Lone Ruin IS Hades, but with twin sticks and more purple

If you’re reading this, I’ve somehow managed to break free from my newest obsession: the lavishly purple isometric twin-stick roguelike Lonely ruin. While the three-tiered main ruin might seem short for some, I’ve found it does little to dampen the never-ending fun; the creative possibilities through randomly distributed powers and items peroffers surprising moments of synergy and new strategies. Replayability remains fresh and reflective. Throw in two difficulty levels, a horde survival mode and a leaderboard that will tempt you even if you’re not the competitive type and this is a game I happily installed on my Steam deck with no intention of ever to remove it.

Available now for PC and Nintendo Switch, Lonely ruin feels like a twin stick remix of Hades bathed in black light. In “Ruin Run” mode, you descend through three levels, each with eight rooms. The last room of each level is reserved for a boss fight. You will fight waves of enemies with a combination of randomly distributed powers and items that you grab as you clear a room. The action is fast-paced and requires you to combine various skills and stat buffs to emerge victorious. With clear language for any power or item and an aesthetic as helpful as it is so pretty, Lonely ruin excels at guiding you through its mechanics with a relatively low learning curve that builds to rewarding mechanical depth. It’s very easy to get sucked in, and just like that, it’s after midnight and you have work in the morning.

You start every enema Lonely ruin with an interchangeable Dash ability tied to your lower left shoulder button and a choice of eight abilities, offered to you by a mysterious stranger who is keen to warn you that going alone is dangerous (I’m told that this is a reference to a popular game or something). But you don’t have a basic “attack” as in Hades. Instead, you attack with one of four swappable abilities that you can earn by completing a room. And as a twin-stick game, you won’t be using your gamepad’s face buttons for your skills; everything is tied to the shoulder buttons (although you can remap this in settings on PC).

In each combat zone, you’ll fight your way through waves of villains that spawn from clearly marked zones reflecting the arrival of enemies Hades. Some are really only a threat in large numbers, while others like few demise Monsters (that’s what I call them) can sniff you and require more immediate attention than the easily dodged bats and lesser enemies. Some enemies, particularly bosses, can spit out enough attacks to create bullet hell-like sequences (which makes sense considering developer Cuddle Monster Games’ first title, Hell is other demons), but it doesn’t veer too far into that genre. It’s a nice touch that remixes the ongoing gameplay just enough to keep it from becoming stale.

Continue reading: A bullet hell in hell that is paradise to play with

How familiar might feel Hades Fans completing each room gives you a new selection of rooms with powers to purchase. You won’t get the power right away; Instead, it’s a preview of what power or item you’ll receive after completing the area below. Sometimes you’ll see a room that promises two rewards, which also means there are more waves of enemies there. Other times, your next “room” choice is to dive into a shop where you can buy upgrades, extra powers, or stat-enhancing items with gold obtained from killing enemies or selling your abilities.

And that pays off Lonely ruin‘s “loop”. Grab an ability at the start, defeat the enemies in the next room, choose what power or item you want next, flush and repeat. And each of your abilities has its own quirks, upgrade paths, and different ways that they can be combined with other powers and stat buffs. Since they are randomly generated and you can sell existing powers or items you have for gold, think several steps ahead and make decisions based on what has and hasn’t worked for you so far.

I tend to start each run with the Chain Lightning spell because, as the name suggests, it chains across enemies and slightly vaporizes the lesser enemies to help with crowd control. But what powers come next is entirely up to RNG; You make decisions based on what you want your build to look like in the end (although I’ve observed what I think could be some subtle upgrade paths; it’s hard to tell how much randomness there is behind each option).

An example of a “build” might involve grabbing the Blizzard spell in addition to upgrading your Dash ability, which sets an AoE (Area of ​​Effect) attack that slows down enemies in your wake. Blizzard also lets you put down an AoE with cold damage; Now you have two options to create difficult areas for enemies to walk through. Pick up an item that detonates defeated frozen enemies and your area denial becomes an additional AoE threat to advancing enemies. This is in addition to two other abilities that could be anything from my go-to Chain Lightning spell to something like Barrage that seems to take inspiration from it Devil May Cry‘s Virgil, which lets you summon blue blades around you to fire at your enemies.

That hardly scratches the surface. There are many other abilities, each with exciting upgrades that can increase their damage, expand an AoE’s radius, reduce their cooldown, or inflict status effects like burning or freezing. On one run, I grabbed Beserk, which pauses all my active spells for extra quickness. I combined this with the Scythe ability (which acts as a melee attack and isn’t a spell) and after taking down a few instances of Blizzard to contain spawning enemies, I went berserk and was able to fly around and take out the rest with fast melee attacks.

All of this wonderful, highly customizable action takes place in environments that just look amazing. The game has an enticing “Is it 2D or 3D?” look at it with a color palette that reminds me a lot Hyperlight drifter. It also features a wonderfully dynamic soundtrack that ranges from satisfying, chilled soundscapes to electrifying beats (seriously, I’ve got to figure out how to replicate that one particular bass hit I hear all the time with some of my own audio gear. Pure ear candy). .

And while I can sympathize with people who lack length a bit – and who would never turn down rooms, bosses, or enemies in the future – I think the replayability and motivation to climb the leaderboards more than makes up for the runs, which can feel pretty lively once you get the hang of it and can zoom through the normal difficulty (although the game defaults to hard mode at launch, FYI). Cuddle Monster Games already has that revealed some of his aspirations where the game can go in the future, so maybe there’s more to look forward to. And if so, well you can be damn sure I’ll write about it.