Ring the city

Review

Rings are beautiful pieces of jewellery, and some of them have a significant meaning for we humans. They can share and represent the love between a man and a woman. They can also represent a family name. But most of them represent beauty or some sort of wealth for whoever wears them. But what if rings had powers? Depending on which ring you wear, you might be able to strike an enemy with fire or chilling ice spells, or defend yourself with a magic shield.  Wouldn’t that be great? Well, here is your chance to find out all about this type of ring as you enter the dungeon of Ring the City.     

Ring the City is an strategy/adventure/rogue-like game developed and published by Giant Network as early access on 1^st of July 2019 on Steam.

When you play the game for the first time, you’ll be greeted with a short introduction and tutorial. After that, you’ll be ready to jump right into the Ring the City Dungeon.

The dungeon consists of five levels of fights and a boss fight. As you start your quest, you’ll have a specific loadout of rings to choose from. As soon as you enter, you’ll have three dark tunnels, which may consist of two dark tunnels and one of the following: a chest, a forge, a locked tunnel or a person. You may even have an area with one tunnel, a forge and a chest. It really depends on the stages, as they are randomised, which is a lot of fun. Moving through a tunnel activates a fight.  In many cases, on the right side of your screen, you’ll have an arrow facing towards your left. As you click on it, you’ll have three different items: health potions, torches or metal fingers. These items can only be found in chests. If you have enough torches, you can throw a torch into a tunnel to find out which enemy lies there.  There, you can choose which enemy you’ll be fighting next. If you have lost a finger in a previous battle, use a metal finger as a substitute. You might also find a character, with whom you can trade items, talk, or take on in a fight.

Interestingly, you, as the hero, have five fingers and you can wear a total of 9 rings. To give you some insight, the Frog Prince will have three fingers for a maximum of 6 rings, the octopus has two fingers for a maximum of 4 rings, and the werewolf has five fingers for a maximum of 9 rings (the thumb can only hold one ring).  Make sure that you evaluate each of the tunnels (which you can do if you have a torch) in order to choose the easiest five fights to reach a boss fight. Each time you manage to defeat an enemy, you can take one of three randomised rings belonging to the enemy. However, as they will be randomized at the end of each fight, they might not be the ones you really want. You might also be able to trap the defeated spirit into a spirit rings (if you have one handy). Bear in mind that you only have nine rings to fit on your fingers and an additional 5 in your backpack.

In terms of the fighting sequences, it works as a turn-based system. The attack rings must be filled with many before you can activate them. You must have tank rings on one or more fingers in order to charge the attacking rings. It will take one or more turns to charge these rings, depending on how many attacking rings you are wearing and how big your tank rings are. You might have three rings that require 6 mana points each to activate. Well, with a 30 mana-point tank ring, you’ll be able to fill them all up in one turn, but if your tank ring has only 12 mana points, it will take three turns to fill them up.  The goal is to destroy your opponent’s fingers to win the battle. Do this five times and you’ll reach a boss fight. If you manage to win a boss fight, you’ll be able to transfer two rings to your personal loadout, but you’ll lose these rings for your next fight. However, when you restart a game, these rings will be up for selection straight away.

Personally, I founnd this game quite addictive, and I enjoyed discovering the different combinations that the rings bring you as you go along. With 180 rings available, it will take you quite a while to master all the combinations, which creates great re-playability.

Nice graphics, and the games run well. It is currently as an early access on Steam, and I look forward to seeing any upcoming updates. A solid game so far.