It’s safe to say that developer Ant Workshop has a bit of a thing for dungeons. Its previous title, Dungeon Golf, was a multiplayer party game which sees you take shots and putt your way through a series of catacombs, taking golfing in an unexpected direction. The next game from the studio is Into the Restless Ruins, a roguelike deck builder, which like Dungeon Golf contains a key idea that aims to provide a unique take on the genre.
In most roguelike games you’ll descend into a dungeon and each time the layout will shift, there’ll be new enemies in different places and while you might be stronger and smarter, it won’t be the same adventure twice. Into the Restless Ruins looks to upend that. Instead of the map changing by itself, you’ll be determining the layout using cards you’ve earned through your travels. By putting you both in the role of dungeoneer and dungeon master, Into the Restless Ruins will put the power in your hands rather than relying on a mysterious algorithm to determine your next route.
By day you’ll use your deck to plonk down rooms, each one having its own bonuses that will determine what shape your run will take. As you progress through the game, you’ll learn which rooms have synergy with each other, taking from your pool of cards to construct a cohesive adventure for your character. You’ll earn these through adventuring at night, as you auto-battle your way through your creations to grab a resource called Glimour from fallen foes and make it back intact. All to please the mysterious Maiden.
The Harvest Maiden is an inscrutable character who will help you get your heart’s desire, should you provide what she wants. Earn favor with her and she’ll grant you wonderful new cards to enhance your next run. Displease her and those cards won’t be quite so helpful. The Maiden, along with other aspects of the game such as goblin-like redcaps and howling banshees, leans heavily into Scottish folklore as the game’s inspiration.
Unlike many games with a grand, sometimes impossible, amount of ambition, developer Ant Workshop is keeping things manageable and responsive, especially following on from Dungeon Golf which didn’t perform exactly to expectations. “It was one of the things we wanted to do, make singles not albums,” the developer tells us at the showfloor at WASD. “We needed to really work on getting it to the point where we can get it to people very quickly. And then we can spend the next three months or whatever listening to feedback, improving the art and tweaking stuff.”
There’s no release date for Into the Restless Ruins just yet but the developer is looking at a potential late summer launch for the game. You can head over to Steam to add it to your wishlists, or if you’re in London right now you can play it on the showfloor at WASD Live.
If you’re like to enjoy some more deck building in your life, our guide to the best card games you can play on PC will see you swiftly shuffling. Should you want to check out crafted by a similarly small team, our guide to the best indie games will get you something you love.
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Additional reporting by Nat Smith at WASD for PCGamesN.