About This Game Runers is a top-down rogue-like dungeon shooter where you explore a vast underground labyrinth and face fierce monsters and bosses. As the game advances further into the dungeon, you will gather Runes, which will be used to combine into 285 unique spells. Discovering new spells will unlock their entries in your Runedex; unlock them all! But be careful – if you die, your playthrough is finished. We wanted to make a game that had a lot of replayability, customization, and discovery. Almost every design choice we made focused on furthering those three goals. We want the player to be able to choose the playing style that suits them: long range sniper, mid range run and gun, or an up close brawler. There are many features to facilitate this level of customization. When you earn enough experience you will level up and be able to choose from 4 random traits to make you even stronger. Each floor is procedurally generated, so the enemies, rooms, event rooms, and bosses you face are all randomly chosen, making every playthrough different. You will not encounter everything in the game in one playthrough, or even five: there is always something new to encounter.Each floor and room is completely randomized – each run will be a different experience Choose from 20 Races and 20 Classes to customize your runsRunes have unique stats that modify the spells you create with them Choose from 285 different spells to build your own unique spell loadoutsUpgrade your spells to make them even stronger50 different traits to choose from when leveling up 10 procedurally generated floors to explore and fight through 15+ random bosses and 100+ random enemies to fightNumerous Challenges, Event Rooms, and Achievements to completeDefeating enemies unlocks entries in your Beastiary5 difficulties to increase the challenge 1075eedd30 Title: RunersGenre: Indie, RPGDeveloper:LGK GamesPublisher:MastertronicRelease Date: 2 Sep, 2014 Runers Download For Pc [key] Definitely a fun, neat twist on the Rogue-like genre. Lots of variety in characters and customability, and the whole rune crafting system for your spells is a nifty idea. What's more, the fact you save your Runedex progress even after your perma-deaths let you know what spells were worth it and which ones weren't. It's hard, but still definitely fair, and I highly recommend this due to its unique play flavor.. A unique and ambitious concept paired with the top-down shooter genre. This is a game that I deeply want to like but cannot due to myriad poor design choices that pull the whole game down.I agree with the bulk of what is expressed in other positive\/negative comments so I'll try not to repeat those and just add my flavor.- Ludicrous design choices like the doesnt-make-an-ounce-of-sense control scheme- Random... so effing random. Yes we need random in games, but balanced random- Atrocious shooting and enemy sounds. Primaries on auto-fire should play a melodic and quiet harmony, not an ear-piercing squeal with every bullet that flies (5+ per second!)- Clunky and non-intuitive spell crafting, odd since this is the game's entire hook and premise- Physics-based bonus mini games where the physics pretty much don't work given the game's control scheme- Why so zoomed out - the hero\/foes are the size of antsI hate this game. But I want to love it with all my heart.. Runers is a top-down, may-as-well-be-twin-stick shooter with roguelike qualities, including permadeath. Contrary to what you might have expected after glancing at the screenshots, the game does not feature traditional loot, consumables, equipment or an inventory system, other than what\u2019s required to craft spells. With this in mind, I didn\u2019t expect it to have much depth but was pleasantly surprised to be proven at least partly wrong.The main attraction here is the magic system that lets you combine a catalyst with one to three runes from eight elements to create 285 different spells. Most results are unique in both animation and effect and generally fall under buff, debuff, direct single-target damage, area of effect, or some combination thereof. Spells can be further upgraded in power by dragging duplicate runes of the same element onto them, which augments their damage, knockback, cooldown, bullet size and speed. Runes, and the catalysts needed to combine them, drop from enemies and destructibles and are presented as a reward option when descending floors.Spell quick slots are limited, maxing out at six after you\u2019ve beaten a few minibosses, and excess spells must be in one of two storage slots or discarded. Two primary spells can be set to autofire so that they blast toward your cursor each time the cooldowns are up, which really makes casting feel like a twin-stick shooter without actual twin-stick support. Spell quality varies wildly with a few feeling overpowered, many feeling useless, and most falling somewhere in between. Casting does not consume resources and is only limited by cooldowns, so it\u2019s fun to experiment with different builds.Adventuring begins with choosing a difficulty, a racial passive ability, a class that determines your activatable special ability, and a starter spell (or, in roguelike fashion, just hit \u201crandom\u201d and let the game decide these things for you). After this, you\u2019ll be placed in a ten-floor dungeon with a toggleable map overlay that shows which rooms you\u2019ve visited and any items you\u2019ve left behind.Enemies often feel just as, if not