Runers

Runers has high hopes, and a fantastic spell crafting system, but is held back in just a few too many ways. The game is full of strange design decisions. For example rune combiners are needed only for new spells. This means that early on in your play of Runers you will find yourself unable to create many complex spells, and once you have died a few times and unlocked a lot of spells, you find yourself with combiners falling out of your pockets. My question is why? Surely the game would play better if combiners were always required but were more common? Then you'd have to be careful about which complex spells you created, and would make each run more varied. Then there's the fact that drops are completely random. I can kill an air mage and get an earth rune! There's no rhyme nor reason for anything, and as such each run tends to blur together. Sound levels are also just strange. Some enemies are much much louder than others. Some barely audible, others annoyingly loud. And this happens on every single 'I got hit', not just for special attacks or anything. Oh, also, your character doesn't have a 'I got hit' noise. That's rather important, and yet entirely missing. The music is really quiet. Again, this is odd because they sell a soundtrack edition, so clearly they're proud of it. You can rebind keys*. You will want to do this, since hitting 1-4 while using wsad to move is rather lethal. *Caveat: However, you can't rebind the left and right click spells. Which is odd, because they end up being the spells you click the least often, since they have an autofire option. The whole pace of the game is bloody fast. It's a test more of reaction speed than skill, most of the time. The main thing is movement speed. You move fast, your enemies move fast. So fast, in fact, that it's hard to control. The game suggests that you can use destructible objects as cover, but I genuinely had a hard time stopping behind them with any sense of consistency. It's that fast. I don't think this is a good thing, not at all. There can be a lot going on in fights, and you just don't have the time to comprehend it. After level three there's a miniboss, called the bombadier. He throws bombs. Makes sense, right? Except that he also throws fans of knives. And he also summons randomly spawning rocks throughout the room. And also there's at least four different types of bombs he spawns. Also he can run very fast, and spends most of his time off-screen while you're frantically trying to figure out if this bomb explodes in a + or an X, so you can't even throw incidental damage at him while dodging. And this is just a miniboss! Enemies can spawn in huge clusters right near the doors, giving you no time to react. If you get mobbed you're kind of in a spot. Unless you have a knockback spell equipped then you have to physics your way out of them. It's nice that you [i]can[/i] push enemies around, but the game is so quick that often it's all you have time to do. When you level up, the game waits to tell you until after the fight. This is pretty great. It automatically pops up the box that gives you the choice of perk and you don't have to worry about getting mobbed the moment you click one. However, the game also doesn't let you click anything until it finishes playing the 'you levelled up' ditty. It just... stops for a moment. The spells. My goodness, the spells are so good. You can make one-, two- or three-element spells, with repeats allowed. The game tells me that's a total of 285 spells, and I believe it. You start off knowing all of the one-element spells, and I have crafted all of the two-element ones and a half-dozen of the threes, and they're very well varied. There's direct damage spells, aoe spells, buffs, debuffs, you name it. This is where the wonderful variety of statistics comes into play. You have damage and bullet speed and bullet duration and size and dot damage and knockback to name just a few that appear on spells, and then characters have movespeed and health and armour and elemental skill and crit chance and density and so many others that there is just a whole heap of room for spells to be different in! It's great! The game makes you feel like a pretty badass wizard, and I have to commend it for that. It's really fantastic in that respect. It's one of the best games I've ever played like that. Level design is good and varied. Each arena is different enough to feel interesting, and the enemies with zones of effect are just the right size to have an impact and let you play around. Enemy AI seems pretty smart. If you go invulnerable then they run away from you. They can try to dodge bullets, especially elites. Bosses are hugely varied, but, again, perhaps a little too busy. There is an awful lot going on in any boss fight, and it gets very hard to follow very quickly. This was my experience in the first boss I encountered: "Oh, so he's immune to damage? Okay, I'll wait it out. It's not ending. Oh, so I can stand on his head to hurt him. King of the hill, no problem. Okay, so those are knockback attacks bouncing around. Makes sense, this is the storm boss. Okay, so bouncing off the walls deals damage? or is it those red areas? Okay, so dodging is hard when his face covers the spells, but almost down to the last quarter and- oh. Dead. So he shoots lightning at the end, centred on his head, where I had to have been standing to damage him up until this point. Well that's good to know if I ever have to fight him again. Back to floor one again." And this hasn't been an isolated incident, this has happened with just about every boss. There's just no way of knowing what the attacks are going to do, or what hurts or where to stand. There's no telegraphing. I encountered a fair number of bugs, but the devs seem to be working on most of them. It's a small team, so this is entirely understandable