Survivors of a deadly Adventurer attack scamper through the dark, damp caves of the underground, with no choice but to flee into uncertain death than to turn around and face it in certainty. These bloodthirsty humans have hunted goblin folk to near extinction, slaughtering your kin in ruthless hunger for XP and loot, no matter how meager it is to offer. You are the last of your kind, and unable to find medicine for your injured brethren, things seem bleak. Until you find the legendary, lost Goblin Stone, a literal light in the darkness, offering you hope, survival, a future for the goblin race… and a chance to reclaim your home from the ravenous armies of adventurers.
Goblin Stone is a turn-based roguelite in which you play as an ever-increasing tribe of goblins, setting out to reclaim your home from greedy XP hunters. It cleverly combines several genres, including turn-based strategy and simulation/management sims, in a way that just works and features a distinctly pro-goblin narrative.
I, for one, support our new goblin overlords. I am a massive fan of goblins and have been pro-goblin since my very first game of Dungeons & Dragons. In fact, I have a Pathfinder goblin character named P’unckk Big-Scream who considers himself something of a goblin-rights activist and would wholeheartedly support this game’s message.
Goblin Stone is all about reversing typical RPG roles. It does this by portraying what is usually seen as a mindless band of monsters as a victimized race just trying to survive and your typical band of heroic adventurers as bloodthirsty, greedy killers instead. The game ensures there is no ambiguity in this message right off the bat.
In the opening segment/tutorial, you play as a typical band of adventurers, navigating through a typical underground dungeon in search of loot. You cruelly and indiscriminately slaughter goblins along the way despite their meager resistance and even less impressive loot. This section does a great job of displaying the goblins as pathetic and the adventurers as cruel, making it all the more cathartic when you band together and start taking the fight back to them.
The core gameplay of Goblin Stone is a turn-based strategy room crawler with roguelike elements. If I could make an easy comparison, I’d say it plays pretty similar to Darkest Dungeon. You lead a party of goblins room to room and battle to battle, collecting loot as you go. Each little “dungeon” you delve into has branching paths with randomized rewards, and if you survive, you return to your home base with the collected rewards.
The turn-based strategy aspect of the game is well done. Not only is it solid, with no glaring balance issues that I could see, but it cleverly uses its premises as an RPG parody to make skills interesting, both conceptually and in practice.
One such example of a skill I found really strategically interesting was the Shaman’s healing bolt ability, which heals a target for a big chunk of health but then stuns it, causing it to skip a turn. Interestingly, this ability could be used on enemies. This gives you a significant amount of freedom and the not-so-easy choice of “Do I heal an ally and lose a turn or force an enemy to skip their turn at the cost of giving them more health.” Tons of other abilities work with each other by triggering different status effects, allowing you to chain some interesting combos.
One mechanic I found interesting happens when one of your poor goblins dies. The death of an ally causes all your goblins to enter a red-faced fury for a turn, dealing extra damage until it wears off. Conversely, an enemy that kills a goblin levels up, allowing them to become a much stronger foe. I’ve never seen an RPG’s level-up mechanic used as a ticking clock to pressure players before, and I found it extremely clever.
As mechanically interesting as the combat is, it’s not so much to look at. The animations are fast, stiff, and not incredibly impressive; they happen and then are done. There are a few exceptions to this, with some moves being far more cinematic than others, but I found myself wishing the combat as a whole was a little more entertaining to watch.
When you aren’t delving into dungeons for the betterment of goblinkind, you’re managing your base in what I could only describe as a management sim mini-game. Think Sim Tower or Fallout Shelter. You dig into the earth to build specialized rooms to improve the lives of your goblin tribe, occasionally taking in freeloaders chilling at your cave entrance.
There’s no leveling up for goblins, so to make stronger, better tribe members, you must breed two goblins to create offspring with better stats. This is, as always, a pretty addicting mini-game, making a strategic choice of which traits and stats to combine to make a great addition to your adventuring parties. Goblins also pass down appearance traits, allowing you to personalize your family tree’s look.
Rather than being a real-time simulation, the goblin camp is sort of a between-rounds thing that you return to after adventuring, with time only progressing on your goblin baby training and room digging after you go out into the wilderness to fight adventurers. While this is a clever way to incorporate the mechanic into this type of game, I almost wish I could run a real-time goblin cave simulation and return goblinkind to its former glory.
The Final Word
Goblin Stone is a cute and engaging little game with a great message, all about taking the fight back against a bunch of XP-hungry bullies. It cleverly combines multiple genres into an amalgamation that works surprisingly well, making for a strategically engaging sim about saving Goblinkind.
8
Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Goblin Stone is available on Steam.