“DWARF COMBAT! Stonewards is a 1-4 player co-op first-person roguelite defense game. Lead a crew of stubborn dwarves from your base camp to aid nearby kingdoms, mine deep for resources, forge powerful upgrades, and hold the line against relentless monster attacks.” – Steam Description

Stonewards is a co-op roguelite base defense game where your goal is to protect the King. You must mine for resources and search for treasure rooms as fast as you can in between waves of monsters to score much needed levels and upgrades. Once waves of foes start to descend on your fortifications you must face them head-on or be overrun. This game has such a successful loop its had a grip on my friends and myself since we played the demo a couple months ago. I’ve been eagerly watching the discord for updates, and couldn’t wait to get my hands on the early access game. It has lived up to my expectations, if not surpassed them, with only a couple things that stand out as unbalanced.

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Once More Into The Dark

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Every run starts at base camp. Here you can grab a quick drink with your friends, pick your character, look at missions, and buy things for meta progression once you’ve got some gold in your pocket. You start with two classes, The Miner and The Warrior, being available with another six to unlock as you play the game. Don’t fret though, swing by the mission board and you’ll know exactly what you have to do to unlock them. Once you’ve picked your class its time to set out to defend your allies at the Bastion.

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Speak Friend And Enter

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You load in sitting by a cozy campfire next to the King sitting on this throne. There’s an area to dig into, a blacksmith, wall repair, chest opener, recycler, and a crafter. All of these stations have uses, but the most important one is the Blacksmith. Pouring your mined resources into the blacksmith grants levels for your whole party. (more on this later) Now there are no other dwarves running around. No buildings to hide in. Just a wall, these booths, the king on his throne, and a dirt filled doorway. There’s no time to lose because the wave progression is already moving. Time to spring into action and start your tunnel. Soon enough you’ll reach a room with glowing items and a chest or two. Time to check to see if any of the items are good upgrades or just needing to be sent to the recycler. Your chests can be upgrade chests containing tomes, or treasure chests holding a variety of resources. This first room is the only guaranteed room you have. Everything else is randomly generated. There are sound cues for when you are close to another room, as well as a question mark with an arrow direction if it is above you or below you on the top compass to help you find these rooms a little easier.

Once you’ve got your pockets full of all the resources you can hold you’ll run back to the start and here’s where you need a game plan.

There is a lot of resource management that you have to do on the fly. As you unlock more classes you’ll find there are more reasons to hold off on dumping everything into the blacksmith.

Once you level your character you’ll get the choice of three rings with a skip button and a reroll button, but both of these are greyed out and unusable. These rings are how you build out your characters for your run. You only get four choices, for now, and use them wisely because your run could be dead in the water if you grab only non-combat rings. Now that you’ve leveled you check the enemy bar and see its blinking yellow. The horns about to blow and its time to defend yourselves.

By jumping over the wall, or running down the stairs you and your party make your way onto the battlefield. Each wave will have increasing numbers or enemies, and a variety of different types. The first couple waves are pretty straight forward, but before long the enemies begin to swarm you, have bombs, or magic. Realizing which enemies are high priority and dealing with them swiftly is your best chance at success. Once the wave is defeated you’ll get the chance to pick one upgrade as a team. These are also a variety of defensive, offensive, and player buff. At this time there is no way to reroll these choices and this could really effect the waves if you don’t get some of the better upgrades. If your group splits the choice it randomizes between the ones you picked.

Time to book it back to the mines and the loop begins. Its a simple concept done well and its addicting gameplay. I will say that you learn what kind of people your friends are by the way they tackle the mines. You’ll find your goal oriented friends buffing their dig strength to get to the back of the mine and hearing the echoes of “My Precious” as they mine for diamonds with already full pockets and cackle in the depths. Their path is normally pretty straight with little off shoots here and there. Meanwhile, your ADHD “ooo shiny” friend is licking the walls listening for the sparkly sounds of new rooms and mining like an insane person (guilty) and people get lost in their tunnels. While your “this is just a job” friend is just there to protect the others from themselves and builds out their defensive/offensive kit, acts as pack mule when the need arises, and tends to dig away from the others.

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There And Back Again

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When your run inevitably ends, either in success or failure, you end up back at basecamp. Now that you have the cash you can buy any of the things you’ve unlocked. There is plenty to choose from. Things to note here are even if you have unlocked a character, tome or ring you will still have to buy them. Some rings are only useful for some characters which can be seen in the shop. This is also where you buy your rerolls and skips. As you play more runs I will say its a bit harder to gain gold so being a little strategic with your purchases could go a long way. Plus, if you don’t buy the rings you don’t want or need they won’t show up in your choices and could make finding the rings you actually want easier. I purchases almost everything as I went to try it all and as I get deeper into the game its making getting my build just the way I want harder. I’m looking forward to getting the Toggler and seeing how that works.

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Solo Vs Co-op

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Playing Stonewards solo is a challenge. It’s better than it was back in the demo, but you will need a strong offensive build with a side of dig strength to make to the end. Meanwhile, co-op feels SO GOOD. I’ve played solo, 2-player, 3-player, and 4-player. The gameplay seems to be fairly balanced in the Bastion map for no matter how many people you have. The Dungeon map however is the only time we’ve said “hmm maybe we need a full four people for this.” Some of the enemies that are found there are just extremely powerful and you are one small mistake from ruining a good run. Personally, while I can play this by myself I prefer it with friends.

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You Can Have My Axe

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As we take a deeper look into the classes there seems to be a clear winner for combat. From what I’ve experienced so far, The Archer is leaps and bounds ahead of the other combat classes and seems to be a must have by your party for long term survival. The Warriors cleave is useful in the swarms and seems like the best up close and personal character. The Miner is great to get deeper into the mines. The Hunter feels like it needs some balancing. You get a companion bear but no way to heal it unless it dies. The bear is also tethered very close to the hunter so you have to be close to enemies to get the bear to attack them. Which seems counter productive as its the only class with a crossbow, and is only proficient with light or ranged weapons. The Artificer has bombs that can be used to dig, or do damage and has a character upgrade for item stack size. Which seems like a good middle ground character ideally but feels like it needs a specific build to be good. The magic classes, Mage and Healer, overall feel underwhelming. They take to long to cast, and to much mana to really be useful. The healer also can’t heal themselves so this is purely for co-op play. The only character I can’t speak about is the Rogue as I haven’t unlocked that at this time.

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• Graphics– Overall the game is this fun 3d pixel style. The only issue major issue I have run into is in the second map, The Dungeon. The starting portion of the mine there is blindingly white, I think it’s meant to be snow but it hurts my eyes to be there. Some of the pets are a little spooky to look at, like they belong in a horror game (looking at you, pigs) but the cat is kinda cute.
• Gameplay– Having a highly addictive and satisfying game loop I’ve found myself playing this game almost every night since it came out. I haven’t experienced many bugs and I’ve been having a blast, but my friends have experienced things that have ended our runs prematurely. So, there are some bugs and balancing issues still to work out. The devs are working hard to fix them and are actively sending out hotfixes.
• Sound– The sound design is wonderful. From the sparkly sound for the rooms, to the tink tink tink when you mine, and the sounds when you are fighting everything feels right.
• Controls– The controls are easy to understand and work well.
• Story– What story there is happens from the lore pages which are found randomly in the treasure rooms. I don’t think I’m missing anything by only finding three of them so far. The lack of story doesn’t feel like it hurts the game because the loop is done so well.