and I don't hold it against them. And now for the nail in the coffin. My final comment: The art is... There's no two ways about this: it's really bad. There is a grand total of one, yes: one, casting animation. In a game about casting spells. A firepit is a reddish smudge, a mudslide is a brownish smudge, ice is, you guessed it, a bluish smudge. An air elemental, a creature, is a whitish smudge Every other creature in the game is done in pixel art, but not the air elementals. This is probably my biggest gripe with the game. I think that hiring a professional artist could double, perhaps even triple the quality of the game. Now you could argue that it's going for a "retro pixel style", but that doesn't stop it from being a terrible example of such. The only animations that you ever see are: walking in the four cardinal directions, walking while shooting in four cardinal directions. And notice that that's the direction you're shooting. The animation's the same no matter which way you're going if you're shooting, say, to the right. That's it, that's all there is. And it's not even a particularly good walk animation, just leg up, leg down. Standing still is even just a still frame from the walk animation, as far as I can tell. So, the verdict. Is it worth your money? Not at the moment. Perhaps after a few patches, and preferably a makeover, then I could recommend it, but not as it currently stands. I will edit this review if anything changes.

In an industry run by flashy visuals and over-the-top plots we tend to forget what makes the games that have lasted us the longest so memorable, their content and the feeling of discovery. Runers ditches the sugar-coating and fluff in favor of pure action and customization to help craft an experience that revolves around how [b]you[/b] want to play. Banished to the confines of a dark and dank dungeon with nothing but your arcane knowledge and the magical power of the Runes found within. The moody melodies and grim dim-lit rooms beckon you deeper in to the randomly generated chambers of ongoing dungeon floors which each act as an arena, staging chaotic top-down battles and sometimes throwing objective based events at you for a chance at an additional skill to level up and increase your survivability in these diabolical crypts. On the surface Runers may seem slightly rough around the edges in terms of aesthetics with its art and sound effects having a very hand-made and appropriately gritty quality to them. This is however not at all a bad thing and will actually be a welcome feeling among old-schoolers who remember the early days of PC gaming, as this has a very similar feel visually to the obscure dungeon delving titles of the early 90s many are fond of. Runers features the grid-like map progression and dungeon exploration of a classic Zelda game with the fast-paced horde slaying arcade-action of a Gauntlet title. There's no drawn out plot or complicated goals present here, instead Runers takes a more score-attack oriented approach testing the players ability to survive and make the best usage of their findings. Most of your early runs will end swiftly in humiliating defeat, but the more adept of players will experiment and explore the hundreds of possibilities made available through Rune crafting. Runes come in the form of different varying elements, from burning Fire spells to Air spells with the ability to knockback. Combining the different spells can be done in pairs of two or three depending on the amount of combiners you have. Combining two spells is as simple as using a Rune Combiner which are generally dropped off of the tougher Champion type enemies as well as mid-bosses. In order to obtain the more useful and generally passive or evasive three-spell combinations you must accumulate 4 regular Combiners. This provides an even deeper level of decision making forcing you to choose between going with the instant gratification of a slightly stronger 2nd level combo or saving your Combiners up for the often life saving 3rd level spells. The easiest way to meet your maker is to become surrounded. The game features Diablo levels of swarming from your adversaries and the worst thing to do is get trapped in a corner or against a wall as you'll quickly be blocked in by swathes of dangerous creatures with no escape other than the sweet solace of your own magic-blasting runes making way. Although you'll be overwhelmed early on much of the time consecutive runs will last longer as you learn the necessities of preparation, especially prior to facing the hectic boss battles and their bullet-hell styled patterns. The rune system is the bread and butter of the game, providing hundreds of unique and effective combinations of magical runes all with different attacks and properties. Throughout the levels you'll find differently sized rune combiners which will allow you to combine different runes into bigger, better attacks to use on your ability bar. The abilities are unknown at first and to unlock the hundreds of useful attacks you'll have to experiment with the different complex combinations. Runes can also be stacked onto powers in the ability bar that use similar elements, strengthening a particular attribute tied to it. In the end what you have is a very free-form combat system with an extremely high skill ceiling, the limits being that of your own discovery and persistence. Runers is the most customizable encounter I've had in the roguelite genre, complimenting the play style of every attribute be it speed, power, or wit. It offers a level of creativity and choice in how you approach battles that is unseen for dungeon crawlers, and offers enough variation to always keep you coming back. For the modest asking price, Runers is an engrossing experience with an amount of content and combat options that surpasses anything like it.

