Stones of Sorrow

I have a soft spot for games that feel like they were made by a single person with a very specific obsession, and Stones of Sorrow is exactly that. Rain Pohlak, the solo developer behind this, is also the frontman of an avant-garde brutal death metal band called NEOANDERTALS, and the whole project is basically that band's concept album converted into a 2D action roguelite. The music, the lore, the aesthetic - all of it flows from one singular, extremely strange creative mind. That alone makes it worth paying attention to, even before you land your first skull-crushing execution. The setup is lean and mean: you play a violent, betrayed warlord trapped in procedurally generated underground labyrinths, trying to hunt down the blood brother who put you there. Combat runs on a stamina bar you absolutely must respect - ignore it and you will die embarrassingly fast. Executions are the mechanical backbone; performing them rewards extra gold and stacks a permanent damage multiplier, so leaning into the brutality is actually the smart play. The item system runs deep for a game this small, with over 50 modifiers that bend the rules in memorable ways: rolling through a weakened enemy kills them outright, eating a corpse poisons you for fifteen seconds but can also restore health, and touching certain enemies triggers bleed-out damage. The cannibalism mechanic even has a fail state - eat too fast without the right item equipped and your character chokes to death on the corpse. That kind of absurd specificity is either going to charm you or immediately tell you this game is not for you. The couch co-op supports up to four players on one screen, with a dynamic camera that zooms out automatically when players spread apart. For a sub-five-dollar title, that is a genuinely generous local multiplayer mode. The boss also gains one permanent hit point every time you die, which is a clever, cruel way to punish grinding and push you to improve. There is a global leaderboard dangling a Golden Greatsword for the single best player in the world as an endgame carrot. Here is where I have to be honest with you, though. Community reception sits at roughly fifty-fifty, and the criticism points to real problems: controls that feel imprecise and sluggish, hit feedback that does not read clearly, enemies with janky AI, and jumps that feel disconnected from the ground. The aesthetic, which draws on actual rock art sites from Southern Drakensberg to Lascaux, is genuinely arresting and unlike anything else in the genre - but the execution of the underlying platformer physics leaves players divided right down the middle. The death-metal narration in the intro has also caught criticism for feeling unpolished rather than deliberately campy. This is a game you should approach like a very specific artifact. If the phrase "avant-garde brutal death metal roguelite built around prehistoric cave paintings" makes your pulse quicken, the rough edges will feel like part of the personality. If you need tight, responsive controls and clear hit reactions in your roguelites, the fifty percent of players who bounced hard off this game are probably telling you something important. Go in with clear eyes and keep your stamina bar green.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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