more, powerful than you because they cast the same spells available to you and can quickly fill your debuff bar. Combat involves a lot of running in circles as a result, dodging projectiles like you\u2019re in bullet hell while slinging your own spells toward the pack of enemies that\u2019s chasing you. Emerging as the victor will unlock the exits in that room and let you progress to the next. Rinse and repeat. The bulk of Runers\u2019 depth and imagination went into its magic system and there isn\u2019t much in the way of surprises outside of that. There are really only three room variants in the game: rooms containing a throng of enemies, a boss or miniboss, or a challenge (which is often just another throng of enemies whose conditional defeat rewards you with a perk).Upon leveling up or completing a challenge room, you get to choose between four perks that are drawn randomly from a huge pool. With a few exceptions, these bonuses are more about augmenting your spells to be as deadly as possible and less about traditional character stat building. Even though death is permanent, a runedex keeps track of all the spell combinations you\u2019ve unlocked thus far and a bestiary does the same for all the enemies you\u2019ve encountered. There are also leaderboards for each difficulty and 30 optional, standalone challenges.As long as you delve into Runers with an open mind and no expectations of it cleanly fitting into a particular genre\u2014and you\u2019re prepared to deal with the difficulty of projectile hell\u2014you should enjoy the ride.. Below you'll find a very in-deph, analytical video review of Runers, and below that a review in written form, should you prefer text over video.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0b1yF0mgHsAsthetics: Decent pixel art style that seems rather generic due to low variety. Especially the floor, the walls and the spelly icons look particularly bad. The spell effects themselves are rather pretty though. Very simple, no doubt about it, however this simplicity also allows for easier recognition (as enemies use the same spells).Sound design: Overall average. The sound effects are again generic, but what you would expect. Water drops create satisfying splash sounds, lightning sparks like broken electricity and fire spews crackling sounds of a train running on charcoal. A gripe worth mentioning here is the forgetable music, which ranges from alien space tunes while fighting in old ruins (huh?) to base heavy tunes in the depths of hell. Luckily the game does have a seperate music switch to turn off the music and play a choice of your own music in the background. I highly recommend playing heavy rock or metal, as I found it most fun to slaughter monsters alongside.Gameplay: The heart of Runers and by far the strongest component that carries the game. Before starting a new run (due to the permadeath mechanic of roguelikes), you create a character based on one out of 20 classes and one out of 20 races, which influence how you try to develop your character. Afterwards you are dropped into a procedurally generated dungeon, where you face hordes of monsters with distinct abilities and strategies to defeat them. There are also several special rooms you can find. Certain rooms have an aura attached to them that randomly affects your (and the monsters!) stats, either by lowering them or by increasing them. There are challenge rooms that completely change the objective, for example protecting a portal or dodging fireballs. On some floors a boss awaits you. These fights are particularly interesting as most bosses require a special strategy to defeat. For a great example, please watch the video and the fight against the Air boss Nimbirrus.While defeating enemies, you will find an array of drops. Among them Runers, Double and Triple Combiners. The Runes can either be used on their own to upgrade an existing spell or in conjuction with a combiner to create an entirely new spell from a pool of 285 spells! After unlocking all double and a reasonable amount of triple spells, I can honestly say that a lot of spells play very differently and this whole spell crafting system adds a really fun layer of exploration ontop of the game. There are some weaker points in terms of gameplay too however. Completing a floor or reaching a level up rewards you with a choice of four possible upgrades, which can be runes, rune level, combiners or passive upgrades (the latter for level ups). As the passive upgrades are mere stat upgrades, completing a floor does not feel rewarding enough on itself.TL;DR: Overall, Runers is an honestly brilliant action roguelike with an incredibly in-depth spell crafting system and a huge variety. The small gripes I have in terms of asthetics, sound design and unrewarding level ups do not diminish my very positive opinion of Runers. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you are into roguelikes like Binding of Isaac, Our Darker Purpose or A Wizard's Lizard.. Runers is very interesting roguelite that does a lot right. Essentially, you attack by using spells and the main novelty of the game is that you hand-craft spells by using various combinations of runes that you collect. You carry several spells at once. This makes for some really wild spells\/attack combinations that actually feel and look and act drastically different. Yeah, you have your run-of-the-mill fireball spell, which is simple to make, but further down the line you may craft a wave of fire that moves in a DNA-strand-like pattern across the screen. It gets crazy. But, there are rough edges.The Great:+This has spell creation like no other game I've played. You really do feel like the crafting is endless, and they do really act and feel different.