Runers is a top-down, may-as-well-be-twin-stick shooter with roguelike qualities, including permadeath. Contrary to what you might have expected after glancing at the screenshots, the game does [i]not[/i] feature traditional loot, consumables, equipment or an inventory system, other than what’s required to craft spells. With this in mind, I didn’t expect it to have much depth but was pleasantly surprised to be proven at least partly wrong. The main attraction here is the magic system that lets you combine a catalyst with one to three runes from eight elements to create 285 different spells. Most results are unique in both animation and effect and generally fall under buff, debuff, direct single-target damage, area of effect, or some combination thereof. Spells can be further upgraded in power by dragging duplicate runes of the same element onto them, which augments their damage, knockback, cooldown, bullet size and speed. Runes, and the catalysts needed to combine them, drop from enemies and destructibles and are presented as a reward option when descending floors. Spell quick slots are limited, maxing out at six after you’ve beaten a few minibosses, and excess spells must be in one of two storage slots or discarded. Two primary spells can be set to autofire so that they blast toward your cursor each time the cooldowns are up, which really makes casting feel like a twin-stick shooter without actual twin-stick support. Spell quality varies wildly with a few feeling overpowered, many feeling useless, and most falling somewhere in between. Casting does not consume resources and is only limited by cooldowns, so it’s fun to experiment with different builds. Adventuring begins with choosing a difficulty, a racial passive ability, a class that determines your activatable special ability, and a starter spell (or, in roguelike fashion, just hit “random” and let the game decide these things for you). After this, you’ll be placed in a ten-floor dungeon with a toggleable map overlay that shows which rooms you’ve visited and any items you’ve left behind. Enemies often feel just as, if not more, powerful than you because they cast the same spells available to you and can quickly fill your debuff bar. Combat involves a lot of running in circles as a result, dodging projectiles like you’re in bullet hell while slinging your own spells toward the pack of enemies that’s chasing you. Emerging as the victor will unlock the exits in that room and let you progress to the next. Rinse and repeat. The bulk of Runers’ depth and imagination went into its magic system and there isn’t much in the way of surprises outside of that. There are really only three room variants in the game: rooms containing a throng of enemies, a boss or miniboss, or a challenge (which is often just another throng of enemies whose conditional defeat rewards you with a perk). Upon leveling up or completing a challenge room, you get to choose between four perks that are drawn randomly from a huge pool. With a few exceptions, these bonuses are more about augmenting your spells to be as deadly as possible and less about traditional character stat building. Even though death is permanent, a runedex keeps track of all the spell combinations you’ve unlocked thus far and a bestiary does the same for all the enemies you’ve encountered. There are also leaderboards for each difficulty and 30 optional, standalone challenges. As long as you delve into Runers with an open mind and no expectations of it cleanly fitting into a particular genre—and you’re prepared to deal with the difficulty of projectile hell—you should enjoy the ride.

