Stonegate: The Mad Baron makes retreat the key to dungeon survival
Try to bring everyone home
- Six-person adventuring parties
- Six hand-authored depths
- One $7.99 campaign unlock
Every dungeon party begins with confidence and ends with somebody insisting they can survive one more room. Stonegate: The Mad Baron appears to understand this problem very well.
Stonegate is a first-person dungeon crawler about heading underground and knowing when to turn back. Recruit a company of six adventurers, then bring home as many as possible. It’s out now on iOS.
Your company can include fighters, thieves, priests, mages, scouts and rarer elite classes, each equipped with weapons, armour and shields. Battles play out in turns against grouped enemies, while healing and magic remain limited across an expedition. Push ahead and rewards improve. Every extra room gives traps and authored encounters another chance to finish someone off.
The six hand-authored depths contain secret doors, treasure chambers and a guardian waiting on every deeper floor. Between attempts, you return to Stonegate to rest, recruit, trade, heal and prepare the next group. Private iCloud saves carry that company between iPhone and iPad, so a doomed expedition can follow you onto a larger screen.
I like the emphasis on retreat. Dungeon crawlers lose some of their tension when recovery is endless and every mistake can be fixed before the next fight. Making the walk home part of the decision gives each spell and injury more weight, even before you meet whatever is guarding the stairs.
The payment model is straightforward too. Depth One is included free. A single $7.99 purchase unlocks Depths Two through Six and the complete campaign. There are no adverts, consumable premium currencies or purchases for character power.
Stonegate tells you what the full descent costs. Losing half the company to a treasure chest is your own problem.
Stonegate may be confined to Apple devices, but our list of the best RPGs on Android has more dungeons for anyone standing on the other side of the gate.
