This Game Combines Vampire Survivors and Slay the Spire Into One Dungeon Slaying Adventure
The light is your best friend.
Into the Restless Ruins features a roguelike deckbuilder that challenges how you play, think, and memorize.
It borrows core elements from two genre-defining games, Vampire Survivors and Slay the Spire, hoping to replicate the success of any of the iconic games. Will it hold up as a great roguelike? Here’s my take.
Into the Restless Ruins Aims to Innovate by Combining Two Popular Core Systems
Vampire Survivors throws you into the heat of the battle, fighting endless hordes of night creatures in a semi-auto-battling roguelike bullet hell game. You defeat creatures, gain levels, choose from a selection of power-ups, and repeat.
On the other hand, Slay the Spire fuses cards into roguelikes, allowing players to craft bizarre power combinations from those cards.
Into the Restless Ruins combines these systems, letting players control a character, mow down hordes of enemies, level up, get random cards that can alter their runs, and repeat.
Although those systems feel familiar, they still played like a fresh and exciting take on the roguelike genre. Exploring all the weapons, cantrips, cards, stages, and even game mechanics or interactions made the game hard to put down.
However, I strongly feel that some players will be left scratching their heads and stop playing the game altogether because of one very tough aspect of the game – memorization.
Into the Restless Ruins Challenges Your Memory Like No Other Game
Into the Restless Ruins gives you random cards as you level up instead of giving you player power. These cards are your building blocks for traversing the ruins and finding seals or other interesting points.
Each card may have unique shapes and sizes with multiple entrances and exits. These cards may also hold something valuable, like upgrades or torch refills. However, the main point of these cards is that you are building to expand the ruins, try to fit everything in with your limited space, and make your way through the dungeon.
You get a few Build Points every round and use those to play cards and connect these tiles. After going through the build phase, you’ll start playing and traverse the ruins you have created.
As you can see, things will get pretty hectic from here. Once you expand your ruins further, it’ll be hard to memorize the ruins. Even if you start at the same point repeatedly, you still have to go back to a retreating stone or the starting point to end the round, meaning you must always memorize your way back before you lose your light and get consumed by the darkness or the horde.
Building those tiles is one tough challenge already, but memorizing them throughout poses a different but unique challenge to players. I only wish I had more power when leveling than just getting a bunch of cards to play with, like a mini-Tetris game. Apart from that, I loved almost everything about the game, and it is a definite must-try for roguelike players.