The most beautiful thing about starting a new rogue-like game is seeing the different options that are available to customise your first play-through. Binding Of Isaac shows you the 6 characters you can unlock, Risk of Rain presents the three classes you can play as. Immediately you’re thrown into the game knowing full well that you can choose to play however you want, and that your choices are going to matter, and that’s what makes rogue-likes my favourite genre, because you have such control over your playstyle from the get go. Runers developed by Let’s Get Kraken is no different. Wait, let me rephrase that. Runers is different. You’re not provided with 5 characters, or three classes. No sir. You’re give 20 of each. 20 blessings and 20 classes. Let’s do some maths for a minute. That’s 20 x 20 playable combinations. And while I’m sure the majority of you remember your 6th grade multiplication, I’ll do it for you here. 20 x 2 = 40, and 40 x 10 = 400. That’s right, 400! Class/race combinations. That’s an incredible amount of choice, and you haven’t even started the game yet! if you played through the game 100 times changing only those beginning choices each time, you’ve only played a fourth of the game! I know I’m starting to ramble here, but re-playability is a major thing for me in a rogue-like, and Let’s Get Kraken absolutely nail it from the get go. Once you get past this selection, you’re offered the choice of ten runes to choose from. Each of these changes the way your character plays. The Spark rune lets you shoot lighting, while the Mind rune shoots a bolt that goes through things. The Earth rune shoots a bolt that pushes back enemies, and the Fire rune one that burns. As you look through these spells, you think to yourself, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I could combine these to make a spell that shoots lightning AND burns?” And you’re in luck. Combining and modifying, and even experimenting with spells happens to be the main method of upgrading your characters arsenal. Runes drop as you defeat enemies, from each of the 10 elements that you could pick from at the beginning. These can have bonuses to bullet size or projectile travel speed, and occasionally can be combined with other runes to create more powerful attacks. You need a relatively rare drop called a “combiner” before you can do this, but once you find one the spells you can choose from rise from the 10 runes, to the 65 combinations that you can now make. Every spell is different, and can change your gameplay style totally. The experimentation of these spells is what I personally think is the most fun part of the game. Once you find one of the even more rare “triple combiners” you can then combine three runes at once, opening up the spell bank even more which modifies what you can do even more. On top of this, your character gains experience through kills, and levels up. Upon leveling, you can choose between four traits to gain, which are randomised and provide a small bonus that makes certain tasks easier. One of my personal favourite traits is one that upon dying allows you to lose all your traits and resurrect yourself. And for those of you that have played rogue-likes, you know how valuable a second life can be, especially when you get further along into the dungeon. Speaking about dungeons, Runers has a pretty nifty map layout. Rooms can contain enemies or challenges, and never both. These challenges can be herding wisps into portals (one that I really don’t enjoy) or having to defeat waves of enemies in a time limit. There are more, but I’ll leave those discoveries to you. Each room also has the chance of having a staircase in it, which takes you down to the next level. Each level has a random enemy buff, making the room harder. These can be things like a 20% increase of enemy bullet size, or 10% increase of enemy health. Nothing crazily overpowered, but enough to keep you on your toes throughout the whole game. The enemy variety is fantastic, with 140 different enemies being thrown at you as you play. From skeletons that you need to run over after killing, to swarms of rats and cockroaches that keep you on your toes as you sprint away from them. These can also be upgraded into champion level enemies that deal more damage and have more health. The coolest thing about these enemies is that Runers features a Beastiary, where information about the enemies killed is stored. When killing an enemy for the first time, a small pop-up shows in the top left, noting that the enemy’s details have been added to the logs. This makes the game feel a lot larger, and allows the players to spend time learning about their opponents, and craft different spells with which to take them done. Boss fights are force to be reckoned with, but I won’t spoil them for you. Look forward to them, I guarantee that they’re a dangerous part of the game, and definitely a trial that stands up to the trope of a boss fight. Artistically, and musically, Runers feels lovingly crafted. The soundtrack (which is also available for purchase on Steam) is light and wonderful, and provides something that adds so much to the atmosphere on the dungeon you’re in. The music flows well, and makes the game world feel much larger than it would otherwise. Runers takes the ideas of the rogue-like genre that have become set in stone, and improves and modifies them to create a masterpiece of rogue-like action. Providing the player with a bevy of choice, and a huge amount of content to discover, fans of the 2D rogue-like action genre owe it to themselves to play Runers. Launching today, you can find Runers on Steam for the modest price of $7.49 for the next week, with the price going up to $9.99 on the 9th.

