Bonelords

My spreadsheet instincts kicked in the moment I saw eight starting classes staring at me from Bonelords' character select. That's a real number - eight distinct entry points, each steering your stat priorities in different directions before the first enemy wave even spawns. For a solo indie release sitting at the budget end of the market, that kind of structural ambition deserves a closer look. At its core, this is a 2D side-scrolling wave defense game where you protect Fort Platz from escalating hordes across the world of Speghiem, but the mechanical layering is what keeps it from feeling like a simple turret-pusher. The combat system asks more of you than most games in this weight class: dodge rolls grant invulnerability frames, weapons have both a standard and a special attack, and the poise-breaking system rewards players who read enemy patterns and commit to stagger windows rather than just button-mashing. Wavedashing is in here too, which adds a movement ceiling that high-skill players can chase without the game demanding it from newcomers. Between waves you pick relics - major power-up items that drop after defeating significant enemies - and those choices compound fast. The relic-plus-curse run modifier is a great late-game hook: start with a powerful relic that carries two stacking curses, then watch your build get twisted into something chaotic. The post-launch update pace from Z0 Game Studios has been steady, adding blessings between rounds, a floor-is-lava mode, type-B wave variants, and new unlockables - active developer engagement matters a lot in a game this dependent on run variety. The co-op implementation is one of the more generous things here. Split-screen supports up to four players on a single copy via Remote Play Together, which is a practical feature that budget indie titles rarely bother with. The community has flagged a bug around mixing mouse-and-keyboard with gamepad input for two-player setups, so controller-plus-keyboard households should note that. Controls also have a persistence issue reported by players - keybind changes made during a run have not always stuck between sessions - though given the active patch cadence, that kind of QoL friction tends to get addressed. As a strategy-first reviewer I want to be honest about the ceiling here. Bonelords is not a deep grand-strategy sandbox; it is a focused, action-forward roguelite with meaningful build decisions baked into a compact loop. The stat system, where each point is genuinely multipurpose rather than a single-stat dump, gives more interesting choices per level-up than you might expect. Where it shows its indie seams is in content volume - eight classes and a growing relic pool keep runs distinct, but players who log serious hours will eventually feel the edges. The Terraria-inspired building angle exists but currently plays a supporting role rather than a primary one; the Steam community discussions suggest wall and trap placement is underutilized, which the developer has flagged for future expansion. Steam user sentiment sits solidly in Very Positive territory across a growing review base, which for a game this new and this small is a meaningful signal. If you have ever bounced off wave-defense games because the combat felt shallow, Bonelords' Souls-adjacent input language is genuinely different enough to be worth the ask.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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