Seeing a dwarf jump as high as they did in Regions of Ruin: Runegate raised both an eyebrow and the bar for everyone’s favourite mine dwellers. Just how agile are these bearded folk, and is this an action-RPG or a hack and slash? It’s both! Yes, you will jump relatively high in this game, but it’s not a platformer. If it were, it wouldn’t score so well.
Before we embark, let’s create a dwarf – male or female, and dress whichever sex you opt for with a hefty beard and some to-die-for plaits. Once the jollies are done, it’s time to face an impending doom, and that is the end of your people, courtesy of the Green Skins, a.k.a. goblins, a.k.a the bastards. It seems you are the last of the warriors who will lead your people to salvation, and you apparently find that through a runegate.
These runegates are like in Stargate, only no Kurt Russell, but still an Egyptian/Middle Eastern vibe. Once you get there. Your stumpy ancestors had allegedly built these in the past, allowing people to travel to faraway lands. This pays off, considering that your group almost copped it, and the location you’ve stumbled upon is quite the haven. Alas, it’s been neglected for ages and could do with a tidy up. Those companions you led to the runegate? They’re staying behind as ‘advisors’ while you step through the portal to locate resources to start the rebuild.
Regions of Ruin: Runegate is a follow-up to Gameclaw Studio’s first outing in 2018. I hadn’t played that, but that didn’t affect my experience here, as it’s almost instant gratification. Predominantly an action-RPG, you investigate equally tiny areas of a map to complete various quests. This includes clearing out a village of goblins, solving rune puzzles to unlock some lore, and mingling with the locals and trading some of the loot you’ve acquired on your adventures. Combat has a reasonable amount of strategies, which include stealth-based attackers, heavy two-handed berserkers, one-handed axes, maces and swords paired with a shield for defensive play, and ranged weapons that include crossbows and grenades.
The actual strategies for engaging the enemies are straightforward. The left trigger, if playing with a controller or on the Steam Deck, will block, and the right trigger will attack with some charged options. Ranged weapons use the left trigger for aiming, and then there’s the jump option and being able to dash. The latter is a key one as your hero won’t move very fast, especially with heavy armour. Trinkets counter this, and you can wear three accessories with your armour to boost everything from movement speed to elemental attacks and defence.
And, as Regions of Ruin: Runegate is an RPG, you can level up your hero and select from four main paths in a skill tree to focus on a damage dealer, defensive player, rogue, or a mix of all the above. The core motivation for the game is establishing a base while balancing exploration. Early on, there was a hint that the area I was exploring was not the only area to investigate, which was quite a surprise, as the worlds are pretty huge. On the world map screen, you can only travel to places you’ve uncovered with your gaze, and this is done through apples. Yeah… Apples are your source of food, but also the currency for exploration. For the perfections, the radius of these reveals leaves parts uncovered, meaning you may be squandering resources purely for completion’s sake.
Which shifts to Regions of Ruin: Runegate base building aspect. I really liked this area as your base is literally your safe space to improve. Through numerous quests, you will unlock workers that can be assigned resource tasks from fishing to mining, all of which contribute to how quickly you develop and unlock things such as blacksmiths for better weapons and eventual enchantments, through to lumberyards for an unlimited supply of wood, to marketplaces to buy up certain resources when in a pickle. It’s a mild grind to begin with, though, as it happens in real time, you can assign workers while you go out and crack some skulls.
The toing and froing to the base and raiding locations is a good balance, but as you unlock new gates to explore, while the enemies do become more challenging and varied and feature some nice ambience changes, it becomes a rinse and repeat of using up apples to explore and going back and forth on fetch quests. They are, of course, optional, which is good as the platforming involved in the rune puzzles can be erratic, with your hero following through floors without warning, or sometimes it’s not clear where it’s safe to jump to and on. From that point of view, the platforming parts aren’t great. The combat and progressive development through better gear and exploration counters that.
Regions of Ruin: Runegate is a fun little action romp that is very much pick-up-and-play. There are a variety of difficulty modes making it accessible, and the selection of weapons and gear to acquire makes it quite engaging. While it didn’t blow me away and had me wanting to dust off Hero Quest or watch a LOTR for the umpteenth time, I did find myself bewitched by the game and spent hours grinding away at a better base. And, though I am quite content with the monotony of that sort of thing, Regions of Ruin: Runegate, doesn’t feel so much of a slog as you can jump ship at any point for a change of scenery, swap out your playstyle or go back and put a plait in your beard. Dwarves 1, Elves 0.
