Runeyana

I went into Runeyana hoping for a rough-edged indie RPG with bones worth picking through. The premise is genuinely interesting on paper: a world stratified by different races, a reputation system that gates your access to factions, a storyline rooted in ancient gods across a timeline that stretches from the bone age to the stone age. That kind of historical sweep is rare in hack-and-slash territory, and the promise of both physical and psychological character customisation suggested there might be some real build depth hiding underneath. There is not, quite. What Runeyana actually delivers is a third-person action RPG with hack-and-slash combat, a pet system, weapon crafting using magic, and the ability to buy buildings and hire guardians in what seems intended as a light base-building or economy layer. The ability-learning system is the most interesting wrinkle: you absorb skills from enemies marked as Wild Signature creatures, which nudges you toward actually engaging with the world rather than grinding the same mob type. That is a solid design instinct. The problem is that the systems around it feel undercooked. The racial tension and reputation mechanics are present but never fully realised, and what is advertised as a huge, responsive world can feel thin once the initial novelty wears off. There are also persistent community reports about the singleplayer and apparent online-adjacent features being confusingly mixed together, with chests lootable by other players and a marketplace for selling goods, yet no clear indication of how or when other players actually appear. The Steam review pool is honest about all of this. With roughly 49 reviews and only 48 percent sitting in positive territory, Runeyana sits firmly in Mixed territory. The median playtime hovers around six and a half hours, which either means the game is short, or that most players run into friction early and put it down. Both are plausible. The game launched out of Early Access in March 2017 and has seen minimal community activity since. No critic has formally reviewed it. That silence is telling. Who is this for, then? Honestly, it is a free-to-play title on Steam, so the barrier to entry is nothing but your time. If you are drawn to scrappy, ambitious indie worldbuilding and can forgive rough execution, there is something here worth poking at for an evening. The Wild Signature creature mechanic and the bone-age-to-stone-age setting are ideas that a more polished game could run hard with. But if you need a tight narrative arc, meaningful choices, or build variety that holds up past the first few hours, Runeyana is going to leave you reaching for something else. It has the sketch of an interesting RPG without the follow-through to make it stick. Monika, Scout Team