~随机地牢随机魔法各种角色升级~虽然很Rogue~但是··· ~可惜游戏没中文，玩不懂~基本在地牢里逛呀逛的~ ~如果有汉化能玩得更久些，虽然实际内容也就这样了~

Summary: Spray n' pray kiting Multiplayer: 2 local (?) Completion: 20 hrs Cards: Yes Cloud: Yes Runers is a twin-stick style roguelike. Unlike most roguelikes, this one comes closer to being one. It's also crazy fast-paced. Being a real-time game, there's very little opportunity to plan out your moves and attacks. While you can pause the game at any time, the sheer speed and volume of bullets, enemies, hazards, and repositioning effects makes dodging difficult. Add to that a low invulnerability period when hit, and you will find it is very easy to die in this game. I underwent a strange journey in my experience with Runers. I began with the curiosity phase. The game seemed simple enough - fantasy Smash TV with procerdurally generated levels. It sounded intriguing, and I gave it a whirl. After the tutorial, the game opens up with a fairly large character selection screen, my weakness. I made what I thought would be a melee character, a Dwarven Paladin. I started the Wimpy-level game, and noticed I was throwing ranged attacks. How odd! I tried to play him like a melee character, and while he did okayish, the only reason he survived was because of the generous life drops on the first floor. That didn't last very long, however, as the life drops became more and more scarce as I went down, and I finally died. After a few more class and spell combinations, and that's when became clear - this game doesn't have a proper melee combat system. Sure you can craft a sword spell, but you'll get obliterated pretty quickly if you keep that up. Fair enough, now was the time to experiment. The next phase of the game was discovery. Having made my first double-rune spells, and seeing how much better they were, I got excited and wanted to make all of them and see what suited me best. I tested all the races and classes to see what they would bring to the table. The opposition was tough, but I was careful and prepared. I made my way to the first boss of the game, Blazia. After a long, dangerous fight, Blazia's tactics suddenly changed drastically. Her fire maze is where I promptly got my ass handed to me. The next run, I made it down there again, but instead found Dash. Dash was much easier to combat, and I beat him without much trouble. The next few floors, the scarcity of health drops did me in, as it seemed to do quite often. After a few more runs, I finally made it to the 10th floor, and beat the game. But wait, I didn't unlock anything at all! So I tried the next difficulty level. And, well, that didn't go so well. Figuring that I would need the powers of triple-rune spells to make any meaningful progress, the time came to discover all 285 spells. This phase of the game was tedium. I can't begin to tell how grueling it is to get triple combiners. This process would have been so much more enjoyable if the triple combiners were not needed. It's not like players are going to find crazy good spells right off the bat, because there's such a large volume of lackluster triple-rune spells. When so much time is spent to waste one triple combiner with three runes that could have been used for something meaningful, that's just adding insult to injury. The Runedex helps out a little with this problem thanks to categorization, but you're still probably going to make a worthless spell regardless. After forty hours or so, I managed to acquire and test every spell in the game. Now came the revenge phase. I planned out which spells I would want to use from now on, and forged my way ahead. Armed with the tools I wanted, what was once fiendishly difficult became manageable. The game is still plenty tough, but I successfully made it through a few more difficulty levels. Still stuggling with higher difficulty levels, I suddenly discovered something far more potent than any triple-rune spell. I can only assume it to be a bug, but this skill provided grossly overpowered buffs, to the point where I could decimate rooms at will. For this reason I was able to plow through Apocalypse difficulty, a worthy end to the crazy hard game. Now onto the nitpicking. -The game is poorly optimized, even in low performance mode. There is ` drastic slowdown when a lot of action is going on, especially when you crank up the size of bullets and swarm the screen with effects. - Global cooldowns in the game are not intuitive. When you have many low CD spells, some won't trigger because the game doesn't adequately explain about this. - The lack of auto-fire for other skill slots seems pointless, since the game implements a global cooldown system for every spell. - The races and classes could use rebalancing. I