Review: Into the Restless Ruins
With classic pixel art graphics and retro soundtrack, ‘Into the Restless Ruins’ has you dungeon building and dungeon searching in a rouguelite game that epitomises that “just one more go” gaming feeling.
Like most games of this genre, my initial run throughs were a mixture of exploration and quick deaths. However, once the finely balanced mechanics of the gameplay became more clear to me, I began to get further and further into the dungeons I was creating.
The dungeons are created using cards that you are given at the beginning of each play through, with more cards being unlocked as you progress. Each card has a different shaped part of the dungeon on it, along with doors which have to be aligned with other doors that are already on the map before you can place them down. This leads to some forward planning about how you are going to build you dungeon on each run, especially as each card can also contain something which will help you on your travels, including the ability to give you more damage or health, and even a very helpful faerie which will show you back to your portal to leave before your torch runs out.
The torch is vital in a couple of areas, as it not only lights your way as you move around (becoming dimmer as it burns down and obscuring your field of view), it also ends the run should it burn out. All adding tension every time you step into a new dungeon and makes you think about where to place your upgrades.
Defeating the enemies you encounter awards you ‘Glimour’, which when you have enough allows you to get other cards. The enemies are defeated in a similar “auto-shoot” manner to games like ‘Vampire Survivors’ and increase in their levels as you progress through the dungeon.
Dying doesn’t instantly end your game, it just builds up the Corruption Meter, and as this gets higher it gives you curse cards that give a variety of negative effects. Once the Curse Meter is filled, then it is game over and time to begin again.
XP points you get unlock new cards and other things to help you on your way (I don’t want to give too much away!), and with over 100 cards to use, each game is completely different to your previous one.
There are 6 main levels to complete and even if you complete them all, this game oozes replayability and gives you gameplay stats for you to try and beat.
A perfect game for if you have only 10 minutes gaming time or hours of it. This will get you thinking and planning your next run and enjoying every minute of it.
Available now on Xbox, PS5, Switch and PC.
Review by Dave from an Xbox code kindly supplied by Wales Interactive via 1UP PR.
