I was really looking forward to getting my hands on Goblin Stone. I love turn-based strategy, I adore base building, and I’m partial to a roguelike. Throw those three elements together, stir in a few goblins – the unsung heroes of nobody’s folktales – and some charming visuals and I felt like we had the recipe for a classic. I mean, what could go wrong? Well, something did…
What is Goblin Stone all about, then?
Now, I’ll start off by saying that Goblin Stone is not a bad game – in no way am I saying that – but it’s just not a great game either. It simply doesn’t live up to its potential, however, there are still loads of things that I do like. So, I suppose it’s my job to tell you what they are!
It’s very easy to be seduced by the charm of Goblin Stone – the graphics and artwork is exceptional, and at first I loved the voice of the narrator who had an element of Patrick Stewart about him (more about that soon). Then there was the music, which set the fantasy theme perfectly. Finally, I loved that the story chose to focus on goblins – a bold move that paid off in the most part.
The first couple of hours are grindy but fun as you go on little trips to collect resources for your base. You run around as a bunch of goblins, moving through a pretty-looking world and coming across story elements, things you can collect, and battles.
Goblins that tackle the darkest of dungeons…
The first thing I’d like to note is that the combat in Goblin Stone draws inspiration from some awesome games – the most notable being Darkest Dungeon. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being similar to other games, I mean Stardew Valley is one of the best games of all time in my opinion, but I suppose someone could say that the first build didn’t do too much that hadn’t been seen in something like Harvest Moon – only, Stardew did it better. I digress.
Goblin Stone’s combat reminded me very much of Darkest Dungeon: you have your band of Goblins standing in a line, and they take it in turns to choose an action to carry out. The thing is, I just didn’t find the combat very satisfying. I think that was in part due to the controls, as you need to select an action and drag it over to the character you want to affect.
Then there are the battles themselves, which at times go on a bit too long – but not in a way that feels nail-biting. However, I love the fact that there are different classes such as mages and guards, which means you have to strategise your plan of attack. All in all, the combat was decent enough and I found it relatively thoughtful and measured.
Narrated to within an inch of your life
However, one thing I have to mention is that narrator. He kept on chipping in with his opinion with regards to my attacks – and OK, the first few times were fine, but after a while I felt I was hearing the same comments over and over.
In fact, at times, the game does feel a little repetitive, especially in terms of things such as enemy variety, and I felt like I was facing the same enemies too many times.
Now, I’ve mentioned that sometimes the battles weren’t punchy enough for my tastes, and I think the major issue with the game is one of pacing.
When the narrator chipped in with stories – which were interesting at times – I wanted to just speed them up a bit. They were not engaging enough and I wanted the experience to be much more dynamic and snappy.
Later on, when you’d rest, he’d chip in with more comments about the fact that you were resting, which started to get to me after a while. Where at first I found his voice engaging and captivating, it soon felt more like some random bloke who constantly had to comment on everything – and it was more distracting than it should have been.
Building a better world for all goblinkind
Another thing I want to talk about are the quality of life issues that detract from the atmosphere. For example, when you run onto a new screen with your team, you can’t just keep holding down the ‘D’ key to keep running. They enter the next screen and then suddenly stop. It sounds like a minor point, but it broke the immersion, and I had a similar minor annoyance with a control issue back at home base.
Speaking of which, the base building reminds me a bit of Fallout Shelter – and I really appreciated it. You have to construct all manner of buildings and structures. I particularly liked the fact you have to breed goblins to try and get stronger combatants, while being mindful of trying to pass the best traits down a lineage.
However, if I have to be honest, it felt a little bit too slow to get to the end product: stronger goblins. Once again this goes back to the pacing issue. And now, I hear you cry, what was the control issue I mentioned before? Well, when you’re on the home screen of your base, you have to drag the view around with the mouse, rather than use the WASD – it felt like a strange omission that once again it gently tugged away at my ability to be immersed in this fantasy world.
Squashing bugs for a better future
I’ll hold my hands up and say that maybe the above was a bug, as I was also about to complain about the zoom feature. This relies on the mouse wheel, and the first time you do it it’s uncomfortably slow. Then, when I closed and reloaded the game it zoomed like lightning, and I was left wondering whether it was a bug or by design.
Overall, Goblin Stone is a good game, but it had the potential to be incredible, and I hope things can be turned around. If it was in Early Access, I’d say watch out for it, because at the moment I’m inclined to wait another year or so and try again. I can see that the devs have been patching things, so there’s hope it can be fixed.
I loved the ideas behind the combat, and I enjoyed the base building, but the execution and overall pacing needs some work. Hopefully, I’ll see you soon, Goblin Stone.