imagine many of them are unused because they are simply not competitve. - Leveling up feels weak most of the time because selections tend to be poor. You don't even gain HP or other stats, unless you pick a skill that does so. - There's far too many weak triple-rune spells. Either these should be buffed, or triple combiners should be removed. There's so many spells to learn, but if people rarely get to see them, what was the point in making them? - I'm not sure if the game mentions that spells do not require combiners once it's in your Runedex. At the very least the game should probably mention this on the inventory screen. - Every hostile room locks you in for a fight to the death. This gets old pretty quick. I'd kill for a spell that lets me open doors or something. Or leave some doors open to begin with. - Occasionally monsters will spawn right next to the entrance of the room. - Enemies use the same bullets you do. For this reason, it's difficult to tell when something belongs to an enemy or not. - Some enemies leave lingering effects well after they die, such as Mud Golems. Oftentimes I re-enter a cleared room and still find the effect lingering there. - Repositioning attacks are excessive. Spending lots of time not being in control of your character is unfun. - Minibosses are oddly harder than real bosses themselves. At least tone down their firing rates. - The damage output of some enemies is far too high, such as necro skeletons (which shouldn't be ranged!). Since there is a very low invulnerability period, you will often suffer multiple hits at a time. - Most single-target spells are not competitive. In general it's best to use spells that can level entire rooms. - The game as a whole is just too fast. Even some enemies are faster than you. Trying to dodge the fireball room without spells is just ludicrous. And because some enemies move so fast, it's bloody difficult to hit them with single-target bullet spells, which makes up a large portion of the Runedex. The ability to pause is no excuse for making everything move so fast. - I would have liked equipment such as robes, and cash to buy things from shops. - How about a way to mash 3 runes into a new random one? - It would be nice if there was an icon above your character sprite to show status afflictions such as confusion. - Allies or hirelings would be a fun addition (not including the escort or class abilities). Something more permanant. - I found a couple game-breaking bugs. Runers is a difficult game for me to rate. I had a lot of fun discovering spells at first, but to get all the triple-rune spells is nothing more than a chore. However, once you DO have all the spells, the game becomes more interesting.The devs clearly want this game to be tough as nails. While they may have succeeded, in doing so, the game becomes inaccessible to a broader audience, which I feel is a shame to an otherwise fun game. If I were to describe this game, it would be Kiting: The Game, because that's all you do. Unless you're using nuking strats, you're just circling around, spraying and praying to hit something, ad nauseum. I rate Runers a 7/10. There's a lot of room for potential, but as it is now, I imagine it will only appeal to diehard players.

[b][i]Runers[/i] is very interesting roguelite that does a lot right.[/b] [i]Essentially, you attack by using spells and the main novelty of the game is that you hand-craft spells by using various combinations of runes that you collect.[/i] You carry several spells at once. This makes for some really wild spells/attack combinations that actually [i]feel[/i] and look and act drastically different. Yeah, you have your run-of-the-mill fireball spell, which is simple to make, but further down the line you may craft a wave of fire that moves in a DNA-strand-like pattern across the screen. It gets crazy. [b]But, there are rough edges.[/b] [b]The Great:[/b] +This has spell creation like no other game I've played. You really do feel like the crafting is endless, and they do really act and feel different. +Definately an addictive factor here. +Meta-game upgrades also keep you coming back for 'just one more run'. +Controller support is solid. [b]The Bad:[/b] -Enemy AI is boringggggggg. While different enemies have different patterns technically, they generally don't feel different [i]enough[/i]. -Artwork is nice, but overall I feel its too small. -Level layout is fairly 'meh'. Yeah, it's random, but its also boringgggggg. [b]The Ugly:[/b] --Music and sounds are really rough. Sound effects range from cringe-worthy to find-the-mute-button. [b]Definatley worth the money for my roguelite friends.[/b] They got enough right here to overlook the bad parts.

