*Please Note that the devs are actively pushing out Updates to improve the Demo based on feedback they receive. This means that some of what is mentioned may change before you get a chance to try it yourself !

“Stonewards is a solo or co-op mountain-defense roguelite. Protect a bastion and keep your King alive! Dig for resources to unlock character upgrades and fight off waves of monsters.” – Steam Description

In Stonewards you and up to three friends play as dwarves that need to mine for resources and protect their King. There are two starting classes, miner and warrior, until you unlock more with meta progression. Each class has slightly different stats and starting gear. Between waves of monsters you have the chance to mine for resources that are used for a variety of things.

• If you feed the forge at the Blacksmith, you can level everyone’s character and get rings, but be careful! You only get four different ring choices.
• If you trade in equipment you no longer need at the Recycling Camp, you’ll get some resources back.
• If you trade to the Crafting Camp, you can get helpful items such as arrows.
• If you bring chests to the Chest Opener, you’ll get items or buffs to share amongst your team.
• If you bring stone to the Wall Repair, you can fix any damage your walls have taken.

After each successful wave defended, you get a power up of some kind. This power-up is for the lobby, unlike blacksmith upgrades, so this will require a vote. After selecting the post wave reward, you start another mining session.
Once you complete Wave 11, you can choose to continue in an endless wave until all of your party dies, or go back to the hub and get your meta progression rewards for any quests completed.

Wanted Improvements

• Start with some way to heal without needing an upgrade. There is an end of wave Bonus Card that gives you 2% healing every 2s from standing next to the Camp Fire that would be perfect for this.
• Having a way to upgrade your pickaxe or equipment without it being locked behind a Ring, a Bonus Card, or Random Chance. Even if it costs a hefty price at the trader, having some way to improve if we are starting to struggle without needing a level buff would be nice in later levels.
• Being able to quickly check what things are by mousing over them in your inventory, or in your equipment list.
• Some sort of marking system for the mines to lead people through our mazes. Maybe chalk or spray paint.
• A way to buff our defenses without Bonus Card Rewards. This could be letting us build structures in the field or giving us a way to build more ballistas or turrets of some kind on the wall.
• When the round is over if we could get a time-lapse of our tunnel systems I think that would be a fun thing to see.
• Some Item Names were missing in the code, but I believe this was fixed in an update.
• The boss enemy names are color coded, which didn’t make much sense.
• Solo play feels extremely hard, and might need some balancing.

Final Thoughts

This demo was extremely fun with friends. We played with a full team of four and it felt like a good balance to have 3 people fighting the waves and one running to and from the mines. While this was not intentional it seemed to work. This happened because one of us didn’t take any combat rings, not knowing the four ring limit, and only took buffs to things like Mining and Speed. This demo has enough polish it could probably be released as an early access with just a few tweaks. We highly recommend keeping an eye on this game if you and your friends are looking for something new with an addicting gameplay loop.