Into the Restless Ruins is a roguelike deckbuilder in which… no, wait, come back!
I get it, it can be hard to overcome your cynicism when faced with the conjunction of “roguelike” and “deckbuilder”, the two most pervasive buzzwords in indie gaming — especially in the wake of such perfect expressions of the form as Slay the Spire and Balatro. And it’s true that Into the Restless Ruins, which is currently available to play as a Steam Next Fest demo, isn’t trying too hard to differentiate itself with its pixel art and its dungeon-crawling premise. But it has one new idea, and it’s a really good one.
In this game, the cards in your hand are the rooms of the dungeon, which you build out a little further each day before exploring it at night. You’re both architect and adventurer, and the game is consequently split into distinct, yet closely interlinked halves: a puzzle game in which you use the hands you’re dealt to build a labyrinth that’s survivable and logical; and a dash through those ruins in a Vampire Survivors-influenced, auto-attacking dungeon crawl.
Developer Ant Workshop is from Edinburgh, and says it has rooted Into the Restless Ruins in Scottish myths and legends. It certainly has a folkloric feel. Your adventurer is tasked by the Maiden with harvesting Glimour from spooky apparitions and besting the Warden of each ruin. The more Glimour you earn, the more Favours she grants you. (The Favours, of course, are cards.) But Curses also accrue with each death and with the passing of time, increasing the hostility of the ruins.
In the building phase, you’re given a certain number of Build Points to spend on playing cards from your hand to place rooms in the dungeon. You’re building toward an endpoint, the Warden’s lair, but also trying to link up preexisting, fog-shrouded rooms on the way, which might contain the Seals necessary to open up new dungeon areas, or the Relics that upgrade your cards. Standard rooms — corners, hallways, and crossroads — have no effects, but are usually larger and have more useful door placements. Other rooms can be tricky to work into a logical layout, but you’ll want to, because they can dispel fog or bestow buffs, health, and time.
Time is symbolized by your torch, and it runs out fast, the pool of light it casts around your warrior contracting all the time. You need to make it back to the exit before your torch runs out each night and you can’t view the map while exploring. So the nightly Harvest takes the form of hasty, there-and-back forays that will go much better if you’ve managed to create a straightforward layout that’s easy to memorize. That’s easier said than done when dealing with the luck of the draw.
Into the Restless Ruins exists in the pleasing tension between the randomness of the draw, the careful problem-solving of the layout phase, and the swift desperation of the Harvest. Each feeds into the next, and when a run comes together, this game really hums. Maybe we’re not done with deckbuilding roguelikes yet.
