by it´s addictive nature. Runestone Keeper is a mixture of Dungeon Crawling and Minesweeper with a boardgame-like feel to it. The gameplay is very easy to pick up, even for someone, who isn´t that deep into complex rpg´s or dungeon crawlers. As easy it is to pick up, as challenging and hard to master it is, the same way. There is basically no big tutorial at the beginning and also you don´t need to dive deep into complex story-stuff. All these facts makes it great for newbies to pick up and also a challenging experience for more advanced players. You´ve got some time to spare and want to play a fun game? Then that´s the moment where Runestone Keeper comes into play. But keep your clock in view, since it´s very easy to sink into it for many many hours.

-it could be like desktop dungeon, but is even more random, too much -it will take too much time to unlock permanent upgrades, which are too expensive -to get gold, you must get lucky, meaning, get +luck equipment at the beginning, in order to get even more +luck item and even more usefull legendary. Otherwise, you'll be dead soon. There is really no tactics at all, except following ballista direction, compared to desktop dungeon (which is good but too hard anyway lol) so finally, it's a random clicking game, you got a +luck item, it will be a good run, otherwise it will be a useless one, which is most of the time Oh, but it's addictive. But, well, it's missing something. it's more 2.5/5 And and really.. THERE IS NO DOCUMENTATION AT ALL, and there is a wiki, apparently made by user, incomplete, not updated, and not that much usefull. and UI is bad. It would be better if less time consuming, with better odds. Feels like losing my time

simple, straightforward, and surprisingly engaging. very easy to pick up and play, and understand. essentially a zero learning curve, which is also nice for something like this. I've had it on Steam for a few months now, and I keep coming back to it. my kids like it too. if I had to levy a complaint, it might be the graphics. only because everything else is so well done that I wish the graphics were a slight bit cleaner - prettier.

i don't know why anyone compares this to Minesweeper. it plays alot like Desktop Dungeons (DD): you reveal tiles and then decide how to handle the things that you found. like DD it's very random driven and you can have lots of good or bad luck. but you play so many dungeons in a short time, that it doesn't matter. you also have a powerup system on the metagame: using the gold earned in dungeons you can unlock new heroes and upgrades that will help in future games (alot more useful than many of the upgrades in DD). contrary to DD, your goal is not to beat single dungeons one after the other, but to go as deep as possible in one dungeon (roguelike). it also has the same problem as DD, which is deaths from accidental missclicks. but in this case it's not so bad, because you play to die anyways, and - contrary to DD - you make progress on the metagame when dying (you keep your gold and can use it to buy upgrades). it also has events and some sort of story. one drawback is, that much is not explained, so mostly you stumble around trying to figure out how exactly things works. i guess that's part of the game. there's a short tutorial at the start that shows you the basic rules, enough to play. it's an awesome game, especially for that price tag.

Better than I expected for the price. It appears to be made by an Asian outfit, so the translations can be a little bit Engrish-y, but in a way it sort of adds to the charm. It's not a humorous game, but it's also not one that takes itself too seriously. Unlocking characters seems to be pretty excessively grind focused (is that a platinum symbol? As in I need 5000 thousands gold pieces???), but the starting character is a great all-rounder and you can unlock a dedicated mage character fairly easily. Roguelite elements mostly consist of being able to spend gold on permanent upgrades (extra XP from kills, extra gold from pickups and so on), starting the game with some items, or starting the game with a god's favor. The gods all change the game to favor a particular playstyle, and have to be found in the dungeon as statues before you can use them in subsequent runs. I can't say much about the game's balance, and I wouldn't expect any balance issues to get fixed if they exist, but it's a pretty good value for the money and I lost almost four hours to this game without hardly a blink. The only way to make this game better would be to make it mobile-friendly. I'd love to have this on my little Chromebook :(