Stone Story RPG
An auto-RPG with strategic combat, deep crafting and programming elements, animated entirely in ASCII-art. In a realm of perpetual darkness, a single stone could change everything...
Stone Story RPG is a rpg, adventure and casual game
developed by Martian Rex and standardcombo
and published by Martian Rex and indienova.
Released on July 26th 2023 is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux
in 12 languages: English, Portuguese - Brazil, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Russian, Spanish - Latin America, Japanese, Korean and Turkish.
It has received 907 reviews of which 829 were positive and 78 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.6 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 29.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Stone Story RPG into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Stone Story RPG through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows 7 SP1+
- Processor: SSE2 instruction set support
- Memory: 400 MB RAM
- DirectX: Version 10
- Storage: 310 MB available space
- Additional Notes: Potatoware friendly
MacOS
- OS: Mac OS X 10.13+ (High Sierra)
- Processor: 64bit, SSE2 instruction set support
- Memory: 400 MB RAM
- Storage: 330 MB available space
- Additional Notes: Potatoware friendly
Linux
- OS: Ubuntu 18.04+
- Processor: 64bit, SSE2 instruction set support
- Memory: 400 MB RAM
- Storage: 280 MB available space
- Additional Notes: Potatoware friendly
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Sights & Sounds o-|-< [*] PC Game development in the 80s seems wild. Imagine having an idea for a game so complex that you couldn't find sufficient memory to display a bitmap. In some cases like this (or simply because it looked kinda cool), devs resorted to using ASCII art to build their worlds [*] Stone Story RPC brings that idea into the modern age—sans the memory limitations, of course [*] What you're left with is the most pared down visual display that you can possibly imagine. Sure, titles like Return of the Obra Dinn , Critters For Sale , and World of Horror may seem aggressively minimalist in their 1-bit presentation, but Stone Story carves away even more complexity by rendering its cursed lands using only a limited character set [*] The one bit of complexity that I noticed is the automatic scaling of the font based on the size of the window. Being an idle game, you'll probably be running this in the background or on another monitor, so it's interesting that you can tuck it in a tiny box in the corner and let it keep playing itself while still being able to glance at it from time to time [*] From the tinkling ethereal piano of the main theme to the angry percussion of the boss fight themes, the MIDI soundtrack is something that you'll want to tune into from time to time. Ironic that a game that is most efficiently played by not attending to it should have a soundtrack this good Story & Vibes o->-< [*] The main plot of Stone Story RPG is only a little more complex than its visuals. You follow the tale of a little stick man known as a "Stonehead". You inch your way forward through a barren wasteland, collecting a few pieces of gear as you go. This is an RPG, after all [*] You eventually find a nice rocky outcropping where you can assemble a primitive shelter and, using the items you've been amassing, build some basic amenities to help you craft more useful tools [*] You encounter a friendly but intimidating being called Dyangelos, who asks you to explore the world and collect 10 stones possessing incredible powers [*] The simple world is a cruel one. Continual exploration reveals new areas to explore and plunder, but these locales are populated by bats, spiders, ghosts, skeletons, and other fiends that want to bring your journey to an end. Some of them even get pretty big and intimidating... [*] Should you be able to slay one of these foes, you'll find them carrying a stone of game-altering power known as a Soulstone. I'll talk a little bit about them in the gameplay section below, but these allow you to do things like record enemy data (HP, attack power, name, etc.), unlock the level up system, or even begin writing your own scripts to autoplay the game without your intervention [*] What happens when you assemble the stones? Well, I won't spoil the narrative, but you essentially unlock the final boss battle in the map you began at and, if victorious, a "cyan world" akin to NG+ in other titles [*] The main plot isn't all you do, fortunately. There's a series of progressively unlocked daily missions that invite you to do favors for NPCs that you meet. These drop a little lore and add some dimension to the world [*] Given the minimilist presentation, dreamlike soundtrack, and idle gameplay, the vibes are chill as far as the eye can see. Even failure barely represents a setback. Just come back with better gear and loot the last guy's corpse. As you may have ascertained, this game has a pretty wry sense of humor Playability & Replayability o->8-< [*] Confession: