RUINER

RUINER is a top-down twin-stick shooter set in Rengkok, a cyberpunk city so dense with grime and neon it practically radiates heat through the screen. You play a wired-up killer with a helmet that broadcasts his mood in pixelated glyphs, hunting through corporate violence and human wreckage to find a kidnapped brother. Reikon Games built something leaner and meaner than most of its genre peers, and it shows in almost every design choice. The combat is the obvious centerpiece. It is fast, deliberate, and punishing in the best way. You have a dash that double functions as your main survival tool, and the game constantly reminds you it will kill you if you stand still. Weapons range from shotguns and SMGs to energy rifles and katanas, and the loadout system lets you swap on the fly between two weapon slots. A skill tree adds passive and active upgrades including a kinetic shield that deflects bullets back at enemies, a dash chain that lets you blur across the arena, and various modifiers to your energy bar. Nothing feels superfluous. Every upgrade has a clear tactical purpose, which is rare for this kind of game. Visually, RUINER is the kind of thing you want to screenshot every five minutes. The art direction leans hard into grim cyberpunk aesthetics without falling into parody. Rengkok feels like a real place in the way only handcrafted environments can achieve. The hub areas between missions actually reward slow exploration, small conversations with NPCs that sketch the city's broken social fabric in a few careful sentences. It is not a narrative-heavy game, but what story exists lands with genuine weight. The soundtrack by Sidewalks and Skeletons and its collaborators is dense, industrial, oppressive in all the right ways. It sits in your chest during the hard fights. Where RUINER stumbles is in its mid-section. The difficulty curve spikes unevenly, and a few arena encounters feel designed to eat your retry patience rather than test smart play. Boss fights are a mixed bag too. Some are tightly choreographed and deeply satisfying. Others overstay their welcome. Players who prefer methodical progression over reflex-heavy trial-and-error may find certain chapters genuinely frustrating. There is also something slightly inert about the protagonist as a character. The aesthetic choice to keep him mostly silent is interesting, but the story never quite fills the vacuum that creates. At around six to eight hours depending on difficulty and your tolerance for deaths, RUINER knows its length and commits to it. This is not a game padded to justify a price tag. It ends when it should end, which is something I will always respect. For fans of hard-hitting action shooters with strong visual identity and a punishing-but-fair combat loop, this is exactly the kind of overlooked gem worth going back to.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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