Runewaker (v2022.05.05)

Rune’s sun-scorched streets hide a city that has rotted from within, where madness grips the surviving population and a corrupt regime rules over the ruins. Runewaker turns that premise into a tense first-person soulslike, trading power fantasies for dangerous duels, ominous exploration, and the constant threat of losing hard-earned progress. Its mood is bleak and hostile, with every abandoned passage, crumbling district, and subterranean route suggesting that the city’s collapse runs deeper than its broken walls.

Combat revolves around carefully confronting deadly enemies while using magical glyphs to gain an edge against threats that can quickly punish reckless play. Progress comes from recovering useful equipment, improving a chosen build, and returning to the central hub to spend experience on character stats; death drops that experience in the world, but a successful return lets you reclaim it. Exploration matters as much as fighting, since interconnected areas contain hidden supplies, gear, NPC encounters, and shortcuts that gradually make the journey through Rune more manageable. Boss battles serve as major skill checks, demanding patience, knowledge of enemy patterns, and a build that suits your preferred approach.

The first-person viewpoint gives its duels a more immediate, claustrophobic feel than the usual third-person Souls formula, especially when enemies close in through narrow ruins and shadowy depths. Rather than leading players through a straight sequence of missions, the level design encourages memorizing routes and taking calculated risks in unmapped corners of the city. Fans of Dark Souls-style death penalties, cryptic environments, and deliberate boss progression should find the structure familiar, while the desert setting and glyph-driven combat give it its own identity. Runewaker suits players who enjoy overcoming friction through persistence, but newcomers to soulslikes should expect a demanding opening and learn to treat every shortcut as a valuable victory.