+Definately an addictive factor here.+Meta-game upgrades also keep you coming back for 'just one more run'.+Controller support is solid.The Bad:-Enemy AI is boringggggggg. While different enemies have different patterns technically, they generally don't feel different enough.-Artwork is nice, but overall I feel its too small.-Level layout is fairly 'meh'. Yeah, it's random, but its also boringgggggg.The Ugly:--Music and sounds are really rough. Sound effects range from cringe-worthy to find-the-mute-button.Definatley worth the money for my roguelite friends. They got enough right here to overlook the bad parts.. Runers is an interesting one.... easily one of the stranger games in this genre, but it comes with alot of really interesting and unique mechanics that truly set it apart from everything else. The basic gameplay is what you'd expect out of this. Twin-stick shooting, while dodging a bazillion enemy projectiles and other things. Clear each room to continue through the labyrinth. Beat a boss every few floors. You know the drill.Where Runers goes off the track though is.... everything else. The core of the game is it's unique spell system. Instead of having some single basic attack to shoot with as in many of these games, there are nearly 300 different spells to use against your foes. There's all sorts here... rapid-fire bullets (that most basic of shot types), debuff fields, supernovas, and all sorts of very screwy spells for you to find. The sheer variety on offer here is pretty amazing. In addition to that, before each run you'll select a character race and class, each doing something different, and there are a TON of them. All of this means that you can have an incredibly different experience each run.The core mechanic is focused on the runes that you'll find as you wander the maze. A varitey of elements from air to force to speed or whatever. When you combine runes with each other, you get a spell that you can then place into one of your available casting slots. When combining, most of the time you'll be using two or three runes at a time... as this is how you get the really interesting stuff.... but even just dropping one rune into the combiner will give you another super-basic shot to use, and those are important too. With so many different rune types, there are boatloads of combinations to find here. However, you cant just throw these things in and start combining right away. Not at first, anyway, and this is where we get to the permanent progression aspect of the game. At first, all spells except the one-rune ones will be locked. Try to smash together a locked combination of runes and it wont do anything at all. You need to find either a double or triple combiner, which will allow you to slap together runes into a combination you have not yet tried yet, permanently unlocking whatever the resulting spell is. Once a spell is unlocked, you can then create it whenever you want without needing combiners, and this carries over through all of your runs. This means that early on, you're going to have a very hard time getting new spells, as combiners dont drop very often. The more you play, the more spells you'll unlock, and the more spell crafting you'll be able to do. You'll really be able to dive into the spell mechanics the further you get. However, this unlock process could create some frustration for you when you're starting out, just because you'll have so few options. But, it also creates an easier learning curve... the game isnt just dumping a list of 300 spells on you and saying "GOOD LUCK!". The slow unlocking makes sure you have time to really get a handle on what each one does, and the progression is satisfying. But yeah, the difficulty will definitely be higher when you have few spells unlocked.Speaking of difficulty, there are many to choose from, so the game can range from "hard" to 'bloody absurd". This is a tough game no matter how you put it. There are LOTS of enemies, and they fire LOTS of bullets and spells and screwy things at you. Having some 30+ monsters in a single room is definitely not a rare occurance. Fortunately, you still have lots of room to dodge, as both you and most monsters are pretty small. The game can definitely have a bit of a bullet-hell feel to it, due to the sheer lunacy that the combat can produce. And you'll have to get to know the enemies, too. Enemy attack patterns are.... fairly simple. Yet even despite this, each type stands out, and you'll have to properly learn to deal with each. Entropy mages for instance are one of the more irritating things you'll find early on; they fire bizarrely inaccurate spells that hit you more BECAUSE they're inaccurate. Or there's bats, with their wonky arcing movement that make it easy to crash into them. Or the Sucky Werewolves (that's what I call them anyway) which dash up near you, and create a vortex centered on themselves, pulling you in and making you easier for other enemies to hit. Some enemies get extra creative, like skeletons, which collapse into a heap of bones when defeated, which you must go and then stomp on to finish them off or they get back up. Or treants, which turn into trees when killed, but the trees can take damage and if they pop, they become a