I do not like idle games. I don't find really find number incrementing simulators to be a worthwhile use of the limited time I have to play games. So its fair to ask: what in the description seemed appealing about this one? [*] I think it's the fact that you're not just trying to make more money or cookies or whatever. There's an actual game with a story, characters, and objectives [*] What's more appealing, though, is the way in which you progressively unlock the game and new gameplay funcitonality as you advance through the game and defeat bosses. Remember those Soulstones I mentioned? Those are used as a way of turning what's initially a very simple idle game into a more complex autobattling RPG [*] Take, for example, the third Soulstone you unlock: the Experience Stone. Up until this point of the game, you're stuck with your starting HP. Earning this stone permits you to finally level up and begin facing some additional challenges. You'll also unlock other traditional RPG mechanics such as currencty (Ki Stone) and sidequests (Quest Stone) with other ones [*] Other Soulstones lack the same game-altering abilities, instead offering utility like experience boosts, healing, or screen-wiping attacks [*] The most powerful of these is by far is the penultimate Soulstone called the mindstone. This unlocks a sort of miniature development console that you can script around in using a language called StoneScript. Don't worry if you lack programming experience; StoneScript is about as simple as scripting languages get [*] The most obvious use of this utility is automating your stonehead's actions to do things like switch gear based on enemy type, heal when below an HP threshhold, loop levels, or craft items when you acquire enough of a resource [*] Some people have gotten especially creative with this tool, creating entirely new campaigns and scenarios. Wanna try them? SoulScript has a library functionality that allows you to import those creations into your game. Wanna share your work? You can upload yours too [*] Soulstones aren't the only way of altering your game. As you explore, you'll come across various bits of important gear. Some is used for more efficiently gathering resources like stone or wood, while others help you reach new areas. The most useful of these is the utility belt, which permits you to store and swap between full gear loadouts at any time using the numkey row [*] So, with all of these unique mechanics, near-infinite NG+ replayability, and even dev-operated community events, this has to be a game worth going back to often, right? Well, that still all depends on how much you like idle games. For my own part, I had my fun and eventually removed it from my startup apps list Overall Impressions & Performance o \|/ / \ [*] In a way, it's poetic. Few games put the creative process in the player's hands like this. Being handed the reins to a barebones console, a basic scripting language, a simple set of characters, and a CMYK color scheme, you're able to take part in the creative process. The only limits are your imagination and the number of characters you can fit on the screen [*] Stone Story RPG may be the most intriguing idle game I've tried, but at the end of the day, it's still an idle game. It's hard to have any actual fun with a game you don't actively participate in. Oh, sure, it's very interesting, but once the novelty wears off, you'll feel your motivation to keep playing slip [*] The toughest pill to swallow is the price point. Given the market for idle games and how much they typically cost, $30 USD is a difficult value proposition to square. Yes, I like to support indie devs, but I think this game could have found a wider audience and earned a bit more despite its niche status if they'd set their expectations where other devs traditionally have in this genre space Final Verdict 6.5 /10. Idle game fans, programmers, and creatives will likely find a lot to cherish in a game like this and rate it more highly. For my own part, I had a good time and reveled in the novelty, but ultimately lost interest not long after unlocking the cyan world. Wait for a sale, but the initial high price point may mean that it'll be a while before this hits your range
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It was fun at first, but be aware that it becomes a grind. One of the items in the game is something that will enable the game to loop levels over and over, so the grind is a planned part of the game. I think for over half of the 91 hours I "played", the game was just going in a loop in a background window while I did other things or slept. You need more and more of things to upgrade them, and it increases exponentially. I'm now at the point where I have 1,028 of one thing, and 5xx-600 of other things. I just don't see myself putting in the hours to get 1,024 of everything, knowing that all that is coming up is the same levels but with stronger foes. I really liked the crafting aspect. Well done. The story and characters enjoyable. I wish there was more.
