The best roguelikes are defined by their dungeons. Hades pits you against the depths of the Greek underworld, Enter the Gungeon sends you into an oubliette themed around firearms, and Slay the Spire tasks you with ascending the world’s deadliest tower. The setting isn’t the only reason these roguelikes work, of course, but each dungeon sets the tone for your adventure. But what happens when you make that dungeon yourself? This is a question Into the Restless Ruins aims to answer. Created by a former Rockstar, GTA, and Call of Duty dev, the roguelike deck builder’s Steam demo is finally live for everyone to try.
Roguelike game dungeons are known to shift. Every time you enter, the layout is drastically different and you’ve got new challenges to overcome as your skills improve. Into the Restless Ruins channels that gameplay loop, but gives you the keys to the dungeon yourself.
You choose and construct the dungeon’s rooms and corridors using a deck of cards, choosing between campfires, armories, portals, graveyards, libraries, and more. Room synergies help you dictate what goes where, as you build out a path to the mysterious Warden and attempt to take them on. It’s a similar loop to dungeon-crawling classics, but one where the actual layout is down to you.
It’s not all room placement, though. You need to earn favor with The Maiden as you play, as they’ll give you new cards to empower your runs. There are also loads of relics to find and trade with other NPCs for even more upgrades, so you’ve got to find the balance between placing rooms and getting upgrades as you go.
Once you’ve placed all the rooms it’s time to explore them. You go through your own dungeon in an auto battler setting, harvesting Glimour from the unfortunate souls and using this currency to further upgrade your deck.
Into the Restless Ruins also respects your time. While most roguelikes are pushing an hour per run, developer Ant Workshop is deliberately making a smaller roguelike that offers a tighter experience. “It was one of the things we wanted to do, make singles, not albums,” managing director Anthony Gowland told PCGamesN during a WASD interview. Gowland’s previous credits include GTA Online, Vice City Stories, and the Call of Duty series.
The Into the Restless Ruins demo is available on Steam right now, with the full launch planned for 2024. You can try it for yourself right here.
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