monster again. The bosses are creative too, which is a nice thing to see. For the most part these fights are well done, and stand out quite a bit from the rest of the gameplay. Minibosses though are the foes that can be a bit of an issue. These guys are rare, and encountered in unexpected places, and while they'll be the only monster in the room, they'll cause so much utter chaos that there may as well be 50 mages in the room. These guys are BRUTAL, perhaps a bit too much, and that could be cause for some major frustration. Some tweaks could have fixed these, but those wont be coming.And the game definitely has some screwy balance issues like that. I dont mean the spells. I mean other things. For instance, bonuses that you can choose from upon levelling up range from "Wow that's great" to "it's like I'm not even getting anything". This is one of those games where the developer doesnt seem to have grasped the art of handling percentages when dealing with stat changes. Getting something like a levelup bonus that gives you a whopping 2% movement speed increase isnt uncommon here... and a number like that means that the effect isnt even going to be noticable. Wheras other bonuses might almost be too good. The same goes for races, classes, and other things. And there's some types of event rooms that are a little broken as well (you'll learn which ones these are really fast). Fortunately THOSE are optional, you dont have to start the event if you dont want to.Actual spell balance is better. Alot of that is going to be up to you and your own personal playstyle. A spell that one player thinks is good, might be one that you just hate. Yeah, it's that sort of game. Experimentation is key here, and there are plenty of spells that will be situational, so choosing the right ones for your current setup is very important. On top of that, there is a mechanic in place where you can stick runes into spells you already have to power them up, which is even more decision-making for you to do, and even more ways for your build to be customized as you play. It's an excellent mechanic that works well, and gives you ever more things to do with all of those runes you'll be filling your inventory with.Balance issues aside, one other thing I need to mention is the graphics. I personally dont really give a fart about graphics, but if you're the sort of player that does, this game absolutely is not for you. And the final negative thing is actually the controller support. It is... a little borked. There are two problems with it: 1, there's this bizarre tendancy for your aim to "snap" to the 4 cardinal directions... it's very hard to explain, but you'll see what I mean the moment you start the game. And 2, there are some spells that target the cursor, and while that's absolutely fine with a mouse, trying to control their placement with a controller is like trying to herd cats. You can get used to these things, but one way or another, a mouse/keyboard is the way to go here.Overall, Runers is a criminally overlooked game with tons of fun and depth to offer you. It's one of those ones that I'm going to keep constantly coming back to, and honestly.... it's just alot of fun. Really though those entropy mages are jerks. So are the bats.. Runers is a game of surprising depth. While not the most hectic Shmup, it is a very tactical one; every choice of spell is worthy of consideration, and the replay value is huge. You begin with a single spell, but as you uncover new rune combinations over the course of your playthoughs, you can optimize and strategize your favorite abilities. Some spells are crap, but with the right bit of luck you can stack a stat to astronomical levels and change the way an old familiar one will play. This game is absolutely worth the price of admission normally, but it's on sale: you have no reason not to pick this up.. One of the best rogue-likes i've played in recent history. It's a nice combination of bullet hell, dungeon crawler, rogue-like, perma death. The basic idea is that you pick a race and special ability. Then you crawl the dungeon as you gain perks and runes. Runes can be combined with other runes to form spells.Highly recommend to anyone who likes Rogue Legacy, Binding of Isaac, Mojo, Rogue, etc.. A word of warning: I think the devs have pretty much disappeared several months back, so treat this game as frozen in its final state.They weren't kidding about the number of unique spells and the variety of classes & races available, and the game definitely has replayability thanks to the random generation of floors, and the different traits available on each level up. The RNG may be a bit too skewed against the player, especially in terms of rune drops, but personally I find it on par with BoI:R. Apart from the usual dungeon crawling, the tricky side challenges test your proficiency in using specific spells or fighting specific enemies.Admittedly the joy of discovery wanes once you earn all of the spells and encounter all of the enemies, but I reckon it'll be quite a long while before you reach that point. And a UX design gripe: there's no "quick restart" option like in many other rogue-likes\/rogue-lites, so you have to navigate from the starting menu again to select the same options as for the previous run if you want to.Still, I think it's worth getting this interesting time-killer, especially now that it's on sale. If you don't mind the once-in-a-while crash.
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