Runers is an amazing combination of discovery and rogue-like gameplay. You use 1-3 of 10 different types of runes to create hundreds of spells. Of the 285 spells you can only discover a handful per run, and runs can take hours. In other words, this game's element of discovery can last hundreds of hours. The spells are incredibly unique and versatile. You'll find that they fit into general categories and serve similar purposes, but that no two spells are the same. You can also upgrade the spells you have created by using additional runes on them. This doesn't simply upgrade damage or cooldown time though, but any of a number of aspects of a spell including but not limited to: buff duration, radius, force, speed, knockback, stun duration, and even "leash elastic." Clearly not all spells will have every one of these and more aspects, but how a spell can be upgraded is just as important as how it first appears. For me the best thing about this game is that it is a rogue-like with meaningful general progression. Usually in rogue-likes, once you die you start over and very little will have changed other than your knowledge of the game. In this game you might discover a very useful spell on one run and feel great about your progress even without winning or performing well. A really important thing to understand about the mechanics of this game is the meaning of "discovery." Creating a spell for the first time does not simply mean adding a new "recipe" to your runedex that you could have just looked up on a wiki. You need combiners to create spells for the first time, afterwards you can create those spells using only the required runes. Combiners have another possible use though, in that you can break them to gain experience. I can't stress enough how important it is to be aware of this aspect of the gameplay. If you look through the discussions you will find many, many people who didn't become aware of this until they had put many hours into the game. I definitely plan on completing my runedex so there's no way I couldn't recommend this game. I should also add that this game has a pretty cool soundtrack.

Runers is an interesting one.... easily one of the stranger games in this genre, but it comes with alot of really interesting and unique mechanics that truly set it apart from everything else. The basic gameplay is what you'd expect out of this. Twin-stick shooting, while dodging a bazillion enemy projectiles and other things. Clear each room to continue through the labyrinth. Beat a boss every few floors. You know the drill. Where Runers goes off the track though is.... everything else. The core of the game is it's unique spell system. Instead of having some single basic attack to shoot with as in many of these games, there are nearly 300 different spells to use against your foes. There's all sorts here... rapid-fire bullets (that most basic of shot types), debuff fields, supernovas, and all sorts of very screwy spells for you to find. The sheer variety on offer here is pretty amazing. In addition to that, before each run you'll select a character race and class, each doing something different, and there are a TON of them. All of this means that you can have an incredibly different experience each run. The core mechanic is focused on the runes that you'll find as you wander the maze. A varitey of elements from air to force to speed or whatever. When you combine runes with each other, you get a spell that you can then place into one of your available casting slots. When combining, most of the time you'll be using two or three runes at a time... as this is how you get the really interesting stuff.... but even just dropping one rune into the combiner will give you another super-basic shot to use, and those are important too. With so many different rune types, there are boatloads of combinations to find here. However, you cant just throw these things in and start combining right away. Not at first, anyway, and this is where we get to the permanent progression aspect of the game. At first, all spells except the one-rune ones will be locked. Try to smash together a locked combination of runes and it wont do anything at all. You need to find either a double or triple combiner, which will allow you to slap together runes into a combination you have not yet tried yet, permanently unlocking whatever the resulting spell is. Once a spell is unlocked, you can then create it whenever you want without needing combiners, and this carries over through all of your runs. This means that early on, you're going to have a very hard time getting new spells, as combiners dont drop very often. The more you play, the more spells you'll unlock, and the more spell crafting you'll be able to do. You'll really be able to dive into the spell mechanics the further you get. However, this unlock process could create some frustration for you when you're starting out, just because you'll have so few options. But, it also creates an easier learning curve... the game isnt just dumping a list of 300 spells on you and saying "GOOD LUCK!". The slow unlocking makes sure you have time to really get a handle on what each one does, and the progression is satisfying. But yeah, the difficulty will definitely be higher when you have few spells unlocked. Speaking of difficulty, there are many to choose from, so the game can range from "hard" to 'bloody absurd". This is a tough game no matter how you put it. There are LOTS of enemies, and they fire LOTS of bullets and spells and screwy things at you. Having some 30+ monsters in a single room is definitely not a rare occurance. Fortunately, you still have lots of room to dodge, as both you and most monsters are pretty small. The game can definitely have a bit of a bullet-hell feel to it, due to the sheer lunacy that the combat can produce. And you'll have to get to know the