Stoneshard: Prologue

Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.

Very Positive · 87%Very Positive · 87%2018

The verdict

A free, short, brutally hard turn-based dungeon crawler demo with deep injury and survival systems and great atmosphere. Skip it if you hate sparse saves, heavy RNG or micromanaging wounds.

Great for

Fans of hardcore old-school roguelikes with survival and injury micromanagement who want to try Stoneshard for free

Main risk

Death sends you far back because saves are rare, and heavy RNG can make runs feel unfair

What players love

Great way to try the full game

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 positive reviews

“Plus, it's a demo and it's free. If you're on the fence on buying the full game, definitely try this demo and see for yourself if you like the game or not.”
Steam review · 6.4 h played ↗

“Great demo to get a taste of this awesome game and decide if it's for you.”
Steam review · 5.1 h played ↗

Deep injury, hunger and status system

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 positive reviews

“The most interesting thing there is a deep system of character conditions.”
Steam review · 6 h played ↗

“Body parts can be damaged and it makes for interesting inventory management with the different heals.”
Steam review · 1.6 h played ↗

Atmospheric pixel art and voice acting

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 positive reviews

“Oddly enough the thing that sealed it for me was the voice acting.”
Steam review · 1.8 h played ↗

“The art is gorgeous, the gameplay is engaging”
Steam review · 1.3 h played ↗

Challenging, tactical turn-based combat

Mentioned in ~1 in 6 positive reviews

“Deep tactical combat where every move counts.”
Steam review · 1.5 h played ↗

“It's challenging but fair.”
Steam review · 1.2 h played ↗

Build variety and skill options

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 positive reviews

Randomized loot and levels add replayability

Mentioned in ~1 in 11 positive reviews

“Maps, enemies and loot are randomised, so you can replay the game without getting bored”
Steam review · 17.1 h played ↗

What players complain about

Sparse checkpoints, no manual save

Mentioned in ~1 in 3 negative reviews

“Pair this with the fact that there is no manual saving and that the prologue only has two save points... Two hours apart... that can only be triggered once...”
Steam review · 3.2 h played ↗

“I reached the end of the prologue after an hour and a half and died to the boss.”
Steam review · translated · 1.4 h played ↗

“Autosaves are too rare. Tired of starting from the same spot for the tenth time.”
Steam review · translated · 4.6 h played ↗

Brutal difficulty and unfair RNG

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews

“there is way too much randomness that strategy cannot account for.”
Steam review · 1.1 h played ↗

“you can end up in a room with two strong monsters early on, and you can't get past them, so you're basically dead.”
Steam review · translated · 1.7 h played ↗

Crashes, low FPS and window problems

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 negative reviews

“it crashes a LOT and has NO way of recovering your progress.”
Steam review · 2.4 h played ↗

“Who locked the game's FPS at forty frames? It's unplayable!”
Steam review · translated · 0.3 h played ↗

Clunky controls and interface

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 negative reviews

“the controls are unresponsive half the time.”
Steam review · 0.3 h played ↗

“This game is like Rouge Fable 3, but with clunkier & inconsistent controls.”
Steam review · 0.8 h played ↗

Bugged achievements and eternal early access

Mentioned in ~1 in 10 negative reviews

“one of the achievment is bugged and not possible to unlock in the actual state of the prologue”
Steam review · 5.1 h played ↗

“There's no way to get the 'Killer Trip' achievement!”
Steam review · translated · 9.5 h played ↗

Too many survival mechanics, small inventory

Mentioned in ~1 in 14 negative reviews

“You spend more time micro managing your inventory than doing anything else.”
Steam review · 1.5 h played ↗

“Inventory management killed this for me. Identification scrolls that are 2x1 and dont stack.”
Steam review · 2.3 h played ↗

System requirements

From the Steam store page

Steam Deck: Unknown

Minimum

OSWindows 7/8/10

ProcessorIntel Core 2 Duo E6320 or equivalent

Memory2 GB RAM

GraphicsGeForce 7600 512 Mb or equivalent

Storage500 MB available space

Recommended

OSWindows 7/8/10

ProcessorIntel Core 2 Duo E6320 or equivalent

Memory2 GB RAM

GraphicsGeForce 7600 512 Mb or equivalent

Storage500 MB available space

OSWindows 7/8/10

ProcessorIntel Core 2 Duo E6320 or equivalent

Memory2 GB RAM

GraphicsGeForce 7600 512 Mb or equivalent

Storage500 MB available space

More games to check

Other games we’ve read the reviews for

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Roguefort

Very Positive · 88%

+ Huge depth and content for the price

− Pronoun option removal and community moderation

analyzed 7 d ago

−15%

Underkeep

Very Positive · 95%

+ Authentic old-school crawler feel

− Brutal or unfair difficulty

analyzed 7 h ago

The Slormancer

Very Positive · 82%

+ Deep, flexible build variety

− Repetitive gameplay and endgame

analyzed 1 d ago

Crawl

Overwhelmingly Positive

+ Great couch party game with friends

− No online multiplayer

analyzed 1 d ago

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