So, it’s been a few days since I published my review on Lone Ruin and as much as I want to love the game, I just feel like it doesn’t really offer too much replayability… unless you’re into scoreboards.
The lack of content and lack of encouragement that I felt was apparently something that a lot of people in the community were voicing as well, which is why I wanted to talk about the new dev post that just came out!
Increasing Replayability/Encouraging new ways to play the game
In Lone Ruin, you either fight in a survival-mode where you’re trying to survive for a long time, fighting wave after wave with increasing difficulty. This is fun at first and the challenge is certainly there… but something I noticed is that it doesn’t necessarily feel “harder” when you go up in difficulty. Rather, you just have less health and since waves appear to be randomly generated, you may face off against different enemies from time to time and an increasing pool of enemies, possibly.
The main game, on the other hand, features different branching paths that all lead to a boss, followed by a shop, followed by more paths that bring you through three acts to the final boss, after which, you’re just done. There’s a scoreboard, and that’s it.
Thus, the developer of Lone Ruin addressed this by stating that they…
- won’t change the game’s core by adding meta-progression that locks spells or perks behind the grind.
- they will try to convey the depth and breadth that is already there better, possibly with a little checklist for builds.
- they’ll add new spells, perks, and synergies with more updates.
- they are working on an Ascension system that unlocks harder and harder runs.
- they may add new areas to the Survival Mode, possibly as Unlocks.
Right away, this already sounds really promising. I’d imagine that meta-progression systems can be a great way to add replayability but personally, I’m not a fan of them as they either make the game too grindy… or they take away from the experience by suddenly making things too easy.
As an example, Tunche did this… sort of… It’s a beat-em-up game but all the combos and fun synergies are locked behind upgrades that you need to grind for and that just ruins the fun for me, personally. Adding meta-progression systems to a game like Lone Ruin may be a valid option to improve stats or something, with an option of turning it all off, but I’m really glad they’re not going for that.
The other points are in regards to more content… so, new areas, new difficulty options (ascension mode), and new spells. That’s really great!
But that second point goes into something beyond that which I find rather interesting: Encouraging new ways of playing the game!
According to the dev post, there are already synergies and certain fun builds in the game but they felt as if they failed to convey their existence properly. By adding a checklist (similar to Hades‘ “Prophecies”), players can actively hunt down combos and try out new things – which encourages playing the game more without taking away from the core experience. That’s a great idea and I look forward to seeing it in action.
Other Changes
Besides that, Cuddle Monster Games’ developer, Hannes, announced that the game also received a few minor changes and some bug fixes.
For starters, the intro now hides after the first skip. You level up faster in Survival Mode, and the Credits have now been moved to the Main Menu.
There are also some quality of life changes like the cursor being locked when the game isn’t paused, enemies being more visible behind obstacles, and enemies not shooting across height differences.
Something that I really expected was a nerf to the boomerang spell. It’s fun when something is strong but it’s not so great when it makes it feel as if everything else is so weak in comparison… so, the boomerang won’t just stay there anymore, hence stopping the boss cheese. Rather, it returns and spreads more!
Apart from that, there are now more rooms in each section, the shop has been moved forward, treasure isn’t available when you’re maxed out on gold, and there are now destructible objects that can drop coins or health, which is pretty neat.
If you wanna check out the full list of all the changes, bug fixes, and other things… feel free to do so over here.
Thoughts
Overall, I think the game is moving into a healthy and overall very fun direction. I’d imagine that it’d be bad if the game suddenly turned into a grind-fest. Hence, more synergies, perks and spells are gonna add a bunch of replayability and content to explore – and thus, they’ll be more than welcome to see!
BUT something that wasn’t addressed at all is the fact that the colour palette is very much lacking contrast and that it being a very purple/red-ish game may cause trouble for people with colour-blindness. A High-Contrast Option would be great to see!
If you wanna check out the review I wrote on Lone Ruin, you can do so over here. If you’d like to take a look at the game itself or maybe wishlist it, check out this page!
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!
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