It’s a Hard Gob Life

As someone that’s read a metric ton of fantasy stories over the years, I think it’s safe to say that maybe goblins have gotten a bad rap. After all, it’s said that history is written by the victors, and when you’re tiny and green, it’s hard to be a champion. Developed by Orc Chop Games, Goblin Stone is looking to reverse the traditional order of things, and let the goblins be the heroes of their own story for a change.

Despite the game being about controlling a band of 6 goblins, the tutorial actually has you in control of three human heroes. They’re all fantasy stereotypes, a tall wizard, stout dwarf and armored human. Here I got to learn how to navigate the basics, such as clicking the screen to move forwards, selecting attacks and watching the Time Bar to see when my turn would come up.

It’s all pretty basic stuff, other than my minor irritation at needing to drag the cursor to attack targets, instead of just clicking them. The tutorial ended with my trio demolishing everything in their path, but things got a lot more complicated once I was finally in charge of my band of goblins.

While your goblins are controlled the exact same way as the humans in the tutorial, there’s one key difference – they’re much weaker and smaller. Meaning they have reduced stats and can get eviscerated quickly if you’re not careful. On the plus side, there’s lots of goblin classes, such as magical Warlocks, tricky Hunters and sturdy Guards.

I used my defensive goblin to block others from attacks, constantly boosting his defenses when his turn came around. This let my spellcasters wreak havoc. Even then, though, it didn’t take much more than a couple direct attacks for my goblins to join the ancestors. Thankfully, death isn’t the end, and the Souls of the departed can apparently be used to upgrade your lair later, along with a goblin breeding system. Unfortunately, those features didn’t appear to be present in the demo.

Though I enjoyed the combat, I did feel it was weighed heavily against your poor goblins. Maybe the aforementioned mechanics will help your chances, but in the demo I constantly felt like each battle would be my last. Even when I was able to purchase items and refresh my team with new goblins rescued from cages. There’s plenty of such captives, which probably goes to show durability is not goblinkind’s greatest strength.

My biggest issue with the game was that sometimes it wasn’t great about explaining things. Such as how to navigate certain menus. There’s icons on the screen you can click to bring up things like the map, but if you wanted to pause and quit from the game, there’s no such icon. Instead, I had to hit Escape just to end my current run. I also couldn’t figure out how to upgrade my weaponry when I found a blacksmith, which was irritating.

Visually, Goblin Stone is quite pretty. It looks the part of a true fantasy adventure, with a mix of static backgrounds and 3D models. It almost appears like an old timey storybook brought to life, which is one of my favorite aesthetics. Mixed with a fantastic, wry narrator, and the game looks and sounds pretty incredible.

More than anything, I just wish I had been able to experience more of the game, since it looks to offer a robust rogue-lite experience when the final version launches in Q1 of 2024. Though if you’re a fan of tactical rogue fun, you shouldn’t have much longer to wait for the full experience.