While I didn't always enjoy them, and sometimes was hesitant to even give them a try (sorry Mum and Dad), as I've grown and experienced them more, it's hard to go wrong with the deeply analytical prose, the sometimes abrasive use of the supernatural, and the all-or-nothing of the Comedy vs Tragedy. In The Killing Stone, a family is fighting for their life as their Matriarch passes, revealing that their entire house has been cursed. It's now up to you as the recently departed's student to stop this tragedy before the curtain falls.

The Killing Stone Is A Story Of A Cursed Family

Your master, Mariken, has passed. As part of tradition, you visit her family at their island manor. It's not long after setting foot on the grounds that you learn that Mariken's power was not just her own but part of a bargain won with a red-masked being called One Eye.

One Eye explains in further detail that Mariken's sins have been passed on to three members of her family, but your skill under her tutelage has allowed you to read and re-negotiate the contracts of their souls, giving each of them a chance to survive and cleanse themselves before a worse fate awaits them.

In terms of gameplay, this amounts to roguelite deck-building gameplay where you use each family member's deck to not only defeat the demons that hold the contracts, but also to remove the cursed cards from their deck to see them saved.

The story of The Killing Stone frontloads a LOT of information onto the player. Teaching you not only about your own personal history and the history of the families, but it also layers in a lot of culture and practice. You'll get into deep conversations with each of the family members as they're skeptical of your arrival, question your methods, and slowly reveal more of what's going on.

How Much Were You Paying Attention In Theatre Studies?

As a player, I definitely felt that I was on the back foot. Especially as the dialogue has been written in one of two ways. The type of English that you might expect to experience if you said something was Shakespearean, and then the English of something that's ACTUALLY written in Shakespearean. Playing through the game, toggling between the two, I was definitely missing the ability to highlight and make notes in the margins like I did when studying Shakespeare but for the parts that I couldn't wholly follow I still got the general gist.

This deep prose is also accompanied by the fantastic voice work of Liam O'Brien as One Eye and Emma Gregory as Mariken. O'Brien's performance as One Eye perfectly danced the line between a jester welcoming new players to a game and a Faustian devil, especially when he got all up on the microphone. Gregory's Mariken was the perfect performance of a scowling matriarch through flashbacks and communes with the dead.

What was a bit disappointing when you take a step back is that none of the other characters are truly voiced. Animals' barks will accompany text, but the other family members don't have spoken lines. When you're talking to the family alone, it doesn't affect much, but conversations that One Eye is having with another are all one-sided.

This is the 'normal' English Summon Enemies To Fight On One Line

The Killing Stone is broken into three chapters, one for each of the cursed family members. At the start of each, you'll approach the affected family member and begin the ritual to free them. Each chapter has five rituals that you will perform, slowly molding your deck as you progress through them.

The in-combat gameplay has you summoning different units, enhancing them, and casting spells to defeat your enemy. Each side has an eyeball that serves as their overall health, with monsters being summoned to serve as attackers and also lines of defense.

Each monster has two basic stats: attack and health. There are also all kinds of modifiers that will power them up or allow them to act in different ways. Some monsters may slide with each attack, further into enemy territory but also closer to your opponent's HP pool, they could attack multiple enemies at a time, or even inflict instant death. The ability to upgrade all of these monsters adds a lot of variety to the state of your deck by the time you're done.

This single line of enemies means the game starts out very simple, but as you upgrade your deck, swap out cards, and unlock additional boons that alter the way that cards or rules perform, you'll very quickly find yourself discovering some interesting strategies.

A fantastic combo that I discovered during the second chapter of the game used the Dhampyr unit. This character deals one damage and has just a few HP to start with, but every time it attacks an enemy unit, it will get one more max health. This, paired with a unit that, when in reserve, gives a monster Counter (which lets you auto-attack after being hit) and Blast (which lets you attack two enemies in a line) means that every time the monster gets hit it will automatically attack two enemies, getting +2 to its HP. Very quickly, you're gaining more health than you could ever lose.

Finding these kinds of synergies across each of the different decks was exhilarating. You really feel a huge progression in your deck from the first time you're introduced to it, to when you're finally overcoming the end of a ritual and hopefully fully cleansing the family member.

Each chapter also features optional side-contracts that will unlock more cards and possible boons to run into, unlocking progression like a more standard Roguelite experience. Even after completing a chapter and saving a deck for the finale, you can replay it to get a different deck and encounter more.

Much like the story, there's a lot to the mechanics of combat, deckbuilding, and different resources that you'll accumulate as you progress through the game's narrative. By the time I was finishing off Chapter Two, and even more so as I was building ridiculously powerful combos in Chapter Three, I was feeling embarrassed about how poorly constructed my Chapter One deck was.

The ritual appears as a path of events for you to take The Killing Stone Review | Final Thoughts

I had an excellent time with The Killing Stone. It certainly was unnerving getting dropped into the deep end with such a beautifully structured story worthy of the Bard himself, but the adventure is well worth it. I also was a big fan of how the story is structured as a Tragedy, but it's in your power as the interfering player that it might not end up so bad…

The gameplay for The Killing Stone is incredibly addictive and oh so satisfying when you happen to build out a powerful combo. More often than not the secret to victory isn't just the strongest unit, but how you can create a mechanism through multiple synergies that earns you a victory.

If you're into Roguelites and Deckbuilding games, you'll have a lot of fun with The Killing Stone. If you happen to also be a fan of intricate family drama retold in iambic pentameter, then The Killing Stone is a must-play experience.

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The Killing Stone was reviewed on PC via Steam with a copy provided by the publisher - All photos were taken over the course of the 21 hour review