Goblin Stone – “Dungeon Crawler” seems to be a gameplay design style that is not strange to gamers, because this formula is widely used in strategy games from large development teams. small scale, typically these are popular games like Darkest Dungeon nice Slay the Spire.

The success of the above games has become a valuable lesson for many game development teams to follow, from which many new games have been released. Among them, the newest is Goblin Stone Just released by the studio Orc Chop Games.

So is it? Goblins Stone Is it good enough to become a new “hit” for the “dungeon crawler” genre?

Let’s explore with MarkGame through the following review!

YOU WILL LIKE

THE RISE OF THE BLUE-SKIN DEMONS

Goblin Stone revolves around tactical elements, turn-based combat, focusing on “Rogue-like” elements (if you die/lose, you will lose everything, have to start over from the beginning – NV), where players will control a A group of small goblins on a journey to rebuild the base.

In terms of content, Goblin Stone There are many mechanisms quite similar to the game series Darkest Dungeon, but their difficulty level is not too high and is quite easy to get used to. Along with that, the game has a story line that is quite easy to grasp, combined with a fun and familiar graphic style, helping players of almost any age to try the game without many obstacles.

The game opens with you following a group of goblins who are being hunted by an evil group of adventurers, but the goblins are accidentally given power from a mysterious stone, called the Goblin Stone. From here, you will begin building a base and controlling goblins to fight in quests to expand the base, as well as adventure around to help races oppressed by adventurers.

The interesting point is that the game will not limit players to fixed goblins, instead, the game depends a lot on the cycle of renewing them, meaning if unfortunately the goblins die in battle, they will transform. completely lost. On the contrary, players can recruit or comfortably… breed goblins in the base to increase their numbers.

The pace of the game depends a lot on the strength of the squad obtained through the mating mechanism. To get a new generation of goblins stronger than before, you must regularly breed strong goblins together, as well as select which ones have good genes to pass on to the next generation.

Overall, this mechanic is quite fun if you like progression systems, increasing in strength with each replay in a “Rogue-like” style. But the biggest drawback of Goblin Stone The number of new genes you can find is very scarce and the stats of new characters also increase quite randomly. That leads to a slow game pace, players will have to spend a lot of time “plowing” if they want to increase their squad’s strength.

Goblin Stone Offering many different character classes, in the early stages, the game will give you three main positions: Raider, Guard and Shaman, the remaining types will be gradually unlocked through each chapter.

Character classes will have a fixed set of skills in the form of cards, players can also unlock new skills by spending the souls of dead or retired goblins.

The game’s skill system is not too new, but the plus point is that they are well designed, easy to access and especially quite convenient in accumulating effects between character classes. For example, during combat, you can stun enemies with Shaman or Guard moves, then use the Raider’s “Wakey-wakey” effect to increase damage.

The game’s position assignment mechanism is also quite simple, making team formation quick and easy. As long as you build a guild for each position, players will be able to assign any position to other players. new batch of goblins, as long as their stats are high enough. So if you miss a single Guard in battle, you can easily assign the Guard position to the newly born goblins and fill the missing position.

In terms of content, Goblin Stone There are many mechanisms quite similar to the game series Darkest Dungeonbut their difficulty level is not too high and is quite easy to get used to

YOU WILL HATE

DESIGN IS LACK OF UNIFORMITY

Although they have quite interesting ideas, in reality, the journey of the little Goblins in Goblin Stone is not complete. The main cause of these shortcomings largely lies in the lack of uniformity in the way the development team designs and distributes content in the game.

Typically, the game’s resource system, collecting materials in the game is very difficult and less diverse, each level almost always gives exactly two types of resources, forcing you to play over and over again. To get a satisfactory item, sometimes there are even levels… replacing resources with healing items, which are not very useful.

You can also buy resources in the store, but the rate at which they are sold is quite random, if at all they are sold in very small quantities. Thereby making “plowing” resources in the game become quite difficult and boring when having to repeat old levels many times.

Next, a rather confusing point is that the game mixes too many temporary items in the game, that is, items that you can only use in the current game screen, they will disappear after that.

These items make the “farming” element in the game become quite meaningless and cramped, most of the items you can pick up on the road, so if the player needs healing items, orbs ) to increase your power, you will have to find it again after each level.

Almost the only thing you can keep is money, but the absurdity at this point is that players cannot bring any money with them after each level, but can only use it at the base. Therefore, every time you start a new level, you will always start with zero, making spending in the game quite confusing.

Not to mention, the game’s poor random screen layout can easily lead to very absurd situations. For example, shops and weapon upgrade stations appear at the beginning of the game screen, making it impossible for you to spend any money. Or the stops where you are forced to make a choice to spend money or face an uneven match, where sometimes the enemy has a health bar 10 times larger than the player character.

Mention the random element of Goblin Stone, the troublesome point is that they appear everywhere, from the game screen, power upgrading mechanisms to the game’s progression system. Makes almost everything clear Goblin Stone Lack of consistency, feels quite “uninspired”, especially in situations of receiving bad effects, or completely losing goblins at Cursed Shrines.

Mention the random element of Goblin Stonethe troublesome point is that they appear everywhere, from the game screen, power upgrading mechanisms to the game’s progression system.

TOO MANY ERRORS

Goblin Stone There are also a lot of minor bugs, the most common are cases where if the player acts too quickly, the game will sometimes get stuck in… the loading screen. Or another case is when you use the Charge move of the defensive goblins (Guard), you will always be stuck for a short time.

Next, manipulating the mouse and keys when experiencing the game on PC is not very smooth. Selecting goblins in War Room or Quarters is quite cumbersome and slow, accompanied by a serious drop in FPS, dropping even lower. 30 FPS level, many times you will get stuck in the loading screen when selecting a character.

Goblin Stone There are also a lot of minor bugs, the most common are cases where if the player acts too quickly, the game will sometimes get stuck in… the loading screen.