Lone Ruin [Switch]

Developed by Cuddle Monster Games, Lone Ruin is a magic based roguelike twin-stick shooter where you play as an explorer as they venture through the broken-down ruins that are overrun with strange, dangerous beasts.

As well as the main ‘Play’ option, you can select ‘Survival’ from the main menu to make things more challenging. There are three difficulty options, Easy, Medium and Hard, that affect gameplay, though they don’t feel overly punishing (aside from the Ghoul Grave rooms that you’ll come across that trigger a gruelling wave-based format - jeez!) You’ve also got a Leaderboards section that you can view to see how you stack up against other players across all modes and difficulties.

Starting with a little nod to The Legend of Zelda, you’ll be equipped with a spell of your choosing - but you must choose wisely, for this will be your main source of damaging enemies as you go. It feels really satisfying to give each of the spells a little test and see how each might fare for you, before you move on to the challenge ahead. Each room sees you taking on a bunch of enemies, before often having a decision of which path to follow in order to progress: do I want to go through the doorway to the Shop? Or Treasure? Alternatively, you might have the choice between two doors leading to two different Blessings, which will help you on your quest. And sometimes, the choice might be between a health replenishing path, or an item - so you’ll need to weigh up the pros and cons of which door you want to walk through, knowing that you could potentially be walking away from something more useful.

The stunning colour palette, filled with blues, pinks and purples, is absolutely gorgeous. Level designs have a very mysterious, almost spooky quality to them, with bright lights highlighting the stone-edges and coffin shaped blocks filling areas. There’s not a whole lot of variation to the level designs as the game is surprisingly short, but the designs we have are definitely lovely to look at. Enemies come in a range of shapes and sizes, with some being far more threatening than others. Their brightly coloured projectiles can overwhelm you as they whizz towards you - but it’s nothing a quick dash won’t save you from (providing you react on time!). Boss designs are brilliant too, and whilst there aren’t a tonne of them to face, their attack patterns change things up from the rest of the enemies, and are a lot of fun to go up against.

Right off the bat, the soundtrack is amazing with fast-paced, energetic tunes that taper off slightly when things get calm, before ramping up again when enemies are near. It’s one of the most enjoyable soundtracks I’ve listened to recently, and works beautifully with the intensity of the levels.

It’s a surprisingly short title, able to be completed in under an hour, though with a variety of starting spells (with three options being given a buff each run, to make your decision even more of challenge), this encourages you to go back for another try - especially since you might see your name crawling up the leaderboard.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Lone Ruin, and feel that it’s a great option for those new to the genre, as the short length keeps it from feeling too overwhelming - though I do hope it gets more content added further down the line, especially given its price. A hub world would have been a nice inclusion, as well as being able to unlock items for further runs - or even having collectible items to give you more reason for going back for more. If you want to try it out for yourself, then you can nab it for £12.99 on the Switch eShop.

In the end, we decided to give Lone Ruin the Collecting Asylum rating of 7.5/10.

Are you interested in Lone Ruin? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!

- V x

Thank you to Super Rare Games for the Lone Ruin Switch review code!