Goblins have gotten a bad rap in fantasy games. Sure, they’re not quite Giant Rats in the sewer in terms of cliche enemies, but they’re what you fight after giant rats, maybe. Nobody really cares about goblins, except, of course, the horny weirdos, but those aren’t really people in a technical sense. Goblin Stone is about taking control of some of those poor little guys, the last goblins to survive after persecution by cruel adventurers, and bring them to glory by rebuilding a goblin lair, slaying adventurers and monsters, gathering gold and treasure, and…wait, did…the adventured-upon become the adventurer after all?! Much to consider!
Goblin Stone
Developer: Orc Chop Games
Price: $25 USD
Platform: PC (reviewed)
MonsterVine was supplied with Steam code for review
I confess to taking an interest in this for several reasons: I am the resident weirdo game liker and I wrote a little tabletop game about being a silly goblin. Also when I looked it up on Steam, it said Goblin Stone was similar to Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon, and as someone that sank hundreds of hours into both, sold. Let’s go.
You start with two little goblins that are mostly naked and you run away from adventurers but, ironically, find a magic stone that is exactly what they were looking for. Being mostly naked goblins provides a hilarious itemization scheme where a giant leg of ham or a rock on a stick is an ideal weapon. You’ll find yourself frowning, wondering whether that wooden stool or magic rock is really an upgrade. The sardonic narrator will muse about your mighty band adventuring and half of them won’t even have pants on.
Goblin Stone follows a fairly simple loop once you’re through learning how to play and finish the initial story/tutorial bit: You have a goblin lair with different rooms to upgrade. Some of these are for things like storage or letting you increase your population of goblins. One of these is for goblin breeding so, yes, you can indulge in goblin eugenics and breeding better goblins but, alas, sorry perverts, you don’t get to watch, though I have no doubt one of you is working on a mod for that now. There’s a campground topside where wandering goblins you can recruit will stop by and a merchant will allow you to buy and sell loot from your adventures.
Adventuring is pretty simple: You put together a team first. The classes include:
- Peon: You’re a goblin. That’s it. But you can carry a lot of stuff.
- Guard: You’re a tank. You mitigate damage
- Raider: Think barbarian: You do a shitload of damage but may also have synergy skills with the other classes
- Shaman: You do heals and hexes
- Mystics: You cause and prevent damage
- Bandit: They’re rogues
- Hunter: You toss traps and screw around with enemies positioning (not like that, sickos).
Once you build your lineup, you pick a spot on the map. Some of these are story-related missions but sometimes it’s scouting or adventuring for loot or crafting materials to improve your base. Generally, you’ll have an idea of what you’re getting into.
The actual adventure itself is a side-scrolling 2D affair where you encounter different things along the lines of, yes, Slay the Spire or Darkest Dungeon because, yes, it’s a roguelike, and hidden beneath the storybook visuals and charming art and sardonic narrator is all the shenanigans that come with “roguelike”, like “yeah your goblins are gonna die a lot, but actually that’s good because souls are a currency you can use to upgrade the base” and “you can’t go back and change your choices because there’s a single save and it autosaves, so deal with the choices you make, sucker.”
Frequently, what you’re going to run into is “combat,” which is the usual turn-based affair, and this is the Darkest Dungeon-style with lots of modifiers and spell effects and positioning and buffs and debuffs and “do you want to do a lot of damage to the first guy in line or the second and fourth guy in line OR do you want to poison three different guys OR do you want to heal your guys but damage yourself”-style decisions. Enemies range from fantasy RPG enemies like zombies and floating skeletons and slime cubes to nefarious adventurers to evil, breakfast-obsessed halflings trying to kidnap your orc bros (orcs are friends to goblins, of course).
…but being adventurers (I think? But goblins that like killing adventurers?)…there’s also a lot of other stuff going on on these maps. There’s resource gathering. There are merchants and blacksmiths that may buff your weapons or sell your stuff. There’s rare treasures to be found. There’s strange encounters with magic lamps or mimic treasure chests that are actually pretty friendly. You have a map and a rough idea of what each route contains, but only a rough one, and it’s a roguelike, so maybe that actually is a magic lamp and something good will happen, or maybe nothing at all will happen. Who knows?
Back at base, you’ll use your loot to build up your goblin lair. One of the downsides, as with most of these games, is the answer to which building or room you should build is “yes,” but you’re frequently resource constrained, so it’s more a question of what to upgrade when and what you have the resources to upgrade.
And as is common with these games, what seems simple often isn’t that simple. For example: I needed to upgrade my Ancestor’s Hall for a quest, and I needed more goblins on the roster to do that. I went to the Campground to recruit them. However, there was no room at the (goblin) inn because my Barracks were full, so I needed to upgrade those. To do that required bone and wood, which I was out of, so I needed to go adventuring.
Alright, adventure time, so I went to my War Room to build a new party since we’d taken pretty heavy casualties last run. So I had to promote a bunch of peons, re-equip the new group, go BACK to the Campground and merchant to buy gear. Then I realized I didn’t like one of the guys I had, so I went BACK to my Warren to make one of my baby goblins into a Guard Goblin, so I could go BACK to the War Room and finish setting up my party to go adventuring…
Please imagine my best Stephen A. Smith voice…BUT…I had a story quest that seemed more important, so I did that instead. And in doing THAT quest, which I did complete, I lost 4 goblins to some tough battles and did not get the supplies I needed that started all this. But I did get to murder the hell out of some filthy hobbitses and that, really, is what it’s all about.
So if that kind of management and absurdity sounds appealing–and I did enjoy frowning at my goblin roster and trying to min-max stats in my goblin eugenics program–then hiding beneath the cutesy storybook exterior is the fiendish heart of a pretty good roguelike. There was also a major patch as I was finishing up, so you can see what kinda fixes they made here, which gives you an idea of the kind of support they’re doing.
The Final Word
2 words: goblin eugenics
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
