Goblin Stone Review for Steam

Goblin Stone is a turn-based RPG where you are tasked with repopulating and rebuilding the nearly extinct Goblin race. Throughout time, Goblins in the world of fantasy have been painted as monsters, weak little creatures that Adventures will cut down without care. Well, that is not how it is here; in this story, Goblins are the protagonists, the Adventurers that improve stats, have classes specialties, and venture out on quests for items and gold. You will embark on an epic journey through the lands where certain choices you make might lead to dire consequences. Will you be able to save Goblinkind?

You start off playing as 3 adventurers who have set forth on a path to uncover an artifact. Your party ventures into a dungeon and they run into some fowl goblins. This is where you learn how combat encounters work. The combat is turn based and revolves around playing cards to do damage or other effects like stunning the enemy or knocking them back delaying their next turn. Weapons come with their own card as well, weapons and most abilities are determined by class with some emphasis on genetics for certain buffs and debuffs. The combat order is displayed at the top of the screen and playing cards costs a certain amount of tiles which is where that character is moved back to which affects when their next turn is, higher costing cards can cause the character to become tired which causes them to take more damage if attacked. After a few different combat encounters two Goblins manage to escape. You then follow the two Goblins on their journey instead of the Adventurers you started with. As they run through a dark cave area to escape they happen upon the artifact that the Adventures had come for. Upon taking the stone spirits appear out of it and tell them that they must take the stone to the ruins in the woods. In the next area two more goblins join the mix and they both have the Raider class you can have up to 6 Goblins in your party, after finding the ruins you do a boss fight against an innkeeper that has turned the ruins into a tavern. Finally after the battle the Goblins place the stone in a statue and unlock the Great Goblin Lair which needs to be rebuilt. You can build new rooms and recruit Goblins to stay in your lair and go on missions with you, you can also create guild rooms for training Goblins into classes, plus many more things to unlock. From then on you continue on adventures getting resources in order to expand your lair. There is much more to explore from merchants, shrines that give you blessings, etc. The art style is cute while also being very fantasy magical the sound design with the both sound effects and the music is well done. Overall, this is a cute fantasy game with an interesting take on adventure, the game gives me standard D&D and RPG vibes but with a twist as you play as the goblins who are usually considered the enemy.

While I had a lot of fun with this game, there are a few things that I want to mention. I ran into a few bugs such as in the beginning of the game when I was trying to travel to the next area I got stuck in the loading screen for over 5 minutes before I had to force close to the game and reopen it to continue. There were also a few visual bugs such as one of the Goblins getting stuck on the end of the screen as well as certain assets glitching into or overlapping other assets in odd ways. Other than a few glitches here and there the game also gets a little repetitive with very few actual choices that affect the overall game, the game is interesting and fun but there are a few marks that make it not all that it seems at first. The story is rich at first but even within the first few hours the story becomes lacking.

Goblin Stone is a cute 2D RPG where you save Goblins from extinction. The tables turn in this fantasy game where you play as Goblins that battle with Adventurers and other monsters. Expand your lair, upgrade your weapons, train and gather more recruits, go on adventures, and much more in this fantasy world. In the end it is up to you to bring Goblins back to their former glory. I am giving this game an 8 out of 10 because it is a cute and fun game overall with only a few drawbacks.

Goblin Stone is now available for PC via Steam.

Related: Reviews by Brianna Keller