Stonewards

If there was a mixed review button I'd use it here, I'm not quite sure how this game is Overwhelmingly positive if I'm being honest. I don't intend this to be a negative "disregard this game" review but more of a feedback review. I will play more of this as the game improves. It's a great foundation for a game and it is fun for a bit, but there's an incredible amount of basic game design missing currently. 1. Can't skip the mid-wave breaks. If we're already so strong that everything is getting 1-shot, we have level 20+ every ring. we're waiting 3 minutes or whatever in-between each wave just so we can farm 1% extra movement speed or a trivial stat that we don't need to complete the run. 2. Build diversity is lacking, you get 4 slots (5 after you play for some amount of hours - which just becomes tedious due to point 1). You'll probably want the Dig Strength ring unless you are cooperating with your friend(s). So now you've got 3 left. You'll probably end up taking Crit Rate, Crit Damage, Heal on Crit, or Raw Damage. With these rings it seems like you can beat anything. Making Dig Strength an upgradeable base stat would be a better idea as I've found when playing with a friend that we either focus entirely on digging or combat. 3. There's lots of unlockable classes, but they seem redundant given point 3. Mage for example is useless. It fires slow single target spells which is absolutely useless when there's hordes of 20+ mobs. 4. Digging is boring. It's identical every run. The loot rooms you can find are filled with crappy weapon drops, or chests which can drop stat tomes which give helpful but ultimately boring stat upgrades ie. items stack 2x more. It really lacks the excitement of potentially finding some really good loot that incentivises continued digging. 5. There's no variance in weapons aside from slight damage differences. There's no extra stats on them, random modifiers, fun modifiers (eg. chance to poison, burn (or all the elements - what fun stuff could you do with them?), explode on hit, turn enemies into allies on hit, lifeleech, where's all the fun game deisign?). Think how much more exciting it would be to find an epic axe that can turn enemies into minions who then explode when they die. There's a ton of fun design that could be done here. 6. Digging items - there's no items that makes digging more fun. TNT, pickaxe modifiers, etc. Chance to explode when digging, %chance to increase dig speed by 500%, find a digging minion, stuff like that. It is surprising to me that considering a large chunk of the game revolves around digging there's not been much fun game design implemented beyond the basic mechanic. 7. Mobs are boring, waves are the same with no variance. 8. Meta-currency (gold) income seems to be lackluster. You get a massive drop of gold as you complete a lot of quests but they quickly fizzle out. The first game I completed earned about 1.5k gold, then we done a 1.1x modifier game which netted us 400. This isn't quite right and should be revised to a more stable and rewarding system. I could probably go on and find a lot of other missing game design that's been missed but these seem like very basic changes that could be made to improve the game a lot. It's not a bad game, it is fun for a couple hours. It does get tedious quickly though. Runs last too long due to point 1. I would wait for further updates before purchasing hence the "No" review. I do think this game has massive potential though, but again I don't think this game deserves the overwhelmingly positive review status it currently has, yet. I do understand this game is early access but it does feel like a minimum viable product right now which is fine. I'll keep an eye out for updates and look forward to seeing where this game goes.