enemies, too. Enemy attack patterns are.... fairly simple. Yet even despite this, each type stands out, and you'll have to properly learn to deal with each. Entropy mages for instance are one of the more irritating things you'll find early on; they fire bizarrely inaccurate spells that hit you more BECAUSE they're inaccurate. Or there's bats, with their wonky arcing movement that make it easy to crash into them. Or the Sucky Werewolves (that's what I call them anyway) which dash up near you, and create a vortex centered on themselves, pulling you in and making you easier for other enemies to hit. Some enemies get extra creative, like skeletons, which collapse into a heap of bones when defeated, which you must go and then stomp on to finish them off or they get back up. Or treants, which turn into trees when killed, but the trees can take damage and if they pop, they become a monster again. The bosses are creative too, which is a nice thing to see. For the most part these fights are well done, and stand out quite a bit from the rest of the gameplay. Minibosses though are the foes that can be a bit of an issue. These guys are rare, and encountered in unexpected places, and while they'll be the only monster in the room, they'll cause so much utter chaos that there may as well be 50 mages in the room. These guys are BRUTAL, perhaps a bit too much, and that could be cause for some major frustration. Some tweaks could have fixed these, but those wont be coming. And the game definitely has some screwy balance issues like that. I dont mean the spells. I mean other things. For instance, bonuses that you can choose from upon levelling up range from "Wow that's great" to "it's like I'm not even getting anything". This is one of those games where the developer doesnt seem to have grasped the art of handling percentages when dealing with stat changes. Getting something like a levelup bonus that gives you a whopping 2% movement speed increase isnt uncommon here... and a number like that means that the effect isnt even going to be noticable. Wheras other bonuses might almost be too good. The same goes for races, classes, and other things. And there's some types of event rooms that are a little broken as well (you'll learn which ones these are really fast). Fortunately THOSE are optional, you dont have to start the event if you dont want to. Actual spell balance is better. Alot of that is going to be up to you and your own personal playstyle. A spell that one player thinks is good, might be one that you just hate. Yeah, it's that sort of game. Experimentation is key here, and there are plenty of spells that will be situational, so choosing the right ones for your current setup is very important. On top of that, there is a mechanic in place where you can stick runes into spells you already have to power them up, which is even more decision-making for you to do, and even more ways for your build to be customized as you play. It's an excellent mechanic that works well, and gives you ever more things to do with all of those runes you'll be filling your inventory with. Balance issues aside, one other thing I need to mention is the graphics. I personally dont really give a fart about graphics, but if you're the sort of player that does, this game absolutely is not for you. And the final negative thing is actually the controller support. It is... a little borked. There are two problems with it: 1, there's this bizarre tendancy for your aim to "snap" to the 4 cardinal directions... it's very hard to explain, but you'll see what I mean the moment you start the game. And 2, there are some spells that target the cursor, and while that's absolutely fine with a mouse, trying to control their placement with a controller is like trying to herd cats. You can get used to these things, but one way or another, a mouse/keyboard is the way to go here. Overall, Runers is a criminally overlooked game with tons of fun and depth to offer you. It's one of those ones that I'm going to keep constantly coming back to, and honestly.... it's just alot of fun. Really though those entropy mages are jerks. So are the bats.

I really want to like this game, but simply can't. I really tried, too. The main premise of the game is to combine up to 3 runes to make new and unique spells, which sounds like it would be a lot of fun as runes drop like crazy. The problem is that you need an additional item called a 'combiner' to create a spell, and these are incredibly rare. 1 combiner is required for 2-rune spells. If you want to create a 3 rune spell, you need an 'advanced combiner' which I have never seen, though you can make one using 4 regular combiners. I have also never seen 4 combiners in 1 contiguous game. I was looking for a game that had a mechanic like this, forgot I had Runers and fired it up. I got probably 10+ rooms into the first dungeon, found around 8 runes but 0 combiners, then got killed using the starting weapon, again, and remembered why I stopped playing. I have put 6+ hours into this game and I've combined maybe 2 spells total, and those I had to look up because I didn't want to waste runes (well, not the first one because I didn't know about the combiner mechanic the first time). This game should be about experimentation, but it practically requires a guide so as not to waste the arbitrarily rare (and in my opinion, unnecessary) combiners. Booooooo, I know this game is 10 years old, and the developer is most likely long gone, but this 1 mechanic has always kept me from being able to play this game despite desperately wanting to do so. If there could be an easy mode without combiners, or remove them entirely, it would be totally worth playing still. I'm honestly surprised they thought this was a good idea since the game brings 1 thing to the table, freedom of spell creation, but locks it behind this stupid rare drop.