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It's a Diablo for busy adults with a bit of nostalgy for DOS times. Kudos to dev for keeping it interesting with new challenges and elements.
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Stone Story RPG is an incredibly interesting and cool-looking game, but it's got a bunch of downsides that make me not want to recommend the game all that much. I'm deciding to leave a postive review nonetheless, because it's a fascinating premise, and I'm very curious as to what this dev team could do next. The game starts fairly simple, an auto side-scroller where your character can equip different items in their left or right-hand: a shovel to extract stones from the ground, a sword, shield, crossbow and other weapons to defend yourself against monsters... but even then, and even before that, what quickly stands out is how wild the artistic approach to the game is. I've never seen small-scale ASCII art look *this* cool. It instantly makes me want to dive headfirst into this game and explore it to the end to see all the stuff the animators could come up with (spoiler: it pays off). Eventually you unlock new areas and features. You craft an anvil, and can now upgrade and enchant your weapons. Later you will find the ability to combine weapons to create new ones, or a simple XP/Level feature, or the ability to earn money, or brew potions to aid you in battles. The game eventually shifts from having you quickly react to encounters with weapon choice, to letting you idle through previous levels to gather resources while you're busy on a second monitor. Spoilers ahead: the game goes so far in this direction of adding new features, in fact, that you'll eventually unlock the ability to script your character behavior in an entirely new coding language, allowing them to make weapon choices based on the enemies they encounter, gather resources, use potions and abilities, and more. This comes with a bunch of prewritten libraries, some of which appear to be entire minigames in and of themselves, although I haven't explored that part at all. In any case, it's a feature that kind of blows my mind . However, as you progress to the end of the main storyline, the game shows a... different approach to game design. The levels become grindy, finding the materials for enchantments and upgrades to beat the next level becomes a bit of a chore, and you don't unlock a whole lot of new areas anymore, so you've already seen most of the game art by then. The game fully embraces this idle-RPG approach thanks to both the spoilered feature above, and the addition of an offline mode, where you can just send your little character on a journey, go play another game for a few hours, then just come back to an amount of resources obtained and chests to open. The game adds other flavors to this. A character requests a referral code from a friend in exchange for free loot. The game regularly sets daily quests and other stuff linked directly to an hours-long real-time clock, a practice usually encouraged for the sole purpose of inflating player retention (why, oh why, invoke the concept of retention on a single-player game that was already paid for?). The menu now shows a pop-up with the upcoming "Free XP weekend" or "Free enchantment rerolls week" events. Some larger events take on a sort of battle-pass form, where completing grindy quests earns you increasingly better loot, and you can use "event tickets" to unlock more of that event loot instantly. While the PC version of this game has no real-money purchases, that is indeed how the mobile version is monetized, and this microtransactional business model reverberates through to the PC version's gameplay. While a steam forum post from the developers states: "Stone Story was first designed as a premium experience, then adapted to f2p for mobile" - as I played the game uninformed, it strongly felt like the exact opposite had happened. This side of the game progressively felt less and less like the sort of patterns I'd like to see in a 30-euro product. These patterns, at the very least, are rebalanced and completely rid of microtransactions in the PC version (thank god), so I feel it'd be a little disingenuous to downvote the game at this stage. I've had my fun with it, I've really enjoyed the art, and I'm probably gonna spend some more time playing around with the spoilered feature. I'm looking forward to what the team will work on next, because both the art (audio and visual) and a good chunk of the gameplay are cool as hell. But I hope their next game feels and plays much more like a game that was fully paid for.
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Game with a beautiful and unique style. The next logical (and insanely in-depth) step after Candy Box 2 (which was not by the same person, but is obviously very much inspired by it). Great game, very unique take on an idle game.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 28 December 2024 00:30 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 20 January 2025 02:52 |
| Steam price | 22 January 2025 20:43 |
| Steam reviews | 22 January 2025 15:54 |
Online players
27
Developer
Martian Rex,
standardcombo
Publisher
Martian Rex,
indienova
Release
26 Jul 2023
Platforms